An Underrated High Fantasy Xmas Special (“The Life And Adventures of Santa Claus” Review)
Originally posted to YouTube on Dec. 15, 2023.
October 25, 2022 saw the passing of Jules Bass, who, along with his partner, Arthur Rankin Jr., was the founder of Rankin/Bass Productions.
Even if you’ve never heard of the company, chances are you’re familiar with their work, especially their iconic holiday specials: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, The Little Drummer Boy, Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town–among many others, all of which, interestingly enough, remain internally consistent with one another.
Yes, decades before the MCU, Rankin/Bass Productions had its own cinematic universe. And if you’re interested in falling down that rabbit hole, I’d recommend this video essay by Quinton Reviews.
Aside from their holiday specials, Rankin/Bass Productions was, surprisingly enough, involved with many other animated projects. For example, did you know they partnered with the Japanese animation company Topcraft to create an animated TV series. You MIGHT have heard of it…
Yes, the same company that created Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer was also responsible for the ThunderCats.
(Don’t worry. That’s not just a random fact. It’s going to come up later. Promise!)
Rankin/Bass Productions also teamed up with Topcraft to create several animated fantasy movies. Some of their most notable includes the 1977 animated adaptation of The Hobbit, the 1982 adaptation of The Last Unicorn, and the 1982 animated film The Flight of Dragons.
(Anyone? Anyone else here know about that movie? Just me? Okay.)
Anyway, if you REALLY want to have your mind blown, after it went bankrupt and dissolved in 1985, Topcraft and its assets would eventually be acquired by a certain animation director, who would turn it into another animation studio.
You MIGHT have heard of the guy. His name is Hayao Miyazaki, and he created Studio Ghibli.
Yeah. You probably never imagined that Rudolph, Thundercats, and Totoro were all connected, did yah?
So, here we have Rankin/Bass Productions, a company famous for both its stop-motion animated specials and its animated high fantasy films created in collaboration with Topcraft. But what would happen if you combined the best of both worlds, stop motion with high fantasy.
Well, you would get the holiday special I’ll be reviewing. Directed by Jules Bass himself, and created as the final Rankin/Bass holiday animated film, this is the 1985 special, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus.
The special is based on the children’s book of the same name, written in 1902 by L. Frank Baum. Yes, the same person who wrote the Wizard of Oz. Interestingly enough, the book is even canon to the Oz mythos. In the fifth Oz book, The Road to Oz, Santa Claus appears as one of the many guests for Princess Ozma’s birthday party, among many other cameos of other characters from Baum’s other books.
Of course, if you want to go down THAT rabbit hole, I suggest watching the Oz book reviews by The Hungry Reader, along with his supplementary Da Baum videos.
This story begin in the enchanted Forest of Burzee–an age ago. There, The Great Ak, the Master Woodsman of the World, meets up with Queen Zurline, the Queen of the Wood Nymphs. Both of them are preparing to congregate with the other immortal spirits for a very important meeting.
The other Immortals make their grand entrance with a royal procession. And what follows is perhaps the special’s finest musical number.
In my opinion, this music number is the number one reason to watch this special. It is such a grand and epic orchestration. It sound like something you could hear in the live-action Lord of the Rings films.
Speaking of Lord of the Rings, the music for this special was composed by Bernard Hoffer, who composed music for other Rankin/Bass productions like ThunderCats and the 1980 animated adaptation of Return of the King.
Yes, aside from The Hobbit, Rankin/Bass also created an animated movie based on The Lord of the Rings–albeit the very last book, for reasons that completely elude me. If you want to know more about that movie, I’d recommend watching the review of the animated Tolkien films by David Gansle.
(Man, I’m recommending a lot of videos in this review.)
Anyway, if there’s one good thing about the animated version of the very last book in the Rings trilogy, it’s the musical numbers, which also have no right being as majestically epic as they are. And, yes, that also includes the infamous song with singing Orcs, “Where There’s a Whip, There’s a Way.”
(I don’t care what other people say, that’s song a real banger.)
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah.
After that epic musical number, the Council of Elrod convenes–excuse me, the Council of the Immortals–and the Great Ak exposits the reason for their meeting.
By the way, remember when I mentioned how Rankin/Bass helped create the ThunderCats? Well, as I said, that wasn’t just a random factoid. Many of the characters in this special were performed by voice actors who also worked on that cartoon.
For example, Queen Zurline was performed by Lynne Lipton, who also voiced Cheetara. Tingler was performed by Bob McFadden, who also voiced Snarf. Peter Knook was performed by Peter Newman, who also voiced Tygra. The Commander of the Wind Demons was performed by Larry Kenney, who also voiced Lion-O. King Agwa was performed by Earle Hyman, who also voiced Panthro. And Santa Claus was voiced by Earl Hammond, who also voiced Mum-Ra.
Anyway, the Great Ak pleads his case for Santa Claus by telling his backstory. Nearly 60 years earlier, the Great Ak discovered a human baby on the edge of the forest. After much consideration, he decides to allow the baby, who is named Claus, to be raised in the forest by Necile the wood nymph and Shiegra the lioness.
An important mythical figure raised and nursed by a wild animal? Insert obvious reference to other mythical figure nursed and raised by a wild animal here.
And so, the young Claus grows up and spends his childhood days care free in the enchanted forest–through a musical montage, of course.
But while the other immortal denizens of the forest do not age, the young Claus, as a human being, does, and once he reaches adulthood, the other immortal spirits bid him farewell as he prepares to venture into the human world where he belongs.
But before he does, the Great Ak treats him to a magical journey around the world, where he shows the sheltered Claus the trials and tribulations his fellow human beings experience.
They visit Europe, where medieval peasants toil away in the fields for mere scraps while their feudal lords feast upon the fruit of their labor. They visit Japan, where young samurai are trained to fight, sometimes to the death, on behalf of their feudal lords. They visit Arabia, where poor orphaned children are forced to beg for food and money. And then they return to Europe once more, where Claus learns about the concept of war.
Having witnessed humanity’s inhumanity to their fellow man, Claus ponders why people endure such harsh lives, to which the Great Ak attempts to answer.
And so, having determined to take the Great Ak’s words to heart, Claus departs from the Forest of Burzee and ventures into the World of Man, determined to do his best to do his part to make the world better.
His travels take him to the Valley of Ho Ha Ho, so named because, well…
There, the other immortal spirits surprise him by building him a new home and treating him to a home-warming party.
And so, Claus spends his days attending to the children in the nearby village. One evening, an orphaned boy appears frozen on his doorstep. Claus take the little boy inside for the evening, and the next morning, treats him to a toy cat he had been whittling away at. The boy shows his gift to the other children, and they all start begging Claus to make them their own toys.
And so Claus determines to make it his life’s mission to give children a little joy in their lives by making and delivering toys for them.
Unfortunately, his efforts to deliver the toys are initially thwarted by the Awgwas, evil creatures who thrive upon the misery of children and influence them to do bad things. Through the gifts bestowed upon him by the immortal spirits, Claus eventually escapes from the clutches of the Awgwas and their leader, King Awgwa.
A few other failed delivery attempts soon force the Great Ak to intervene and implore the evil creatures to stop interfering with Claus’ deliveries. King Awgwa defies Great Ak, and the two factions inevitably go to war with one another.
And so the Great Ak and the Forest of Burzee go to battle against King Awgwa and his minions in what is essentially this special’s Siege of Gondor.
You know, some people might criticize this action scene as being anti-climatic, but personally, I love how the evil Awgwas are charging into battle with the intention to use brute force, only to be thwarted by the other creatures through magic tricks. It’s just makes for delightful schadenfreude.
And so the Awgwas are defeated and Santa Claus is free to make his toy deliveries. He is aided by one of the magical creatures, Peter Knook, who provides him with eight reindeer.
Because Santa Claus.
Unfortunately, they arrive to the village too late and discover all the houses have been locked for the evening. Fortunately, Claus decides to deliver the presents by sliding down the chimmnies and leaving the toys inside the children’s stockings hanging by the fireplaces.
Because Santa Claus.
When he returns, Claus asks Peter Knook if he use his reindeer again to make another delivery. Knook agrees, but only for one night a year. They decide to make that one night Christmas Eve so the children can have the toys as presents on Christmas morning.
Because Santa Claus.
More than sixty years pass, and Santa Claus is off making his yearly deliveries. It is here where the Great Ak ends his story, and he informs the other immortals that Claus will pass away later that evening. He implores them to allow Santa to continue living by bestowing upon him the Mantle of Immortality.
Of course, the other Immortals agree, Santa Claus is given the mantle and made immortal, and he lives on to continue delivering Christmas presents to the children of the world.
As I mentioned before, this was the very last animated holiday special created by Rankin/Bass Productions. The special aired on CBS on December 17, 1985.
Unfortunately, it didn’t do that well. As Wikipedia explains, it only managed to earn a 12.5 rating and a 19 percent audience share, ranking it third in its timeslot, and placing it in the bottom ten for the week. And so, the Rankin/Bass holiday specials ended, not with a bang, but a whimper–a pretty well-made whimper, but a whimper nonetheless. There is a reason why this special is one of the more less known of Rankin/Bass’ filmography.
As for Rankin/Bass itself, the company would officially shut down nearly 15 years later on December 18, 2000. Arthur Rankin Jr. would pass away on January 30, 2014. And his partner, Jules Bass, as mentioned earlier, passed away last year.
The Rankin/Bass library is currently owned by Warner Bros. Entertainment, and many of the holiday specials had aired for more than 20 years on the Family Channel (now Freeform) during its “25 Days of Christmas” seasonal event.
Since 2018, many of these specials, including this one, air on AMC in December during its “Best Christmas Ever” seasonal event. As of this recording, this special is available to stream on AMC Plus.
(Psst! Of course television recordings of this special have also been uploaded to Dailymotion and the Internet Archive, which is where I got my video footage, but don’t tell anyone.)
In 2022, Warner Bros. partnered with NBCUniversal to release The Complete Rankin-Bass Christmas Collection, a nine-disc DVD box which includes eighteen specials from Rudolph to, well, this one. If you’re interested in Rankin/Bass, it’s available to purchase on Amazon.
Go buy physical media while we still can, until our corporate overlords decide to eliminate it altogether and force us to pay exuberant fees to stream everything, and considering how said corporate overlords have been acting recently, well…
Hey! Hey Zaslav! Zaslav…don’t you think about!
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus is a forgotten relic among the Rankin/Bass holiday specials, but it certainly is an underrated gem. It truly combines the best of Rankin/Bass’ output between its iconic stop-motion animated holiday specials and its beautiful animated fantasy movies. If you love Rudolph and Frosty, and you love The Last Unicorn and The Hobbit, I highly recommend you watch this special this holiday season. It was a good final bow for Rankin/Bass and its legacy.
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J.C. Alexandre 