Ms. Scrooge

Title:

Ms. Scrooge

Format:

TV Movie

Country:

USA

Production company:

Power Pictures, for the USA Network

Year:

1997 (first broadcast on the USA Network on December 10^th that year)

Length:

87 minutes

Setting:

Contemporary United States

Background:

One of the major general-interest cable channels in the United States, the USA Network was also one of the first, being founded as a sports network in 1977 before transforming into its current more mixed format in 1980. Through the 1980s is began investing in original scripted programming, and by the 1990s was a major player in America cable ratings and a commissioner of various series, miniseries and TV movies such as this seasonal offering for Christmas 1997.

Cast and crew:

Scriptwriter John McGreevey was a very experienced hand in American television drama, having written for series going all the way back to the early 1950s, including twenty episodes of The Waltons in the 1970s. Ms Scrooge was his final credited work, produced when he was 75 years old. Director John Korty was an Academy Award winner, although not for a dramatic work – he won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature for Who Are The DeBolts? in 1977. During his career he also made animated  shorts for Sesame Street and directed the Ewok-based Star Wars spin-off Caravan of Courage in 1984.

Cicely Tyson stars as the rather-forcing-it ‘Ebenita Scrooge’; a hugely experienced and acclaimed performer in film and television, she had been nominated for an Oscar for her role in 1972’s Sounder and had previously worked with director Korton when she starred in his TV movie The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, which also garnered them both much acclaim.

Katherine Helmond as ‘Maude Marley’ was known for her starring role in the American sitcom Soap, and had also been a regular in Who’s the Boss?, the sitcom which was remade in the UK in the early 1990s as The Upper Hand.

Underdone Potato:

Ebenita Scrooge is a loan shark in Providence, Rhode Island, who runs a business giving loans to the desperate and needy and making a tidy profit in return. She has a few more employees other than Bob Cratchit, although he is the one of whom we see the most through the whole thing. There are a few other differences, too – it’s Marley’s name first in the business, although this is later explained, and Maude Marley died ten rather than seven years ago.

Nephew Fred is Reverend Luke here, the first sign that this version takes a more explicit leap into Christian territory than most versions of the Carol usually do, and perhaps even more so than Dickens’s original did.

There are some oddities once Scrooge has made it home for the evening. She has a cat, Mortimer, which she genuinely seems to have affection for. This seems an odd move as it gives her perhaps a chink of sympathy to her character a bit too early – the same issue caused by Scrooge being kind to a mouse early on in the 2001 animated version.

She also has various odd little novelty money boxes around the house, into which she puts various coins at the end of the day, which again seems a bit frivolous for her character. Speaking of money boxes, when Marley appears the boxes on her chains have been replaced by more modern-day items such as mobile phones. Oddly, although she draws attention to the chains almost immediately, they aren’t subsequently commented upon or explained in any way.

There’s an interesting difference to Marley here, too. Which in the original Marley says Scrooge’s chance at redemption is “a chance and hope of my procuring,” (one of my favourite lines from the book) here Marley’s motivations are much more selfish. If Scrooge is redeemed, she will apparently no longer have to walk the Earth – although Maud has it easier than the literary Marley, as she evidently only has to walk out once a year, at Christmas.

Maude Marley; a more selfish version of the character than usual.

Past:

The Ghost of Christmas Past is a jolly-ish late middle-aged man with the odd cutting remark, although he doesn’t actually appear all that much. Most of the past scenes are simply shown to us, with Ebenita and the spirit only occasionally present, with voiceover often being used instead of seeing them in the scenes.

We see Ebenita as a child, presumably just after the Second World War as her father mentions using his GI grant to start up a shop. This is also the only element of the story where we get any hint of racial tension – you might expect this to perhaps be more of a theme when the story is about a black woman who grew up in the American south in the middle of the 20^th century, but although it’s touched on here it never becomes a major theme of the piece. Of course, just because a story focuses on a black character it’s not somehow compulsory that it has to tackle racism. But it does enough to give the context of the time, I think, acknowledging it without it being a focus.

Ebenita’s father had given her the best Christmas she ever had as a child by giving her a puppy as a present, but gets himself into debt trying to start the shop, and then dies in a fire when it burns down. The fire scene perhaps echoes a similar event in An American Christmas Carol from 1979, one of the best-known US-set versions.

We then see Ebenita having moved north as an adult, having a romance with a man named Steve and getting a job working for Marley. Marley in this version combines both the traditional role for the character and that of Fezziwig, although with none of Fezziwig’s jolliness. Marley is hard and pragmatic, and these traits start to rub off on Ebenita. When Steve decides to move back south she doesn’t go with him, receiving a promotion in Marley’s firm but a couple months later learning that her brother Perry has been killed in action in Vietnam.

The Ghost of Christmas Present. I'm not sure about that baseball cap...

Present:

The Ghost of Christmas Present is played by Shaun Austin-Olsen, an actor about whom very little information appears to be available but who seem like the sort of person you’d get for a role where you can’t get hold of Simon Russell Beale. He’s British, middle-aged, only moderately bearded and not particularly jolly. Intriguingly, he mentions that he usually resides in a “toasty place,” suggesting that he is doing this as penance for his own failings.

We see Bob sliding on the ice with Tim, who unusually in this version does actually have his illness specified – it’s a slow-growing tumour. His crutch does look very Victorian, perhaps either a hint at how poor the Cratchits are or else a deliberate throwback to the original version. There’s the toast scene at the Cratchits, with Mrs Cratchit – actress Arsinée Khanjian, whose accent I couldn’t place so looked her up afterwards and found she was Armenian-Canadian – being irritated by it as per the book.

We are taken to nephew Luke’s, but of course him being a reverend it’s not a party we’re dropping in on, but a church service. He tells a story I remember being told in primary school about everyone in the afterlife having to eat with very long cutlery, but those in heaven feeding each other while those in hell go hungry.

Looking like Death-not-even-all-that-warmed up.

Yet to Come:

Julian Richings as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come looks like an undertaker, and it’s no surprise to learn that he does seem to have made something of a career out of playing Death. Although his face is seen he is still mute, similar to what was done with James Cromwell in the 2003 A Carol Christmas.

Fred knows the Cratchits more than he does in the book, as they go to his church. Rather than seeing the aftermaths of Tim and Scrooge’s deaths, we actually see them dying, with the Inland Revenue Service taking all of Ebenita’s money, much to her disgust. There’s an interesting line from Cratchit when he turns up at her funeral as the one and only mourner – even though she had fired him – when he tells Fred that he “grieves for who she might have been.”

What’s To-Day:

Tyson does a good job of Scrooge being overtaken by a joyous laugh after she awakes, and the boy – or “young man” – outside of the window gets a name in this version, Chris Logan. He’s sent to the supermarket to buy the turkey for the Cratchits, and has a fun line when he gets back with it about the person in the store at first not having believed the fifty dollar note Scrooge gave him was real, or that he hadn’t stolen it.

As the Cratchits receive the turkey, Scrooge makes amends with some of those she wronged or turned down for money at the start – although not all of them, which makes me wonder whether some material was cut here for time – and leaves bonuses in envelopes for her employees to come into on Boxing Day.

One employee receives a personal visit, however – Bob, whose wife at first thinks she’s come to fire him, until Tim points out it must have been her who sent the turkey. Scrooge doubles his salary, makes him vice president of the firm and says they’ll be instituting a healthcare plan. She also has presents for all and sundry, including a Punch & Judy toy referred to by name, which surprised me as I didn’t think they had Punch & Judy shows in America. She also gets Tim a puppy, echoing her father’s gift to her all those years ago, which must have been in that box for a hell of a long time before she gives it to him, but it seems happy enough.

The film ends with Scrooge paying a visit to Fred’s church service as the choir is in full song with Go Tell It On the Mountain, and he’s surprised but pleased to see her arrive.

I bet the Cratchits were *thrilled* that she got Tim a puppy without even asking them first.

Review:

This is a pretty well-done contemporary version, and it makes an interesting comparison to ADiva’s Christmas Carol from three years later. Both contemporary US-set versions with female leads made for American cable television channels – and both shot in Canada – and both managing to tell decent versions of the story in very different ways

Whereas A Diva’s Christmas Carol goes primarily for the comedy, here scriptwriter John McGreevey has very much gone for a serious version of the tale. Neither approach is more valid than the other, of course, but although I can appreciate the work done here I actually probably found the fun of Diva a little more to my taste.

But that’s not to say this is in any way bad. It’s not. It’s a good film, and more directly acknowledging the Christian aspect of Christmas marks it out from a great many other versions. As a serious US-set version, however, it’s probably somewhat in the shadow of An American Christmas Carol, which I don’t think it quite manages to match.

In a nutshell:

While it’s not in the first rank of Carol adaptations, it’s certainly not bad and worth a watch if it happens to be on.

Links:

Wikipedia

IMDb

An All Dogs Christmas Carol

Title:

An All Dogs Christmas Carol

Format:

Animated straight-to-video feature film

Country:

USA

Production company:

MGM

Year:

1998

Length:

73 minutes

Setting:

Fantasy version of 1930s San Francisco.

Background:

All Dogs Go to Heaven was a feature film released in cinemas in 1989, not from Disney as you might usually expected but backed by United Artists. It had the misfortune to be released at the same time as the film which started Disney’s great renaissance in animated films, The Little Mermaid, but although it was rather overshadowed in its cinematic run, it became a huge hit when released on VHS. That’s certainly when I saw it – I remember us being shown it one last day of term as a child in primary school, perhaps even the last day of term before Christmas. All I remember about it is a plot involving roguish dogs teaming up with a young girl to bet on horse races. Oh, and that it made one of the younger girls in the school cry with its sad ending.

Anyway, the success of the film on VHS led to a sequel, a TV series and eventually the final entry in the run, this straight-to-video effort in 1998.

Charlie and Sasha

Cast and crew:

Ernest Borgnine, who I once briefly met fact fans, is the biggest name in the cast – an actual Oscar winner, for his lead role in Marty in 1955. He voices the central character here, Carface Caruthers, having taken over for the second film after original performer Vic Tayback had died. Carface had been a supporting character / antagonist previously, but is the focus here.

US TV actor Steven Weber plays Charlie, the character portrayed by Burt Reynolds in the first film, with 1980s pop star Sheena Easton as Sasha, a character introduced in the second film and which she had voiced since then. Don DeLuise returns as the character he had played since the first outing, Itchy.

The film was co-directed by Paul Sabella and Gary Selvaggio, and written by Jymn Magon. Magon had spent 17 years working for Disney on various animated TV series, including the likes of DuckTales and Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers, before going freelance in 1993 in which capacity he wrote this. Sabella had worked mainly as a producer on various children’s animated TV series since the 1980s, but had also occasionally directed, most notably with All Dogs Go to Heaven II in 1996. Selvaggio had mostly worked on the animation side, but had directed episodes of the All Dogs series before this.

Underdone Potato:

We begin in heaven with dead dogs – puppies, as well, which seems especially harsh for a children’s film, although of course it being that they don’t make too fine a point of it. The puppies are being read a story by the implausibly pink dog, Anabelle, and when she mentions that as well as ghosts the story involves her cousin, an evil witch, you know early on that we’re going to be departing somewhat from the usual formula.

Back on Earth, Charlie and Itchy and Sasha are having a song and dance with various puppies and other dogs as they decorate a Christmas tree and prepare for the big day. Not being massively au fait with the All Dogs… continuity I’m not entirely sure who’s alive and who’s not, as I was sure Charlie did actually die at the end of the first one, but I am basing that on quarter-of-a-century-plus old memories, so may not be entirely reliable.

Anyway, the festivities are interrupted by the arrival of bad guy Carface, who collects various debts of bones, then uses a hypnotic device he has been given to take all their food and money as well. This is particularly nasty as said money was being collected to help pay for an operation for one of the puppies, Timmy, who has a gammy leg, as shown by the fact it’s bandaged.

After Carface has departed, Sasha takes Timmy back to his human family, while Charlie and Itchy try and fail to nab Christmas back off Carface and his henchman… er… henchdog. In the process they discover that Belladonna, aforementioned evil witch dog, is behind Carface’s activities and is going to use her hypnotic powers to get all the pets in the city to steal their owners’ Christmas presents at midnight.

As Charlie and Itchy despondently trudge away, Anabelle gives them a magic amulet to help them – but irritatingly, if conveniently for dramatic purposes, there is “a limit to what she can go,” so she can’t just tell them where Bella’s hypnosis machine is and how to stop it, but they can work magic on Carface to try and get him to change his ways and help them out. So after a chance remark from Itchy, Charlies comes up with the idea of doing a Scrooge on Carface.

Carface and Timmy.

Past:

After a brief introduction from Charlie, styling himself as ‘Jacob Charlie’, Itchy functions as the Ghost of Christmas Past, as Carface is pulled into the world of visions through his television set. We see him with his mother as a puppy, and then with his first human owner, a boy who was devoted to him. However, we then see how it all turned sour for Carface, as he was chucked out after having weed on the floor – which seems a bit harsh, if you’ve got a puppy surely it rather comes with the territory?

Present:

For the second set of visions, it’s the radio which functions as the portal through which Carface is pulled. Sasha is the spirit this time, although she looks rather more like depictions of Christmas Past than she does Christmas Present. She shows Carface how his right-hand-man… dog… actually really enjoys Christmas, and also a vision of little Timmy, happy at home with his owner.

Timmy accidentally breaks a plate, and Carface is sure the puppy will be chucked out as he was, but his young owner takes the blame to her mother. However, when Timmy is then able to own up to actually being the one who broke it, all is well, and Carface is surprised by the tender way in which he puppy is treated, and saddened that unless he gets his operation he may not see another Christmas.

Yet to Come:

This time it’s a comic book into which Carface is pulled, quite a nice little running theme of it being a different medium each time. The Ghost here initially appears as a very traditional version, albeit pretty obviously with Charlie’s hands / paws, but quickly the robes are thrown off and for the rest of the sequence Charlies plays the ghost as an homage to Jim Carrey’s eponymous character in The Mask.

It’s a very usual glimpse into a world in which Carface is dead and gone and very much not missed, complete with a touch of the ‘descent into hell’ which the 1970 musical had. Speaking of musicals, this is sort-of-one, with the very occasional songs scattered through it, including here a big gospel-style number.

Carface begs Charlie-as-the-Ghost-of-Christmas-Yet-to-Come-as-The-Mask for forgiveness.

What’s To-Day:

After Carface is returned to the real world, he initially goes along with Belladonna’s plan and the hypnosis machine is activated. However, his new conscience gets the better of him, and he decides he can’t go through with it, sabotaging the operation. A furious Bella then turns on him, but Anabelle now decides she can be bothered to get her paws dirty directly after all, saves him and sends Bella packing.

Sometime later on Christmas morning, Carface turns up at wherever the hell Charlie and the others live or gather with their Christmas tree, and returns all of the money and presents, with more added to both. He refuses the invitation to stay, however, as he’s heading off to see his mother – in a break from the norm, he also warns that his transformation may not be permanent.

The film ends with Annabelle finishing reading the story to the heavenly pups, as Charlie and Itchy watch on. This only further adds to the confusion for one-off viewers about whether they’re actually supposed to be alive or dead or something in between.

Review:

This was one of those Carols that I wasn’t expecting very much from. Let’s face it, a straight-to-video sequel to an animated film which wasn’t itself in the Premier League of the genre doesn’t exactly auger much. But in the end I rather enjoyed it.

The production values are high, with slick traditional animation. The performances are good, and even the songs aren’t as irritating as they could be. It manages to stay just this side of the saccharine, and even has a little bit of wit and style to it at times.

I know I have criticised the presence of cutesy animals elsewhere in other versions, but I think that’s only a problem when it’s a distracting or irritating addition in versions where you don’t need them. If you accept that this is a version entirely based around cutesy animals, then I think you have to take it on its own merits and what it’s trying to do. And in that respect, it’s certainly in no way awful.

In a nutshell:

Probably most enjoyable if you’re already familiar with All Dogs Go to Heaven, but certainly far from being the worst animated version of the story ever made.

Links:

Wikipedia

IMDb

Nan's Christmas Carol

Title:

Nan’s Christmas Carol

Format:

Multi-camera video comedy special, with single-camera inserts

Country:

UK

Production company:

Tiger Aspect Productions, for BBC One

Year:

2009 (first broadcast on BBC One on December 25^th that year)

Length:

50 minutes

Setting:

Contemporary UK

Background:

That rarest of things – a British television adaptation of the Carol actually getting its debut broadcast on a major channel on the day itself! Nan had been one of the central recurring characters in The Catherine Tate Show, a vehicle for the eponymous actress and comedian which had made it and her both hugely popular in the 2000s. The foul-mouthed, plain-speaking Nan was a perfect candidate for the Scrooge role in this admittedly rather fast-and-loose parody of the tale, and Nan’s Christmas Carol was the last big offering of BBC One’s Christmas night line-up this particular year.

Cast and crew:

Catherine Tate is an accomplished actress of both stage and screen, having starred in major roles on the West End and also being a co-star of Doctor Who during one of its biggest periods of popular success and critical acclaim, in 2008. In fact she’d returned for the then-annual Doctor Who Christmas special just a few hours before Nan’s Christmas Carol was broadcast – Christmas Day at this point still being a major day for the main British broadcasters, when they made a big effort to win the higher-than-usual audiences of gathered families on offer.

As he had in the sketch shows, Matthew Horne plays Nan’s grandson – he’d starred in his own runaway comedy success in the decade, the BBC Three sitcom Gavin & Stacey. Tate’s Doctor Who co-star David Tennant puts in a guest appearance as the Ghost of Christmas Present, as does actor and comedian Ben Miller of the Armstrong & Miller duo, as Christmas Past. Roger Lloyd-Pack, veteran of many a BBC One Christmas Day centrepiece from his role in the sitcom Only Fools and Horses, rounds out the trio as the final spirit.

Tate co-wrote the script with regular collaborators Aschlin Ditta and Gordon Anderson; Anderson also directed, as he had done on the main series.

This is Madness!

Underdone Potato:

Nan is visited by her grandson Jamie on Christmas Eve, and as the audience would expect she’s in a typically foul mood and unimpressed by the idea of festive fun. After turning away some carol singers – who are, randomly the band Madness – their relatives the Cratchits turn up, Nan having drunkenly invited them to spend Christmas with her at a previous family gathering. The father of the family is, of course, Bob, and as well as two children they have a dog called Tiny Tim.

Nan, particularly unimpressed by the fact that their Christmas present to her is a donation on her behalf to the Mobile Library of the Sudan, sends them packing, leaving them with nowhere to spend Christmas. After Jamie leaves in disgust, Nan goes to bed, where she is haunted by the ghost of her late husband, Jake, who died seven years ago this very night.

Jake isn’t chained, although he does complain that as the suit she had him buried him was the one he married her in, it is rather small for him and the belt now constantly bites into him. There’s quite a fun joke about the number of spirits he warns Nan will be visiting her – does the three include him, or not? – and a surprising moment of pathos at the end of his section too, as he laments that he misses her and it’s lonely in the afterlife without her.

Tate playing closer to her actual age, as the younger Nan.

Past:

Ben Miller plays the Ghost of Christmas Past as a bumbling, incompetent spirit of someone from the 19^th century, who smashes through doors and tables rather than passing through them insubstantially, insisting that he is out of practice as it is “seasonal work.” He does, however, impress Nan by being able to instantly transport her to her childhood in the 1930s.

We also see the 1950s and the 1970s, with the production having the same advantage that the Albert Finney version did – their Scrooge is played by a younger person aged-up, so they can appear younger in the past sections without the old-age make-up on. It’s quite fun to see the younger versions of Nan delivering some of her typical lines, including this version’s equivalent of “bah, humbug” – “Christmas – what a load of old shit!”

Present:

David Tennant gets a big reaction from the studio audience when he dances onto set to the Ghostbusters theme tune. He plays the Ghost of Christmas Present as a rather camp cross between Russell Brand and Alan Cumming, and if I had to guess I would say that this section was the one which had the most cut from it in the edit.

He shows Nan only two scenes – the lottery syndicate she’s been scamming checking their numbers, and the Cratchit family waiting at a bus station to go home. When taking Nan from one to the other, the ghost says that there is “one more family” he wants to show her; an odd line if he’s only shown her one anyway, so perhaps a ‘present’ section with grandson Jamie was cut?

In any case, we see the Cratchits feeding Tiny Tim a crisp, which kills him – so another version where the Scrooge equivalent is blamed a bit more directly for Tim’s death.

David Tennant as the Ghost of Christmas Present.

Yet to Come:

Oddly, despite having his face visible and speaking, Roger Lloyd-Pack seems the closest to the traditional depiction of his spirit – although he is called “Christmas Future,” which usually happens more in American versions rather than British ones. Perhaps he just seems to suit the character because he’s quite tall and, well… deathly! He is dressed more in the traditional manner, anyway.

He shows Nan her syndicate’s numbers coming up the following Christmas – but of course she hasn’t bothered buying the tickets for them, only kept the money herself. We also see her grandson having abandoned her, and she’s left sad and alone with nobody coming to visit her in an old people’s home – just abuse from those she swindled.

What’s To-Day:

Surprisingly, Nan does seem to have a genuine change of heart about Christmas, calling to the ‘boy’ outside – actually Jamie again – to go and get her a goose, or at least a frozen chicken from the corner shop. Everyone is invited round for a sumptuous feast prepared by celebrity chef James Martin, about whom there’d been a gag earlier in the show, and there are even gifts for the Cratchit children.

Madness turn up again, and the whole thing turns into a variety show as they break into Baggy Trousers, with Suggs and Tate taking up hand mics to sing it together. There is, however, a post-credits scene which may give the sting in the tail many of the audience would perhaps have been expecting, as Nan feeds a crisp to Tiny Tim the dog, suggesting that she wants to kill him off and perhaps isn’t so changed after all.

Review:

This isn’t laugh-a-minute, and isn’t in the same league as probably its closest similar version, Blackadder’s Christmas Carol. But it is quite good fun, and especially so if you’re familiar with Nan from The Catherine Tate Show. However, unlike the Blackadder version it probably does still work as a stand-alone, too.

There are some nicely-taken gags about the Carol, such as whether or not Marley is counting himself as a Spirit, and the likelihood of anywhere being open on Christmas Day. Some of the other jokes, though, are interesting in the sense that even just ten years on, I wondered whether or not they would do some of them ‘these days’. Not that they’re particularly controversial, but there might be more of a sensitivity about causing offence or being crass, perhaps.

In a nutshell:

Not the greatest or most spectacular version of the Carol ever made, but as an out-and-out comedy / parody version, not bad.

Links:

BBC

Wikipedia

IMDb

A Christmas Carol - 1969, television

Title:

A Christmas Carol

Format:

Animated television special

Country:

Australia

Production company:

Air Programmes International

Year:

1969 (that’s the copyright on the endboard, although the first screening I can find evidence of was on the USA’s CBS Network on December 13^th 1970)

Length:

45 minutes

Setting:

Victorian England

Background:

A day after we had the first Canadian Carol on the blog, we now have the first Australian one! Air Programmes International were one of the very first successful animation studios to be established in Australia, so much so that most of their key staff were lured away to setup the Australian arm of Hanna-Barbera.

This production part of a series called Family Classic Tales, animated versions of well-known literary classics suitable for a child audience. The Carol and others were purchased for broadcast by the CBS network in the United States in their similarly-named Famous Classic Tales strand, which ran in late afternoons or early evenings on Sundays.

G'day, strewth, etc...

Cast and crew:

Director Zoran Janjic was a major figure in Australian animation circles. He had worked on The Beatles cartoon series which had been made in Australia in the 1960s, and directed several of API’s classic literature adaptations. In 1972 he left API to head up Hanna-Barbera’s Australian division, before forming his own company, Zap Productions, in the 1980s.

Beyond a few other similar animated collaborations with Janic, both for API and for Hanna-Barbera, scriptwriter Michael Robinson doesn’t appear to have may other credits.

As you’d expect from an Australian production, Australians fill most of the voice acting roles. Ron Haddrick voices Scrooge – he’d briefly been a first class cricketer in the 1950s, alongside an acting career which had begun when he was a teenager in the 1940s. Haddrick would go on to voice Scrooge for a second time in another Australian animated version in 1982, rather cornering the market in Australian animated Scrooges!

British actor Bruce Montague provides several of the other voices – he is probably best known for playing the ‘other man’, Leonard, in the 1970s BBC sitcom Butterflies.

Underdone Potato:

In common with one or two other versions, such as the 1999 Patrick Stewart version or the 2009 Jim Carrey effort, we get a flashback to Marley’s funeral. I wonder if Robert Zemeckis might have seen this at some point, as in common with the Carrey version there is a bit of business with Scrooge being expected to give a tip – to the gravedigger rather than the undertaker in this case – but it could simply be coincidence. Interesting that there is a sexton featuring, though, given Dickens’s pilot run for Scrooge with Gabriel Grub in The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton.

I’m not sure whether or not I simply think this because I knew going into it that this was an Australian production, but even trying to be as objective as I can I do think that despite the Victorian England setting, Haddrick does sound quite Australian as Scrooge. Most of the other voices do keep an authentically English flavour, however – including Nephew Fred, who rather unexpectedly suddenly starts singing partway through his appearance. Scrooge starts singing back at him, which made me think it was a musical version which surprised me as nothing I’d read about it suggested that. However, this turns out to be the only song in it, aside from diegetic carols. It’s almost as if they thought about making it a musical, got one song in and then decided they couldn’t be arsed.

There’s no face for Marley on the door-knocker, but when he does finally appear in Scrooge’s chambers he’s far more gruesome and ghoul-like than he is usually depicted. His face is more like a skull, or perhaps The Scream, with little or nothing of his human features remaining.

Jacob Marley, or The Scream...?

Past:

The Ghost of Christmas Past isn’t the figure described by Dickens. Instead, he more resembles a schoolchild’s stereotypical image of god, as an old man with a long white beard. Another factor which made me wonder whether this version was an influence on the 2009 Disney version was the fact that I thought I detected an Irish accent from the character at times, the same country Jim Carrey chose to make his Ghost of Christmas Past from in that version. But I think I could be mistaken – it could just be an Australian attempt at aiming for and missing some variety of British accent.

There’s no school scene, instead we go straight to Fezziwig’s. Unusually for a screen adaptation, Belle isn’t introduced early here and instead comes in at her usual place in the book, her leaving Scrooge. It’s quite a short version of that scene, however, and then we’re back to Scrooge’s bedroom.

Special guest appearance by god.

Present:

The spirit in this section does look very like it’s just the previous on with a wig on. Having less variety among the spirits does seem like a bit of a shame, as I think it makes the story feel just that bit smaller.

All through the production there is a running bit of ‘comedy’ business with Scrooge trying to take some snuff, but being unable to get a sneeze out. The spirit tells him that he is “too mean to give away a good sneeze,” setting up a resolution for this rather pointless little addition to proceedings at the end.

There’s only really one vision shown here, Christmas at the Cratchits. It’s quite a full version of it, one might even say over-long, especially as it means we don’t have a visit to Fred’s for any fun and games.

Erm... are you sure you're not just the other bloke with a wig on?

Yet to Come:

The spirit is in its traditional form, although as in some other versions looking perhaps rather more like a monk than the Grim Reaper. It also has some rather extravagant hand gestures at times, but perhaps they felt that was needed for a silent spirit.

We see the gentlemen discussing Scrooge’s death, and his belongings being sold to Old Joe, and Tim’s death being mourned. We then get the scene with his grave, before its back to the bedroom and back to ‘reality’.

What’s To-Day:

Scrooge doesn’t go mad praising anybody and celebrating, but runs straight to the window, throwing some money down to the passing boy to go and buy a turkey. The boy points out that he could just run off with it, but Scrooge insists that he trusts him – and that besides, it’s Christmas.

Despite the charitable gentlemen and Nephew Fred having featured in the early scenes, none of them make an appearance here, with Scrooge going to the Cratchits’ house as his only festive visit. Somehow he’s found places open where he’s able to buy presents or them in addition to the turkey, as well.

The running gag about the snuff finally comes to an end here, with a follow-on from the Ghost of Christmas Present’s remarks as Scrooge is indeed finally able to let out a good sneeze.

Review:

The animation here lacks the style of its near contemporary, the Richard Williams version from 1971, but it’s not badly done, and there are some atmospheric designs and sequences, such as Scrooge walking home and of course Marley’s ghost.

All the same, it doesn’t feel like the most sumptuous adaptation ever made, and while most of the performances are good and Haddrick’s certainly couldn’t be called bad as such, I do think that he does sound too Australian in the role when it comes down to it. Of course, there’s no reason why this version of Scrooge couldn’t actually be Australian, especially as we don’t see him as a boy in this version, but if he is it’s never commented upon.

Indeed, perhaps it might have been more interesting to have a full out-and-out Australian version, set in the colony in Victorian times perhaps. But that might have been a bit much, especially given they had an eye for international sales, so probably wanted to provide as traditional a version as possible.

In a nutshell:

Not bad by any means, and certainly far better than several other animated versions from later years. But neither can it be said to be a classic – decent, but there are many better versions.

Links:

IMDb

Ebenezer

Title:

Ebenezer

Format:

TV movie

Country:

Canada

Production company:

Nomadic Pictures, for Image Organisation

Year:

1998 (the US TNT cable network showed it on November 25^th that year)

Length:

90 minutes

Setting:

The wild west of Victorian-era Canada

Background:

That rarest of things, indeed the first of these I have covered on this blog – an adaptation of the Carol which is neither British nor American. That said, despite its Canadian production it does feel very American; it is set in both countries at different points, but very much evokes the typical flavour of the American wild west.

I’ve actually been able to find out very little about the background of this film, but an end credits ‘thank you’ to the ‘Canadian Television Cable Production Fund’ shows that it did benefit from some state funding, as part of an initiative to get more Canadian-made content on-air in ‘under-represented’ categories – presumably in this case scripted TV movies, which I can imagine would be dominated by American-made fare in Canada.

Nomadic, the production company, were founded in 1995 and are still going, described on their website as “one of the most active production companies in Canada.” Their website also describes this as having been made for TNT, so that November 25^th 1998 premiere date is probably the correct one, without an earlier Canadian showing.

Ebenezer Scrooge: gambling man.

Cast and crew:

American actor Jack Palance stars as Scrooge – another Oscar winner to add to the list of Carol stars from down the years, having won the Best Supporting Actor award for City Slickers in 1991. There are a couple of other American actors in main parts, but otherwise as you’d expect along with the filming locations and the crew, the rest of the cast are predominantly Canadian.

Scriptwriter Donald Martin is also Canadian, and seems to have developed something of a line in Christmas TV movies. In addition to Ebenezer, his other such credits include Operation Christmas, Christmas Homecoming and Christmas Town. Director Ken Jubenvill had helmed various TV drama series, including episodes of the 1980s helicopter-based action show Airwolf.

Underdone Potato:

They really do go all-out to try and make this feel like an old-fashioned western, so much so that it at times feels like a parody of one. The whole town set looks like something from a wild west theme park, and characters go around saying things like “dang it!” and talk about how they “moseyed in” to the saloon bar.

Said bar is owned by cigar-chomping gambler and businessman who “owns half the town,” Ebenezer Scrooge. He is described, rather distractingly for British viewers, as a “geezer” by young Sam Benson, a short-sighted cowboy who Scrooge cons out of his money, his land and – most upsettingly of all for Sam for some reason – his horse by cheating at cards.

Scrooge thinks Christmas is a “hogwash” rather than a “humbug,” and fires his bartender and chief assistant Bob Cratchitt (with an extra ‘t’ for no given reason) when he discovers a secret compartment holding extra cards built into the table where Scrooge always cheats people out of his money. This is after we’ve had probably the sequence which most fees like a comedy sketch in this production, near the start where Scrooge demands Bob take off and give him one of his boots, so that he can throw it at some carol singers outside. “But it’s my last one, Mr Scrooge!”

Soon after he’s dismissed, Tiny Tim turns up and gives Scrooge a hug, for reasons which are never adequately explained, seemingly convinced there is some good in him. When Scrooge’s Mountie nephew Fred had hugged him earlier he’d threatened to punch in the mouth the next person to do so, but he at least doesn’t carry through on this threat.

Speaking of things which are never explained, Scrooge evidently has a tradition of going to have his Christmas Eve meal in the local whorehouse, where Erica Marlow, the daughter of his former business partner Jacob, works as a cleaner. Jacob had told Scrooge to give her the saloon when he died, but Ebenezer has reneged on that promise. Erica is also Sam’s fiancée, although a very understanding one – when he tells her that evening how he’s gambled everything away, she for some reason isn’t extremely pissed off with him. It’s made clear Scrooge never does anything more than eat at the whorehouse, once a year – much to the surprise of the woman who runs it, Martha (named for the Cratchit daughter in the book? Quite a change of occupation if so!) and her very well turned-out ‘girls’.

Scrooge goes back to his rooms at the top floor of the local hotel, where that night Marlow appears. Why they decided they had to very slightly change his name, having kept Scrooge’s the same, I have no idea. Perhaps it has something with also having added that extra ‘t’ on the end of Cratchit. Having tried to failed to shoot him, Scrooge is dismissive as Marlow – no chains – warns him he is doomed to walk the Earth forever in death, or crawl in Scrooge’s case, if he doesn’t heed the warnings of three spirits who are coming to visit him, and change his ways.

Nephew Fred, doing his best to appear serious despite looking
like either an overgrown bellboy or something off a chocolate box.

Past:

The first spirit is a Native American woman, who Scrooge had earlier glimpsed coming out of the whorehouse. After some faffing about on the balcony getting him to fly, she takes him back to a childhood Christmas in his native Philadelphia, revealing how he had to be taken out of a school that he loved because his father had lost his money in a poor investment.

Later, we see Scrooge working for Fezziwig – or ‘Fessiwig’ as his shop sign has him, although it’s spelt the traditional way in the end credits. There’s no massed ranks of partying – all the way through this reeks of being a rather cheap production – and instead we see Scrooge stealing the Christmas Eve takings and running off to look for gold in the west. He claims to the ghost that he left a note promising Fessiwig he’d pay the money back, but he left it in a bloody stupid place, only just tucked into the front door of the shop, and sure enough it blows away in the wind. He never did pay the money back, though.

Scrooge ends up in a wild west town called Deadwood – hmmm – and meets Rebecca Gordon, who fills the Belle role here. Their relationship lasts longer than the one in the book with Belle, however, and they actually get married. Scrooge ends up running the Gordon family cattle ranch, with old man Gordon signing it over to Scrooge on his deathbed, only for Scrooge to sell it to and unsuspecting dupe when the cows start dying of a mystery disease. There’s also mention of Fred here – he seems to be Scrooge’s nephew by marriage rather than by blood in this version.

Scrooge and Rebecca head for Canada, where he does indeed find gold and become rich – “I love Canada!” he declares, and you wonder how they managed to resist the urge at this point to flash up a caption with details of the Canadian Tourist Board.

Rebecca, it turns out, also loves Canada – or at least its police force, running off with a Mountie, never to be heard of again but helping to fuel Scrooge’s dislike of the force.

Unusually, we cut back to the real world at this point too, with Erica having told Sam that she keeps her father’s old key to the saloon on her necklace. The two of them sneak back there and find the secret of how Scrooge cheats at cards. They go to the hotel to confront him, where after initially thinking they are head and the next ghosts, Scrooge dismisses them, but is called out by Sam for another wild west cliché – a shoot-out at high noon the next day, one shot each.

The Mountie of Christmas Present

Present:

The actual Ghost of Christmas Present turns out to be… another Mountie, not exactly to Scrooge’s delight. He takes Scrooge to see Christmas at the Cratchit(t)s’ house, where it’s Tim who proposes the toast to the old man, and they all seem pretty happy about it. Indeed, Mr Cratchitt – not usually fond of the miser – laments “poor Mr Scrooge!”

We also see Fred’s Christmas pageant at the local opera house, which seems to be a sort of pantomime-type production. Fred also toasts Scrooge, although there are no further hints given about the precise nature of the connection between them, and why Fred hangs around here if he’s not a blood relative.

Yet to Come:

The Spirit is the traditional hooded figure, albeit with long pale hair visible at times – perhaps this is meant to fool you, as it did me, into thinking that it’s going to be Rebecca beneath the hood. It doesn’t take Scrooge very far into the future – indeed, it does what the Ghost of Christmas Present usually does (although didn’t in his case, having only shown him Christmas Eve), and takes him one day into the future, into Christmas Day. Odd how we never really talk about there being two Ghosts of Christmases Yet to Come in the book, and Present is just lying about it, isn’t it? I suppose he means the Christmas season, but still…

Anyway, we’re taken to the high noon gunfight, where Sam and his myopia don’t stand a chance, and he’s shot dead. I had thought that this was going to be an interesting twist on the usual formula, with Scrooge being moved by someone else’s death which he had directly caused, rather than his own. But after an argument with Erica where she wants him to confess to having cheated Sam and driven him to the fight, he falls to his death from a balcony, so it is indeed more himself that he ends up feeling sorry for. Nobody except Tim hears him calling for help as he lays dying, and everyone’s too busy rushing Tim himself to the doctor to notice.

At the end of the segment, at Tiny Tim’s funeral, Scrooge turns on the Spirit and unmasks it – the long hair turned out to be a red herring, and it’s the face of Scrooge’s own father which is revealed.

With the aforementioned long hair, for some reason.

Heeeeeeeeeere's Daddy!

What’s To-Day:

Scrooge doesn’t go wild with excitement when he awakes as in most versions. Indeed, he keeps things quite cagey as it turns out he’s slept through most of the morning and it’s nearly time for his noon shoot-out.

He goes down there as if he’s taking it all seriously, and allows Sam to shoot first knowing that his short-sightedness means he’s in little danger. Then he walks up to Sam, tells him not to insult him again, and gives him back his land and his horse. He also gives Erica the bar, before heading off to the Cratchitts to dispense presents – including, you’ll be happy to hear, a new pair of boots for Bob – and ask if he can take Tim back to Philadelphia for medical treatment.

Later in the day he appears in the Christmas pageant, and there’s a well thought-out bit where people still boo him when he rides in as Father Christmas, as they’re either not aware of it not convinced by his transformation. However, he wins them round by singing the same soppy Christmas song we’d seen him sing as a child in the Christmas Past section.

The Father Christmas business is interesting, actually – it’s not me being stubbornly British and just calling him that here, it’s what they refer to him as several times in the scene. This feels very unusual for a North American production, and is perhaps down to its Canadian origins – possibly the term ‘Father Christmas’ is better-known there than it would be in the States? Scrooge as Father Christmas isn’t of course a new idea; it’s perhaps most prominently done in the 1970 musical.

Review:

It’s certainly an interesting idea to take the story of A Christmas Carol and transplant it to a Wild West setting. The description, however, is more engaging than the reality, and there’s little to recommend here. The whole thing is chock-full of Wild West clichés that would have seemed almost beyond parody even twenty years before this, and the whole thing is hamstrung by beginning so slowly.

Palance may be an Oscar winner, but he’s not great as Scrooge – oddly, he feels much more convincing in the brief period we see him as the reformed character than when he’s rather chewing the scenery as the traditional miser. All of the female characters feel rather wet and underwritten, too – I know the Carol is probably lacking in female characters anyway, but if you add more in and boost their parts, it doesn’t help if they’re not even as good as the few in the book.

You can make a decent North American version shot in Canada – the likes of An American Christmas Carol prove that very well. But sadly, this doesn’t have anywhere near the care and craft which was put into that production.

In a nutshell:

A nice idea done badly – I’m sure there is a very good western version of the Carol to be made; but this isn’t it.

Links:

Wikipedia

IMDb