VHS Reflections - The Gwangi Christmas Tape ft. Ernest Saves Christmas, The Simpsons, etc.

 

VHS tapes, especially ones recorded off the TV, are a link to my past. Watching them brings me back to simpler times. It is also fun to watch the things I enjoyed as a kid, and analyze it with the mind of an adult. One year ago, I posted a pretty fun blog about my Christmas-themed recorded VHS tape from 1989, dubbed the He-Man She-Ra Christmas Special Tape, in which I did just that. That is a tape that's been with me almost my whole life. But it's not the only Christmas tape I have. Ten years later, in 1999, I recorded another one. Kind of a sequel, in a way. And I'm here to discuss that tape; The Gwangi Christmas Tape. Why "Gwangi"? Because it features the movie The Valley of Gwangi on it, among other things; a movie that's not really holiday-themed, being about some cowboys finding a valley in the desert where dinosaurs still survived, but pretty much everything else on the tape is. Above is the cover of the tape, an old Memorex HS. The tape itself is from the 1980s, and was probably formerly a tape of my mom’s that she let me record over. But that just means it’s a good tape. VHS tapes were built much sturdier in the 80s as opposed to the late 90s. The label you see there had to be updated after this most recent viewing, as I recorded over it again a couple more times after the initial 1999 recordings. It’s been quite a few years since I watched it actually, so going in I don’t remember everything that’s on this other than a few key things; The Valley of Gwangi, the first Futurama Christmas episode, Ernest Saves Christmas. Anyway, let’s pop this thing into the VCR and see what shape it’s in. If I find any of it on YouTube I will post it so you can watch along. (Update: Very little of it is, sadly).

Archie’s Weird Mysteries

So there used to be this channel called PAX. It was mainly a Christian network but they played other odd shows and cartoons. I specifically remember watching the Super Mario Bros. Super Show on that channel in the 90s. It was also one of the few channels you could get with a TV antenna; which believe it or not my family used on and off whenever they couldn’t afford cable. Yeah, there’s something my son will never understand. I feel old now. Well, they also aired this Archie cartoon that I never saw anywhere else. Looks like YouTube has every episode, which is a sure sign it’s obscure. I’ve never been that into the Archie comics. I did read the Sonic the Hedgehog comic when it was published by Archie Comics, but not Archie himself really. But, for whatever reason the stories of this teen boy in a polyamorous relationship with two girls have endured through the decades. Archie’s Weird Mysteries features Archie as kind of a paranormal investigator who looks into the supernatural goings on at his high school. In this episode a dumb jock starts enhancing his brain with a special machine the stereotypical nerdy kid at school invented so he can pass a test, and his brain starts expanding. He starts reading people’s thoughts and develops telekinesis. He alienates himself from his friends and dumps his girlfriend, and his powers start to threaten the school. It’s the Dumbass No More trope. Also seems suspiciously like a metaphor for steroid use. Obviously Archie intervenes and the process is reversed with no lasting effects, unlike one would expect if this somehow really happened. Watching it again makes me think about how I will handle tropes and cliches in my own webcomic. My comic Alcatraz High will also feature supernatural plots at a High School. I don’t think I was directly inspired by this show because I barely remembered it, but there are slight similarities. These characters are one-dimensional cliches seen in hundreds of other works. I want to write my characters like real people. I might play with cliches, but then subvert them and take them in a realistic direction. If I were writing a plot like this I would probably have the jock character get permanent brain damage as a result. Or for something more supernatural, have him ascend to a higher plane of existence after becoming too smart. Anything but have him end up going back to normal. That’s just lame.

In any case, watching this now as an adult, I’m not too impressed. 

The Valley of Gwangi

And now for our feature presentation. I was obsessed with dinosaurs as a kid, thanks to Jurassic Park. There was a point where I wanted to see every dinosaur movie ever. I am fairly certain I first saw this movie years before I recorded it on this tape, possibly on AMC, a former classic movie channel which is now better known for The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad. Or was last decade, at least. I don’t watch cable anymore. The idea to make a western movie with dinosaurs is a strange one. Perhaps that’s what children wanted to see in the 1960s.

It has a pretty slow beginning, where you’re just waiting for the dinosaurs to show up already. But you have to sit through more than a half hour of exposition first. The story is about this businessman who puts on circus-type Buffalo Bill style shows, he comes down to Mexico to try to get a horse off his ex-girlfriend but she throws him out; she has an even better act, involving a pygmy horse that’s supposed to be extinct. The horse later gets stolen by “gypsies” (their words not mine) and returned to the valley it came from. The main character gathers a team of an eccentric paleontologist and some cowboys from a circus show to find the valley. When they get there, the valley is full of stop motion dinosaurs. The stop motion effects aren’t bad really, you can tell a lot of work was put into them. They look no more fake than some of the computer animation from movies these days. Anyway, greed overtakes the characters, who look to exploit these dinosaurs for their show.  Eventually they manage to wrangle up an Allosaurus who they name Gwangi. Since Allosaurus was from the Jurassic era it makes even less sense than if it were a Tyrannosaurus, from the more recent Cretaceous era. But, they obviously weren’t concerned with realism. They try to put Gwangi in their show but he escapes, eats a stop motion elephant, and then terrorizes the city. A bunch of people get eaten and stepped on. The climax does make sitting through the rest of the movie worth it. It’s hilarious. Gwangi chases the main characters into a large cathedral. The protagonist causes a fire that burns the building down, killing poor Gwangi as onlookers watch teary-eyed. Even though this is all their fault and they should have left the valley alone. Greedy idiots. I dislike all of the human characters in this movie, the real hero was Gwangi. 

The Simpsons

What a pleasant surprise to find an episode of The Simpsons on the tape. It’s the episode “Grift of the Magi”. Pretty sure this is a recording from the original airing too, which according to Wikipedia was December 19, 1999. Now I can definitely date the tape. It is nice to see the old episodes every now and then, since it’s a show I don’t watch often anymore. It’s the first Christmas-themed thing on this tape, although it’s not really about Christmas until halfway through the episode. Through a convoluted series of events Springfield Elementary gets shut down, and to reopen they have to let it get bought out by a toy corporation that is using the children for market research. I could see this happening in real life. It’s almost a prediction of the corporate espionage that takes place on social media. It’s an okay episode, still got a couple chuckles from me at points, but by 1999 the show was already a little bit past its prime. Which says something about the last 21 years of the show. 

Much has been written about how The Simpsons is so beyond its prime now it’s practically a reanimated corpse of its former self kept alive through necromancy that its corporate owners refuse to let die since it is still somehow making money. If it still has an audience they must be watching it as a guilty pleasure and not telling anyone. I have never heard of anyone watching and enjoying the recent seasons. I personally stopped watching sometime in the early 2000s. I thought the movie that came out in 2007 was alright, but even that was the first good Simpsons content in years. It was the last of The Simpsons I enjoyed. I have tried a couple of times since to watch an episode, and it just wasn’t the same. Too formulaic and unfunny. Even the voice actors are getting too old and are unable to do the same voices after all these years. The show wouldn’t have gotten this stale if the characters were allowed to age up. That’s a problem with long-running animated shows like this and South Park. It limits the plot ideas you can pull off, and it even messes with the canon of the show. Homer would have been born in the 1980s at this point. He’s a millennial. Soon the show will be older than him. I was 4 years old when this show started and pretty soon I’m going to be Homer’s age. Just let them age up, or stop the show already. You don’t have to age them up at a real-time rate, but do it every few years. Sheesh. 

Futurama

This was my favorite show from about 1999 to 2001. Watching it now, it’s very much a product of when it was made, which is ironic given that it takes place in the future. Much as The Jetsons was basically “the 1960s with robots and flying cars”, Futurama is “the late 90s/early 2000s with robots and flying cars”. Jokes in this episode such as Conan O’Brian losing his legs in the war of 2012 have aged very poorly. Characters constantly talk about events 1,000 years prior too. How often do you bring up celebrities from the year 999 AD in casual conversation? It was pretty normal in this show to have pop culture humor that was horribly dated only a couple years after the episode was made. Did they not think anyone would be watching this show twenty years later? I think the same thing when I watch Back to the Future II. Obviously they were written as comedies and I’m probably taking them too seriously. But, I’ve never been one for shallow, quickly-outdated pop culture humor. The show was at its best when it avoided such things and focused more on storytelling, character development and world building. I suppose they were written for their current audience, not for a future one. It tells you more about the world when it was made than it does about the actual future. It’s more surprising when something they predict still sounds plausible, or even accurate. Another joke in this episode, that global warming was cancelled out by nuclear winter, was actually a good one that’s aged well.

This episode is “XMas Story”. It’s Fry’s first Christmas in the future and he’s homesick. Christmas is officially called XMas in the year 3000. Leela, an orphaned cyclops, is depressed as well. Fry wants to get her a gift, but is warned about an evil robotic Santa who kills anyone he considers naughty, which is almost everyone. He gets her a parrot, which escapes. He climbs up a tower to get it back and gets stuck on a giant digital clock, in a more modern homage to the Harold Lloyd film Safety Last! where he gets stuck on a clock. I always liked that gag. Leela saves him, but soon, the evil Santa comes for them. It’s a pretty funny twist on Santa, and the episode holds up well as a Christmas special.

Rocko’s Modern Life

Another goody I forgot I had on this tape. Rocko’s Modern Life is a cartoon from the channel Nickelodeon. Out of all the “Nicktoons” as they were called, it actually stands up the best as an adult. It satirized everyday life in modern America, and at times seemed much as if it were aimed at adults. I like it even more now than I did as a kid because I understand it better now. It’s aged better than Futurama, and didn’t stick around forever and get stale like The Simpsons.

This is the Christmas episode, “Rocko’s Modern Christmas”. Rocko is planning a Christmas party with his friends Heffer and Filbert. Once they find out about it they start inviting other people and it ends up becoming way huger than the small get together he anticipated. We follow his misadventures trying to buy supplies for the party. Meanwhile some elves move in to the house across the street from him. Rocko meets one of the elves at the mall and helps him back home. They make toys, and he invites them to the party as well. Rocko’s grouchy next-door neighbor Mr. Bighead is prejudiced against elves and endeavors to sabotage Rocko’s party by telling everyone elves have foot fungi. So sadly no one shows up to the party, except for the one elf he met at the mall, who makes it snow, and it’s a big miracle. The next morning everyone shows up, astonished by the snow that only fell around Rocko’s house, and they end up having the party after all. 

Eh, as far as episodes of this show go, it isn’t one of my favorites really. It’s a little boring. For a show that was so good at satirizing modern life, they played things pretty straight in this episode. I would have expected maybe a critique on the rampant consumerism of Christmas, or other negative aspects of the holiday season. Not that it was the most cynical show, but this episode needed a little more cynicism to make it a less generic Christmas episode. It’s not the show at its best. My favorites episodes are the ones that revolve around Mr. Bighead, honestly. He’s hilarious. I always end up relating to grumpy, curmudgeonly characters it seems.

Ernest Saves Christmas 

Next on the tape is this classic, recorded off the Disney Channel. The channel was never as good after it went from premium to basic cable, but this was before their era of inane sitcoms for preteen girls.

Oh Ernest. To this day he is an enduring character. Too pure for this cruel world. And this film, as silly as it is, has a kind of innocent sincerity to it that is refreshing, if you’re in the right mood for it. I still have a soft spot for this movie after all these years, even as I have become bitter and cynical in my adulthood. And now that I’ve lived in Florida a few years I understand this movie even better. Not a lot of Christmas movies take place in Florida, where it’s often 80 degrees Fahrenheit on Christmas, but this one does. Christmas in Florida just feels kind of fake, like everyone wishes they were someplace where it snowed. Some holidays really don’t translate well across different climates, Christmas most of all. This was filmed on location too, I recognize the freeway to the Orlando airport at the beginning. 

The film features perhaps the most believable Santa I have seen on film. Everyone thinks he’s a delusional senile old man who just thinks he’s Santa, but I wonder if I met him in real life he’d have me believing his story. Then I’d ask him why he gives rich kids better presents than poor kids. Anyway, the guy he wants to pass the title of “Santa” to isn’t nearly as good of an actor. A former children’s show host, the movie clearly wants him to be some Mr. Rogers type of person but I just never felt convinced for some reason. Nor does he look like Santa; even at the end of the movie when he’s got the beard and outfit on there’s just something off about him. It could be just because he’s juxtaposed with the best film Santa ever, and it’s a tough act to follow. 

The main highlights of the film are wholesome Santa, and the antics of Ernest. The subplot about the runaway teen girl who becomes Ernest’s sidekick was kind of odd and not very believable, although I will say she looks like a Floridian. I could imagine bumping into her at a kava bar in Pinellas Park. The subplot of the two Laurel and Hardy wannabes getting a shipment of flying reindeer doesn’t really do anything for me. Maybe they were funnier in Ernest Scared Stupid, or maybe that’s the nostalgia goggles talking. In all, it’s a silly but overall harmless movie, probably best enjoyed if you saw it as a kid and have nostalgic feelings tied up with it like I do.

Ren & Stimpy 

Yes, one of my favorite cartoons!  The source of my bizarre and twisted sense of humor. This is a Christmas episode, “A Scooter for Yaksmas”. A Yaksmas episode, technically. Ren & Stimpy is a very surreal show, known for its gross-out comedy. I had forgotten this episode existed. It’s one of the later ones, after the show’s creator John K. was kicked off the show. The show was very hit-or-miss after that. So in this episode, Stimpy wants a Scooter for Yaksmas, and drops several very obvious hints at Ren. Yaksmas is a bizarre alternative universe version of Christmas where an old hillbilly named Stinky Wizzle-teats breaks into your home, stuffs your socks with meat byproducts, vandalizes your home in several depraved ways, and passes out on the lawn. Ren doesn’t end up getting Stimpy the scooter, leaving him heartbroken. He goes to the store, and snaps, ending up stealing the scooter. He then becomes a fugitive, and decides to travel to Stinky Wizzle-teats at the West Pole for help. When he gets there he sees a present that Ren got him, which was the scooter after all. I used to be all about this absurd show. To be honest, I still am. 

Christmas Comes to Pac-Land

Cartoon Network used to dig up every obscure Christmas Special ever this time of year. And this was one of them. There was a Pac-Man cartoon in the 1980s. One of the first video game cartoons, and not nearly as good as the Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon. Maybe I just recorded it because I was in awe that it existed. At some point, around 1996 to 1997, I was obsessed with Pac-Man thanks to the game Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures for Sega Genesis. The game was a lot like this cartoon, starring a Pac-Man with arms and legs, who lived in a house with Ms. Pac-Man and his family. It was basically a point-and-click game rather than the familiar arcade maze game. I don’t even really know why I liked it so much, but it was probably why I recorded this cartoon, where Santa crash lands in Pac-land, some alternate Earth where people have yellow ball bodies, and Pac-Man has to find his lost toys. I can only imagine what a blow it would have been to my edgy self image in 1999 if the other kids at school knew I’d been watching this. A part of me still feels embarrassed. Remnants of an old feeling that’s been beaten out of me in the years since. This special is really dumb though. 

Four Tex Avery MGM Cartoon Shorts

This was a welcome surprise. What a jackpot. And they have nothing to do with Christmas. I completely forgot I had these on here. Tex Avery is my favorite classic cartoonist, his shorts were the funniest, and a bit more adult than other cartoons of the time, a reminder that back then cartoons were shown in movie theaters and were more for general audiences than just kids. As close as you could get in the 1940s to The Simpsons and South Park. And MGM is my favorite overall classic cartoon studio. They had Tex Avery, Tom and Jerry, and I like the other cartoons they had too. They also had higher production values, on par with Disney. I probably recorded this a little later, it’s from the channel Boomerang, which I didn’t have yet in 1999. It’s taken forever to get Tex Avery shorts released on DVD (I think there was finally a set released last year or something), they’re not on the big streaming services, Warner Bros. greedily takes them down when they get uploaded to YouTube, so these VHS recordings are a good way to still see them, and for a long time they were the only way. The first short is “The Cat that Hated People” directed by Tex Avery, about a cat that tries to leave Earth because he has been mistreated by humans, only to find the moon to be a zany and psychedelic place (a ripoff of the Looney Tunes short “Porky in Wackyland”, actually). 

Second short is “Swing Shift Cinderella”, a sequel to the Tex Avery short “Red Hot Riding Hood” featuring the alluring dancer Red (the original Jessica Rabbit; who’s slightly more realistic body proportions make her more attractive than Jessica in my opinion) and the Wolf, who becomes enraptured over her and does a bunch of wild takes like his eyes popping out and such. This one is almost as good as the first Red short. 

After that we have “Red Hot Rangers”, a short featuring Tex Avery’s recurring characters George and Junior, based on George and Lenny from Of Mice and Men. A fire imp sprouts from someone’s discarded cigarette in the forest, and George and Junior, working as forest rangers, have to put it out.  Cartoony gags ensue as the bumbling duo fail over and over again to douse the pesky fire imp.

The marathon continues with “The Screwy Truant”, starring Screwy Squirrel. Screwy Squirrel was a deliberately exaggerated parody of the screwball cartoon character (like the early Daffy Duck for instance) that punishes their hapless victims, with very little if any provocation, yet remaining the protagonist the audience is supposed to root for. Here he is ditching school, and being chased down by a dog acting as a truant officer. I am pretty glad this sort of thing was obsolete by the time I was in school. School is already too much like prison without being chased by officers and forced to go. 

This is the last thing on the tape. Overall the tape is longer and has more to offer than the He-Man She-Ra Christmas Special tape. It’s not quite as iconic in my mind though. It was nice watching it again, a trip down memory lane. It took me more than two weeks to get through the whole thing and write this, to be honest. I have another Christmas tape I can watch and review next year, so if we all survive 2021 and you like reading what I have on these old recorded VHS tapes stay tuned for that.