John McCoy

A Rankin-Bass retrospective 2: The Little Drummer Boy

The Little Drummer Boy (1968)

Plot: We open to the melodious but stern voice of Miss Greer Garson whose schoolmarmish reading of scripture lets us know it’s time to sit up straight, as there will be a quiz following. It’s the time of Caesar Augustus and there’s a “cruel tax”—although what does she think, those roads just grow on trees?—that requires everyone to shuffle through the desert in bleak, single-file lines. Everyone, that is, except the n’er-do-well entertainer, Ben Haramed (Jose Ferrer), and his cross-eyed companion, Ali (Paul Frees), who seem to be strolling through the sand dunes without a destination or provisions. Perhaps the story that follows is merely a hallucination brought about by extreme dehydration.

Here comes the titular drummer boy, Aaron (Teddy Eccles)—who is drumming, because what else would he be doing? He’s accompanied by his “old friends:” the donkey, Samson; the lamb, Ben Baabaa, and the camel, Joshua, all of whom are swaying about on their spindly hind legs as though they’ve stepped out of a particularly apocalyptic Bosch painting. The catty Aaron is unimpressed with the animals’ footwork and spurs them on like a stage mother: “be lighter! Happier!” Ali notes that “it is said” that Aaron hates all people—at eight years of age, Aaron already has a rich body of folklore surrounding him.

Ben Haramed and Ali take Aaron and his friends captive as the title song plays, unhelpfully. Ben Haramed reveals his nefarious intent of putting on a variety show for the taxpayers through the song “When the Goose is Hanging High.” The connection between poultry and show business is left unmade as Garson leads us a flashback explaining why Ali hates people: this involves the onscreen knifing of his father and the offscreen murder of his mother, as well as the destruction by fire of Aaron’s home. Happy Holidays, everyone!

The horror continues within the bleak gray walls of Jerusalem where Aaron is compelled to perform for a leering crowd while wearing a painted smile that would make Heath Ledger cringe. “Why can’t the Animals Smile?” he sings, as his furry companions stage a bacchanal in which they pretend to be other creatures, and we recall the words of Lovecraft, that the most merciful thing in the world really is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. All this proves too much for Aaron, who finally snaps and turns on the crowd before a passing of the keffiyeh can garner a single shekel.

As luck would have it, outside the city the troupe runs into a trio of wise kings (all Paul Frees), who are uninterested in percussive music but are happy to purchase Joshua, having killed their own camel by loading it with an industrial pallet of Frankincense and Myrrh from Sam’s Club. Aaron is none to happy about this and runs after the kings’ caravan to be reunited with Joshua. There hasn’t been quite enough tragedy in this children’s story, so Baabaa is abruptly run over by an irate Centurion in a chariot, late on his way to a filming of Ben Hur. Aaron takes his dying lamb to the stable where the kings are, and finally notices this huge star in the sky thing that’s been looming overhead the entire time. Fortunately, the Messiah is hip to Aaron’s crazy beats and Baabaa is miraculously healed.

Notes: This show is based on the listless, monotonous,and inexplicably popular Christmas song, written by Davis, Onorati and Simonein 1958. It never ceases to amaze me that it took three people to write the thing. The gritty sets and misshapen china-doll character designs are straight from your nightmares—or perhaps a Cold War era animation studio somewhere in Czechoslovakia. Reflecting the emerging crafts movement that would dominate the early ’70s, everything is gritty and dirty and the palette runs the gamut of browns from dirt to mud. While the actual hills surrounding Jerusalem are quite lush with vegetation, this story takes place in what looks like the Gobi Desert, because it’s the Middle East, am I right?

For a children’s special, The Little Drummer Boy is pretty brutal: violent death, enslavement, and the Vienna Boys’ Choir all feature prominently. But it’s also earnest and honest in a way that, say, The Christmas Shoes isn’t, like a big sloppy dog that just wants you to love it and to forgive it for what it did to your socks. The basic message, that we should give what we can as we are able, is both theologically and ethically sound. But did they really have to make the bad guys Arabs?

A Rankin-Bass retrospective 1: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

Plot: The story opens in the manner of Citizen Kane: with spinning newspapers whose headlines announce a terrible storm, because there were no bigger news stories in the early ’60s. But fear not, our narrator, Sam the Snowman, assures us that Santa will still be coughing up the presents. In fact, the next scene reveals that the greatest threat to Santa is in fact the monstrous Mrs. Claus, who is intent upon producing arterial sclerosis in the jolly old elf.

Sam introduces us to Rudolph, a reindeer who was born with a 5-watt penlight instead of a nose. Fascist parents Donner and Mrs. Donner are deeply disappointed with their minute-old offspring, as is a grumpy Santa, who nonetheless launches into the stirring “I am old Kris Kringle.” Meanwhile, Hermey the elf tries in vain to defy his phallicly-nosed boss by becoming a dentist. “Why am I such a Misfit?” he asks no one in particular. “Such is the life of an elf,” observes Sam, philosophically. In another part of Christmas Town, Rudolph provides a melancholy echo to Hermey’s haunting song. Somewhere in between comes the musical number “We are Santa’s Elves,” but nobody ever remembers that one anyway.

At the Reindeer Games (which are no fun at all), Rudolph’s hides his shame, allowing him to make friends with the spunky Fireball and to put some moves on the coquettish Clarice. He blows his cover just as Santa arrives. Spurned by the beloved saint, Rudolph is nonetheless encouraged by Clarice’s observation “There’s Always Tomorrow.” Several woodland creatures seem to agree, but just as the two are about to mate, Clarice’s dad intervenes. Hermey appears and the reindeer and elf set out together to seek “Fame and Fortune,” nearly plunging off a cliff to early deaths.

Suddenly, the Abominable Snowmonster of the North appears, snarling, over the mountain tops, in a scene designed to forever scar the collective psyches of a nation’s children. For no apparent reason he allows Hermey and Rudolph to pass unmolested. The duo meet up with the prospector, Yukon Cornelius, the only competent individual in this holiday special. Sam chides Yukon’s avarice—or does he celebrate it?—with the ambivalent ditty “Silver and Gold.” Enter the Snowmonster again, attracted to little red light bulbs. Yukon saves the day with his pickaxe, leading the three to the “Island of Misfit Toys,” a bleak, pale pink land whose denizins spend all day hiding in giftwrap. The loudest of the toys is the whiny Charley-in-the-box, who sends the newcomers to the castle of King Moonraiser, this world’s secular version of Aslan. Moonraiser grudgingly allows the trio to spend the night, but in a fit of altruism, Rudolph sets off on his own to be eaten.

After growing some horns, Rudolph returns to Christmas Town only to find that his mom, dad, and girlfriend have been taken by the Snowmonster to his cave. There the cross-eyed brute drools over them for several weeks, apparently waiting for Rudolph to show up before administering the coup de grace. Rudolph fails miserably in his attempt to rescue them, but Hermey and Yukon save the day by yanking the monster’s teeth out, another scene designed to further terrify. “I’ll light the way,” Rudolph offers as they leave the cave, but no one pays his cry for attention any mind. Yukon torments the defenseless Snowmonster and ends up falling over a cliff, and by now, the shell-shocked viewer has run screaming from the room.

Of course there’s a happy reunion at the end to the tune of “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” and Yukon and the monster aren’t really dead and Rudolph, by virtue of his nose, gets to lead Santa’s sleigh, although a pair of headlights seems the more obvious answer. In the most heartbreaking scene of all, the Misfit Toys weep bitterly about their apparent abandonment. “I haven’t any dreams left to dream,” states the rag doll, who has absolutely nothing wrong with her. But down comes Santa and Rudolph, and off they fly to the tune of Sam’s rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Notes: This was the first Christmas special to be produced by Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass, and the animation has both the freshness and the funkiness of a maiden effort. The simple felt-covered characters have a tendency to sway wildly and stare blankly ahead, and the sparse, blank sets sometimes make you think you’re watching a frozen Meshes of the Afternoon.

As networks have demanded more commercial time, Rudolph has often been shortened for broadcast. I once saw an airing which cut “I am Old Chris Kringle,” yet confusingly left in Santa’s lead line “You see, Rudolph, every year I polish up my jingle bells…” before jumping to the shot of the jolly man exiting the cave. Donner’s line to the Mrs. when he sets out to find Rudolph—“This is Man’s work”—is also often cut in these more enlightened times.

Santa and Mrs. Claus are nothing like their later Rankin-Bass incarnations, and both seem to be quarrelsome and unpleasant—the Italian mother Mrs. Claus, especially. Santa calls her “Mama,” which leads to some disturbing questions about their sex life.

Embrace the Void!

We all have favorite books that we re-read compulsively when we’re sick; or favorite movies which we can’t help but watch again while channel surfing, even though we own the five-disc collector’s Blu-ray. There are songs that we want sung at our funerals even if the choice might only pile confusion onto the grief of the mourners (Radiohead’s “Airbag” for me, please). And then there are works of art that aren’t necessarily favorites, whose aesthetic merits we would be hard-pressed to defend, but which were somehow at the right place at the right time to burrow deep into our subconscious like psychic earwigs.

Back in the day, when comic books were still mainly sold in five and dimes, the practice was for unsold issues to have their covers torn off and sent back to the distributors. While technically these books were supposed to be written off, some did re-emerge at the very bottom of the retail food chain in plastic bags sold three for a dollar. I believe that it may have been through this dicey trafficking that a copy of Marvel Presents #7 (1976) made its way into my older brother’s hands. All I know is that the ragged, torn, and smudged copy I re-read compulsively for the next several years of my young life never had a cover, which only added to the aura of mystery of the thing.

Also adding to the mystery: I had no idea who any of the characters were, or what the events leading up to this comic were, only HOLY HELL THIS MAKES NO SENSE. The story—titled “Embrace the Void!”—involved a group who called themselves “the Guardians of the Galaxy,” only apparently the main characters in the story didn’t consider themselves members. They are a ragtag group of aliens from various planets—Mercury, Jupiter, and Pluto are mentioned—and for some reason they are visiting the Convent of Living Fire, a nunnery run by a sisterhood of green webbed-handed zealots whose religion involves a process of psychic self-immolation resulting in oneness with the universe, as well as eventually collapsing into a pile of ashes. Nikki, the voluptuous, flame-headed Mercurian who may or may not be a member of the group is being encouraged by Starhawk, the omniscient and brooding instigator who is definitely not a member of the group, to undergo the ritual that will result in her combustion. An explanation as to why she must do this is not forthcoming.

Neither is there an explanation of a sudden cutaway scene occurring in a spaceship orbiting the convent’s planet. Only it’s not a planet per se, it’s an enormous man, the “Topographical Man,” whose body spans light years and who holds twin stars in his grasp. Aboard this ship a final member of the Guardians, Vance Astro, is locked in a psychic battle with a creature who has assumed his appearance, a battle he apparently loses when he collapses to the floor. And then there’s yet another jump-cut to a scene that chilled me to my eight-year-old core: a shattered biodome floating through space with a frozen horse suspended lifelessly within. This is apparently Starhawk’s home, but the narrative doesn’t dwell on this scene of distruction: we return to Nikki, who has willingly strapped herself to a ritualistic throne and burst into flame in a scene which can only be described as orgasmic, although that particular detail only became clear to me years later.

Adding to the mélange of crazed hedonism, Starhawk suddenly lurches forward in the grips of his own spasms, and beats a hasty retreat from the temple, pursued by the Plutonian member of the group, a figure composed of silicon who can apparently melt solid rock with his hands. When the crystal pursuer reaches his prey, Starbuck confuses the sexuality of children across the nation by transforming into a woman (his outfit also morphs into something much more revealing). Before you can say weirdest boner, the scene cuts once again to the orbiting spaceship, where—surprise!—instead of having been defeated, Vance Astro has merely switched minds with his foe. But before he can luxuriate in his own new body, he dissipates, his consciousness seeping out of the ship into space to become part of the Topographical Man (remember him?)

And just in time, too, because the now engulfed-in-flames Nikki has astrally projected herself into space as a translucent naked entity—to engage in congress with the celestial humanoid, whose mind is now at least partially Astro’s. Yes, that’s right: this has all been leading up to a ghost fucking a planet. Which causes the planet to explode. Which is…good, I guess? Apparently this Topographical Man has been absorbing other planets, which is bad, although the inhabitants of these worlds seem to have done all right for themselves starting strange religions and constructing huge convents and all. Somehow the Guardians all escape, leaving presumably billions of the Topographical Man’s inhabitants to die, but they seem happy enough with what they’ve done to call it a victory. Nor do they seem all that surprised that their companion Starhawk is now a chick, but that will apparently be resolved in another issue.

Except for me there was no other issue. Until I became an adult, this coverless issue was my one and only glimpse into this crazy universe and to say it left me with questions would be an understatement. But in spite of my confusion, the comic book haunted me. Actually, the confusion only fanned the flames of my obsession. This was a window into something cosmic, bizarre, and intensely sexual in a way that broke my brain. It made me feel like I was reading something forbidden that was just on the verge of making sense. And the art! The gorgeous sinewy line work by Al Milgrom, given a Kirbiesque flair by inker Bob Wiacek, so much more visceral and connected to the id than any digitally produced comics today. The author of this story was none other than Steve Gerber, writer of Howard the Duck, which makes perfect sense.

In recent years I’ve tracked down copies of the other issues in this run of stories—copies with their covers intact—and while the plot lines are more or less explained, I can’t say that knowledge has led to enlightenment. I can now place this comic in the context of the culture of the mid-70s, of waning psychedelia’s last gasps and a counterculture being absorbed into the mainstream. I can also see the comic for the narrative and derivative mess it sometimes is. But that doesn’t matter. The damage was done long ago, and for that I’m grateful.