The many returns of the Miser Brothers

The Year Without a Santa Claus isn't the best of the Rankin/Bass Christmas specials. Sure, it's cute as heck, but the plot is a little draggy at times, the songs are a mix of covers and rather undistinguished originals, and the animation lacks the boundless charm of efforts like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. But it's become a classic thanks to Heat Miser and Snow Miser, two of the most unforgettable characters in all of Christmas TV special-dom. Here, I'll let the boys introduce themselves:



They have yet to invent a scale capable of measuring the awesomeness of Heat Miser and Snow Miser.

The characters have been popular for decades, so it was perhaps inevitable that eventually Hollywood would decide that a remake was required. And so, in 2006, we got a live-action TV movie remake of The Year Without a Santa Claus, starring Harvey Fierstein as Heat Miser and Michael McKean as Cold Miser. How bad was it? Well, watch this clip:



Friends, that clip was the best part. It actually gets worse from there, with a lot of awful pop-cultural gags. And Chris Kattan. Sweet Jesus, this show makes the Star Wars holiday special look good.

The remake was swiftly and justly forgotten, but two years later somebody decided to try again with A Miser Brothers' Christmas, a direct sequel to the original show. This special would feature stop-motion animation and would try to be more faithful to the spirit of the original. Here's the big show-stopping number:



Yeah. It's somehow missing something, huh?

The animation is very good and the character re-designs work well enough, you can tell that the people making this special really wanted to honor the original. But there's something inert about the finished special, it never comes alive and it's just not very... well, special. If the original show is a little slow in spots, the sequel is downright sluggy, and it lacks the crude vitality that has made the original endure. The 2006 remake failed by trying too hard revamp and parody the original, while the 2008 sequel failed by arguably being just a tad too reverent toward its source material.

Of course, if we're looking at the various renditions of Heat Miser and Cold Miser, I have to include this one:



Sorry about that. But those 37 seconds of exquisite agony, courtesy of Joel Schumacher, were still better than anything in the 2006 remake.

Read more by Greg Stacy at GregStacy.com. Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site? Send us an email.

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A very 1987 Christmas to you!

If you need a little retro Christmas TV, right this very minute, Betamax Christmas will put the jolly back in your holly. The site recreates a full evening of Christmas TV programming circa 1986 or so, complete with rabbit ears on the TV that you have to fiddle with to get a better picture. (You change the channel by flipping the remote floating over on the right. It seems obvious once you notice it, but it took me a while to spot it.)


Read more by Greg Stacy at GregStacy.com. Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site? Send us an email.

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Get your Schulz on!

If you've wished that you knew how to bust a move like the Peanuts kids in the classic holiday special Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown (and goodness, who hasn't?) now you can, thanks to the helpful diagrams on the accordion Christmas card seen on the website of designer Candy Chang. The girl's head-flopping move is diagrammed on one side of the card, the boy's weird neck-jut thing is depicted on the other.



The card, however, does not appear to be available to actually print out so you can mail it to your loved ones. That's just... Well, Scrooge-ian is the phrase that comes to mind. A lump of coal for you, Ms. Chang!

Read more by Greg Stacy at GregStacy.com. Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site? Send us an email.

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LAND OF THE LOST episode studies

I have made no secret of my raging fandom for the old TV series The Land of the Lost. So you can imagine how delighted I was to discover this site offering detailed commentary on every episode of the original series. The site finds just the right balance of amusement and respect, taking the show seriously without taking it too seriously. Once you're finished reading through their coverage of all three seasons, you can spend the rest of your 4-day weekend geeking out with their coverage of the original Battlestar Galactica, the original V and other dorky favorites of yesteryear.

Read more by Greg Stacy at GregStacy.com. Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site? Send us an email.

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Cosmohut.com is a website and they are paying me to post about them

A while back I signed up with a website, Payperpost.com, where I can get paid a few bucks to write MonstersandRockets.com posts about certain products. I can pretty much say whatever I want, I just have to link to the product's website and write a certain number of words, and I'm done. I haven't done one of these in a while, but last night they sent me an offer from a site called Cosmohut.com and the offer was too good to pass up. So, I'm writing about Cosmohut.com, where you can learn about Make Up and pick up all sorts of Cosmetics Tips. They also want me to link to their Make Up Tutorials. I don't know why they looked at my sci-fi nerd blog and decided this was a good place to advertise their fancy lady website with the make up tutorials and such, but I'm glad they did because after they approve this post they'll send me some money and I like money. The end.

Read more by Greg Stacy at GregStacy.com. Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site? Send us an email.

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George Lucas' daughter is a pro kickboxer

No, really. George Lucas' daughter Amanda is a pro kickboxer. She's the girl with the cornrow hair in the clip above.

Wondering how George Lucas feels about his daughter's chosen career? Well, he talks about it a little in this predictably sleazy TMZ clip:



Read more by Greg Stacy at GregStacy.com. Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site? Send us an email.

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Andy Kaufman in unaired sci-fi comedy pilot, STICK AROUND

Comedy great Andy Kaufman plays a bumbling android in this rather hopeless 1970s sci-fi sitcom pilot. His "Foreign Man" accent would be put to much better use later, when he was cast as Latka Gravas on Taxi.

Read more by Greg Stacy at GregStacy.com. Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site? Send us an email.

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GHOSTBUSTERS fan makes creepily realistic Harold Ramis bust

Ghostbusters fan Carl Lyon has built himself an incredibly realistic bust of Dr. Egon Spengler, the brainy 'Buster portrayed by Harold Ramis. Lest you think that Lyon is just obsessed with Harold Ramis or something, he assures us that he also plans to build the other Ghostbusters soon. A full gallery of making-of pics can be seen here.

Read more by Greg Stacy at GregStacy.com. Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site? Send us an email.

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Happy 45th birthday, Star Trek!

45 years ago today, a little show called Star Trek made its debut on American TV. To celebrate, let's enjoy this fan film made by a bunch of kids in the 1970s, dubbed over with their adult voices 25 years later. (I hate to say it, but that cyclops monster is arguably an improvement on some of the effects in the original show.)

Read more by Greg Stacy at GregStacy.com. Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site? Send us an email.

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Lee Harvey Oswald's Poseidon Adventure

Paul Wilson is a big fan of the 1970s disaster picture The Poseidon Adventure, miniature models and Lee Harvey Oswald. Perhaps these seem like three interests with very little overlap, but Wilson has actually managed to combine them... by building an enormous model of the SS Poseidon and sending a little doll of himself and a little doll of Oswald on a romantic cruise together.

Wilson's Flickr account is a wonder to behold. In the photo above, Paul and a very hairy Lee relax on deck in the hours before the ship's fateful New Year's Eve party.

Read more by Greg Stacy at GregStacy.com. Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site? Send us an email.

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