Current location:	Mom's house
Current mood:	sick
Current music:	Tombstone on in the background
Entry tags:	animation, holiday special, rankin-bass

Jack Frost




No, not the creepy family movie with Michael Keaton or the DTV killer snowman flick. The 1979 Rankin Bass holiday special (combined Ground Hog's Day and Christmas) with Buddy Hackett (Scrooged) as a famous groundhog, Pardon-Me-Pete. Seems that every year everyone looks to Pardon-Me-Pete to see if winter will last six more weeks, and every year he "sees his shadow" and returns to the ground, even if it's cloudy and no shadows can be cast.

That's because the shadow is actually Jack Frost (Robert Morse, Hunk). Pardon-me-Pete explains how they came to have this arrangement. Seems that no one can see Frost, but he flies around the world managing winter for Father Winter, while "snow gypsies" drop the snowflakes one at a time, the Sleet Sisters create sleet and Snip (Don Messick, The Hobbitt) cuts each individual snowflake. One year, though, Frost became human, and Pete tells us the tale.

Down on earth, at the poor pumpkin eaters of January Junction (we never see them eat anything else) are oppressed by Kubla Kraus (Paul Frees, who voiced Jack Frost himself in Frosty's Winter Wonderland), "the king of the Kossaks" who's so terrible that the Kossaks have left him alone. He has an army of mechanical knights, a steam driven horse, a clockwork butler and a handpuppet for a sychopant. Kraus takes every coin from the people, and most of their food as well. One of the villagers, however, Elisa, is a beautiful girl who "loves" Jack Frost, or at least his handiwork. Frost asks Father Winter if he can become human so he can be with her, and he allows him one winter to gain a house, a bag of gold, a roof over his head and a wife (the necessities of life, apparently). He sends Snip and the littlest snow gypsie down with him to help him out.



Spoilers ahead


As a human Frost is a clumsy goofball who claims to be a tailor. With Snip's help he is one, and he lives with Elisa and her folks. He seems to be making little progress, but Elisa does seem fond of him. Unfortunately for Jack, Elisa's "knight in golden armor", Danny, comes back from adventuring with King Arthur. Kubla Kraus also gets a hankering for Elisa, so he abducts her. Danny rides to the rescue, but so do Jack and friends-but Jack and friends get captured and put into a dungeon, while Danny is wounded but rides off with Elisa, who then spends the winter nursing him back to health.

It's a long winter, indeed, because Frost goes back to his old form to stop Kraus's army of mechanical knights from invading the town by creating a huge blizzard at Kraus's castle. To extend winter, he scares the crap out of Pete, who then discovers that he quite enjoys the extra six weeks of "shut eye". Therefore the whole "seeing his shadow" every winter. Jack finally defeats the robots for good, and Kraus, so he's got a house (the castle) a horse (the steam horse) and plenty of gold. What he lacks is a wife-and when he goes to find her he finds that Elisa will be married. So Jack has to go back to his old life.

This was a fun story with a fairy tale feel. It's too bad they shoehorn in some Christmas elements-everyone gives "imaginary gifts" at Christmas, a nice idea which of course Danny upstages by giving Elisa real flowers-because it would be cool if there was a Groundhog's Day special all its own. I think every hoiday should have a slasher film and a holiday special. I did find it depressing that Jack doesn't ever get a single chance with Elisa-I think if he really had to give it up to save her that might have been more interesting. Kubla Kraus is an absolutely nuts villain, and I dug Pardon-Me-Pete.