Balladeer’s Blog’s Eighth Annual Christmas Carol-A-Thon continues!
SCROOGE (1935) – This is the notoriously cheapjack and rushed version of A Christmas Carol.
It is almost unwatchable if you’re not a lover of bad movies like I am. And we are talking lame, lame LAME! Continue reading
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As Christmas Carol-A-Thon 2017 rolls along here at Balladeer’s Blog I’ll remind you that even though I’m a non-believer there is nothing wrong with appreciating the cultural premise of the holiday. At Halloween I’m not drawn into the Wiccan religion by celebrating witches and at Christmas none of us lose our claims to rational thought by playing songs with a religious theme. Lighten up, in other words.
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Before you know it Christmas Carol-A-Thon 2017 will be over so let’s cram in as much as we can before the 25th. Here’s another individual song from one of the many versions of A Christmas Carol that I’ve reviewed over the years. From Scrooge (1970) it’s Thank You Very Much, which SHOULD have been sung by Bob Cratchit but instead goes to the guy from the Schizoid Man episode of The Prisoner.
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Balladeer’s Blog’s 2017 Christmas Carol-A-Thon resumes with this look at one of the WEIRDEST and most pointless renditions of Ebenezer Scrooge outside of Dickens Slash Fiction.
SCROOGE LOOSE (1957) – Scrooge Loose is an 8 minute long Gumby stop-motion animation treat from 1957.
Gumby and his equine pal Pokey spot Ebenezer Scrooge escaping from the book A Christmas Carol and set off in pursuit. The pair are posing as Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson just to make even less sense. What, no Jack the Ripper? Continue reading
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Christmas Carol-A-Thon 2017 continues! Yes, it’s the Christmas Carol adaptation NOBODY asked for … not even KEN!
BARBIE IN A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2008) – Mattel provides us with a plastic version of the Carol in a plastic cartoon about its plastic creation Barbie. Just as Mr Magoo was an actor portraying Scrooge in Mr Magoo’s Christmas Carol, Barbie is the story-teller relating the tale to her younger sister Kelly.
As in A Diva’s Christmas Carol the Scrooge stand-in here is a female singing star – Eden Starling. Eden’s mean-spirited Aunt Marie has spent a lifetime molding the young songstress into an equally unpleasant figure complete with Aunt Marie’s credo: “In a selfish world, the selfish succeed.” Continue reading
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SCROOGE & MARLEY (2012) – I am still very ill so here’s a rerun for this latest installment of Balladeer’s Blog’s Christmas Carol-A-Thon for 2017.
Scrooge & Marley is a gay-themed version of the Dickens classic. It’s also a musical, but unfortunately the songs struck me as being as blah as most of Leslie Bricusse’s output in Scrooge (1970).
Previously I’ve examined Ebbie, which is a business-woman themed version of the story, John Grin’s Christmas and Christmas is Comin’ Uptown, which are black-themed versions of the story and even See Hear Presents A Christmas Carol, a sign-language and spoken version aimed at the hearing impaired.
Scrooge & Marley is an openly and deliberately gay adaptation of the Dickens story. It often falls into the trap of using its gay narrative as a gimmick rather than a theme but that risk just goes with the territory when a creative team is locked into following a previously mapped-out storyline.
The film is set in the fairly present day and opens up at Ebenezer Scrooge’s gay nightclub called Screws. I was hoping it would be called Screwed, to be reminiscent of the porno version of A Christmas Carol titled Ebenezer Screwed.
At any rate Scrooge is, as usual, a tight-fisted (as it were) hand at the grindstone and treats his employees horribly. Hell, he even fires them if they tip delivery people out of their own pockets! Continue reading
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Christmas Carol-A-Thon 2017 continues!
This is a filmed presentation of the stage play by San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre and originally aired December 21st, 1981 on the Arts Channel.
The adaptation was by Dennis Powers and Laird Williamson and starred William Patterson as Ebenezer Scrooge. The only real mistake this Carol makes is that it’s one of those versions that reads WAY too much into Scrooge’s relationship with his father, even making up beatings that are never mentioned in the Dickens original. Other than that this production features some very nice touches.
During the Christmas Past segment Young Scrooge (Thomas Harrison) and Belle (Janice Hutchens) are ice-skating under starlit skies while having their breakup scene, which livens up this often tedious bit of business. When the Ghost of Christmas Present (Lawrence Hecht) shows Scrooge the Continue reading
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Yes, it’s another isolated song from a version of A Christmas Carol which I have previously reviewed in its entirety. From An All Dogs Christmas Carol it’s Clean Up Your Act as the Scrooge stand-in (Carface Caruthers) begs the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come to give him some hope.
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Balladeer’s Blog’s Christmas Carol-A-Thon for 2017 continues! This time around I’m examining a 1965 production from California PBS station KCET. The title may not sound action-packed and appealing but Dr Frank Baxter was to the 1950s and 1960s what Carl Sagan and The Reduced Shakespeare Company were to later decades.
Just as The Reduced Shakespeare Company made the works of the Bard of Avon more accessible and therefore more popular among non-Shakespeare fans Dr Baxter’s Shakespeare on TV series inspired younger generations to take an interest in the works of the great Elizabethan playwright.
And like Carl Sagan’s series Cosmos made him a virtual rockstar of the scientific field Dr Baxter’s entertaining and educational Bell Laboratory Science Series of film shorts made him enormously popular among teachers and students in every school that used those shorts as classroom aids. The Bell Laboratory Science Series educational shorts were so effective and beloved they were still being used in the 70s and 80s.
This black & white hour-long holiday special features Baxter at a Continue reading
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Christmas Carol-A-Thon 2017 continues here at Balladeer’s Blog! These neglected songs from various versions of A Christmas Carol have proven pretty popular so here’s another. From the fairly blah Shower of Stars tv presentation of A Christmas Carol from 1954 it’s the song A Very Merry Christmas.
Part of the fun comes from the fact that the song is sung by Ray Middleton, who went on to play Colonel Thomas McKean in the theatrical release of the musical 1776. Middleton played Nephew Fred and the Ghost of Christmas Present in this Christmas Carol.
This song is just so-so, but if you’re like me you’re desperate for new background songs to sprinkle in during Christmas Time get-togethers. Some of these out-of-the-way songs from Carol adaptations are ideal.
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