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Many of
you are aware of the
Star Wars Holiday Special,
something that has been spoken of in hushed tones among fans and
viewed in clandestine meetings in the darkened back rooms of various
geek conventions for over twenty years. George Lucas has disowned it,
and flat out refuses to even speak about it. He has disowned it
because it is wretched, vile, ludicrous, and awful in every way
imaginable; furthermore, it has almost no connection whatsoever to
anything resembling the Star Wars you know and love... you know, kind
of like the prequel trilogy.
So I was
thinking, what if there were other ill-conceived Holiday Specials
involving other popular franchises of the 80s that were more
successfully buried and forgotten by the creators, only to years later
become the stuff of rumor and whispered legend among the fanbase? What
awful disappointments might they have contained? Let's find out, shall
we?
The Aliens
Holiday Jamboree
A
Weyland-Yutani corporation freighter picks up a distress beacon on
outer rim planet JC-1225 and decides to go help. After losing all
contact with the vessel and her crew Weyland-Yutani coerces Ellen
Ripley (under contract) to act in an advisory capacity to the marine
squad sent in to investigate the situation. Ripley and the marines
soon find clues pointing to a xenomorph infestation of this worker
planet. The indigenous population are a bunch of defenseless tiny
elfin creatures who serve as painfully easy prey to the aliens. A new
breed of elf aliens proves quite the challenge to Ripley and the
marines, easily prancing and fluttering past their bullets with all
the trickery one might expect from a faerie sprite. Ripley finds a
valuable ally in the constructed leader of the elves, the android
S.A.N.T.A. (Synthetic Adaptable Nano Tech Android; played by a very
inebriated Don Johnson), who helps her defeat the aliens with a
strategy involving multi-colored strings of light, soft red foot
coverings, and tall pointy decorated trees shoved where tall pointy
decorated trees should not be. S.A.N.T.A. is wounded beyond repair in
the battle, and tells Ripley that it is his responsibility to fly
around the universe dropping off charitable donations to everyone
alive for the universally celebrated "Generosity Day". Since he is in
no shape to perform this service, he enlists the aid of Ripley, who
reluctantly agrees. S.A.N.T.A. tells her about the prototype rocket
spaceship Sleigh 01, which has speed capabilities powerful
enough to travel anywhere in the universe within moments, and she
gallivants around the universe in the nick of time, saving Generosity
Day for all. In the surprise twist-ending, we see a little girl
preparing to open a wrapped present, only to have an alien facehugger
burst from the box just as she undoes the ribbon. The last thing we
see is the facehugger leaping toward the camera, accompanied by the
girl's scream.
I don't know whether I would fear this more or less than a regular
xenomorph.
The
Terminator Holiday Hoopla
After narrowly escaping another raid by the machines, an aged John
Connor (played by William Shatner) gets insanely drunk one night and
reminisces on his childhood, focusing in particular on a miserably
disappointing Christmas when he was eight years old. In a tragically
inebriated moment of misjudgment, he decides to send a reprogrammed
Terminator back in time to save that Christmas. What ensues are a
bunch of comical scenes in which the Terminator and a hysterical,
panicking eight-year-old John Conner (played by Gary Coleman) travel
around Los Angeles, while the Terminator indiscriminately kills
everyone who doesn't seem to have enough "holiday spirit" and young
John Conner tries to convince him the error of his ways. The show ends
when an "elf" (played by Wilford Brimley) working in the local mall
Santa display, completely drenched in Santa's blood and guts,
nervously manages to finally convince the Terminator the true spirit
of Christmas while begging for his life. During this distraction, mall
security guards manage to sneak up behind the Terminator and remove
his AA batteries, thereby saving Christmas for everyone. The show ends
with John Conner waking up with a severe hangover and realizing that
the whole reason that Christmas sucked in the first place was because
of the insane Austrian who kidnapped him and took him along on an
eighteen-hour killing spree.
The Predator
Christmas Special:
The Hunt For Red-Nosed Reindeer
In this travesty a bunch of Aliens and Predators duke it out in
subterraneous frozen caverns in Antarctica. Wait, sorry, I'm confusing
this with Aliens Vs. Predator, an entirely different travesty
altogether. In the Predator Christmas special, a Predator's ship crash
lands at the North Pole, and he ends up tracking and killing a certain
reindeer with a glowing red nose. When Rudolph doesn't return home one
night, Santa and the elves become worried and send a search party to
investigate. Lots of bloody, visceral Predator/Elf combat ensues, and
the Elves finally manage to ensnare the Predator by setting a trap
using one of those goddamned Coca-cola polar bears as bait. Santa
(played by Dolph Lundgren) explains to the Predator the true meaning
of Christmas and they eventually realize it's all a big
misunderstanding caused by severe culture clash. In the end, Santa
gives the Predator the gift of a shiny new spear, and the Predator
gives Santa Rudolph's polished skull for his mantle. Then he goes and
slaughters a bunch of children with his new present.
The Robocop
Christmas Hootenanny
Omni Consumer Products has developed a new Santa cyborg to deliver a
cornucopia of OCP products to all the good little boys and girls.
Robocop is disappointed to learn that OCP is actually delivering the
children nothing but addictive caffeinated sodas and candies to get
them hooked on OCP products. But when drug dealers kidnap and
reprogram the Santa robot and up the ante by having it start peddling
Nuke drugs to children, Robocop draws the line. Robocop teams up with
Michael Jackson (played by Wilford Brimley), for no good reason
whatsoever, to put a stop to this. In the final epic battle involving
an endless spray of lead justice and some killer dance movies, Robocop
and Michael destroy the Santa robot in broad daylight on a city street
in front of a crowd of crying drug-addled children.
Now watch and learn
what we do to drug dealers on our streets, kids!'
The
Masters of the Universe Holiday
Stock Footage Adventure
In this
abominable special, Prince Adam decides to adopt some white fuzzy
fringes to his outfit, in order to spice things—
RoG: Sorry to interrupt, Proto,
but there already is a He-Man holiday special.
Proto: WHAT??:
RoG: Yeah, check this out:
Proto:
…
RoG: Proto?
Proto:: I… I think I'm going to go
cry now.
RoG: Yeah. me too.
The G.I.JOE
Hanukkah Hullabaloo
On Christmas Day a small contingent of Jewish Joes, led by Deep Six,
are all that presides over the G.I.JOE headquarters while everyone
else is off for the holiday. Deep Six is pissed about this, however,
because the 25th happens to also be one of the days of Hanukkah, so
he's stuck working on his holiday while the rest of the Joes have off.
But the bigwigs in Washington don't seem much to care about his
non-Christian concerns, so Deep Six grumbles complaints to no one
while he distracts himself from the lifeless security monitors by
playing solitaire. Meanwhile Cobra Commander, figuring that most of
the Joe team would be off with their families, has decided that this
is the perfect time to launch a strike against the Joes, when there
are in fact almost no Joes there to attack. Yes, truly another
brilliant stratagem from Cobra Commander. Zartan and the Dreadnoks
lead the assault team inside but the Joes eventually defeat them by
tripping them with well placed dreidel caltrops and then nuking them
with Menorah rockets. The episode ends with a moral message about how
we may all be different and have different beliefs, but a well place
Menorah rocket will still blow up even the wiliest Cobra scum.
The
Transformers Energon Holiday Shindig
The Autobots are celebrating Energon Day, a holiday when they give
each other gifts of free Energon cubes, which coincidentally happens
to take place on December 25, so Spike and Sparkplug get into the
gift-giving action too. An animated version of Menudo guest-stars,
doing a fantastic musical number during the celebration. But as with
all good celebrations, sooner or later a crazed villain arrives to
crash the party. Megatron learns that the Autobots will be celebrating
Energon Day at the Ark and decides to launch a strike to destroy the
Autobots and collect the Energon for Decepticon use. The
Constructicons have adopted a new combined form that looks like a
giant Mecha-Grinch (voiced by Madonna), who ends up crushing Menudo
under its gigantic steel feet. The Autobots answer this new threat by
having the Protectobots combine into a new Cyber-Santa form to battle
the Mecha-Grinch. After a stirring battle, the Cyber-Santa manages to
destroy the Mecha-Grinch through the awesome power of good will toward
men and robots, and also by having Spike and Sparkplug sing shitty
Christmas carols to distract the Decepticons. After the battle is won,
Ratchet inserts the brains of Menudo into new robotic bodies, so they
can keep on sharing their delightful tunes and dancing with
audiences...forever!
Indiana Jones
and the Last Day of Christmas
In the winter of 1943, Hitler (played by Steve Guttenburg) sends a
platoon of Nazi soldiers to the North Pole. Their mission: to capture
Santa Claus, his elves, and his magical sleigh, for it is Hitler's
belief that the elves may be used to manufacture weapons and the
sleigh would put him at a tactical advantage, allowing him to
transport troops to any location in the world within minutes. Also,
because a Hanukkah Special would have been in extremely bad taste.
Indiana Jones, already in the area to find a fabled frozen and
perfectly preserved Abominable Snowman corpse, stumbles onto the Nazis
and their wicked plot. At first he doesn't believe in Santa, the
elves, or any of that other nonsense, but after a couple of elves save
him from a subterranean Nazi encounter by using the booby trapped cave
to their advantage, he reluctantly agrees to help, grumbling that he
hates Nazis. Several exciting battles follow, including a manic romp
across a sea of floating ice plates surrounding a glacier (played by
Wilford Brimley), and a stirring final chase scene with Indy piloting
Santa's sleigh and going toe to toe with a German Panzer.
The Rambo
Holiday Bloodbath of Joy
There's a bit of distressing news awaiting the children of the Western
world one year: it seems that while Santa was delivering his presents
in the far East, he was shot down somewhere over Vietnam. Believed to
have been taken to an old POW camp, Santa will not be there to deliver
presents to all the good little American boys and girls. There's only
one man who can rescue him: John Rambo. But first, he's got to finish
Santa's job before the children of America know that anything is
wrong. Rambo makes a few mall appearances that don't go so well and
then he hops into Santa's sleigh to deliver presents-but not before
festooning it with weapons. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar makes a guest
appearance, riding shotgun in the sleigh to help drop off gifts. Rambo
ends up killing a bunch of street thugs and criminals on his jaunt
across the States with his heavily armed sleigh, and then he goes on a
rescue mission to Vietnam and brings Santa back home in time for
breakfast.
Rambo has quite a way with the little tykes.
Back
to the Future: The Ghost of Christmas
Future's Past in the Present Day of Yesterday
The Biff Tannen of the future ends up stealing Doc Brown's DeLorean
from Marty McFly with the goal of going back in time to assassinate
Jesus on the day of his birth and replace him with his own baby who
will become the new savior in Jesus's place. The Marty of the past
learns of this sinister plan when the Marty of the future comes back
in time to warn him about it thanks to the help of the Doc Brown of
the present day visiting the future and loaning his DeLorean from the
past. The Marty of the present goes back to collect the Doc Brown of
the past and the (guest star) Mr. T of the future to go back in time
to the birth of Jesus to stop Biff, only the Biff of the future has
recruited the Biff of the present to kill the Marty of the past before
he becomes the Marty of the future. However, Marty McFly's son
recruits Zombie Doc Brown from the far future to come back and eat the
brain of the Biff of the future (who is visiting the present) before
he can get the Biff of the present to kill the Marty of the past, thus
allowing the Marty of the present and the Doc Brown of the past and
the Mr. T of the future to save the baby Jesus and ensure a Merry
Christmas for everyone.
Marty expresses a holiday sentiment we're probably all feeling
right about now.
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