The program began life as a 1997 TV special, running just 21 minutes according to the IMDb. In 2002 the show was expanded to nearly 33 minutes ("Bloopers" at the end play like shameless padding) and reformatted for both giant-screen IMAX and its impressive 3-D process. Universal Home Video's DVD offers two versions of the 2002 version, one in "flat" 2-D, the other in red-green anaglyphic 3-D. Four pairs of heavy-stock paper "glasses" are provided with each DVD.

The short is both a hip and gentle spoof of Rankin-Bass style holiday shows. Happily, it avoids fashionable cynicism and almost ambushes its audience with a surprising bit of real sweetness near the end. Its story concerns a lonely, mute snowman who, after a misunderstanding where he's run off the grounds of Santa's Workshop, becomes determined to take Santa's place on Christmas Eve.

The gags are frequently obvious and the movie references overdone, but there are still plenty of laughs. (One example: after Santa's computer program crashes, Bill Gates finds himself added to Santa's "naughty" list.) Jonathan Winters is a delight as a voice of Father Christmas, striking just the right balance of warmth and humor. Eventually, the snowman creates an army of minions (they sprout out of the earth like the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts) and their assault on Santa's Workshop set off alarms at its NORAD-like security center, with Santa ordering his elves to "Scramble the reindeer!" All this serves as an excuse for a snowmen vs. elves battle that's really an elaborate and pretty clever parody of the Battle of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back.

Video & Audio

Santa vs. the Snowman is presented in full-frame format with 5.1 sound available in English, French, and Spanish. Also included are optional subtitles in Spanish, French, and English for the hard-of-hearing.

The 3-D and 2-D versions of Santa vs. the Snowman each have their advantages and disadvantages. The quality of the 3-D is very good, and the snowflakes, flying reindeer and such are well-suited for 3-D treatment, but it's undermined by the use of the inferior anaglyphic process. The great pallet of color in the 2-D version is pretty much ruined when viewed through the red-green (actually red-blue in this case) lenses, which makes most everything look a blurry seaweed green and which loses many design details. The elaborate IMAX 3-D process has been approximated elsewhere on DVD with some success, but presumably deemed impractical for such a wide release, given the added (if very modest) expense for the equipment it requires. Still, Universal deserves praise for the releasing the 3-D version at all. If only they had offered both the flat and 3-D versions of their Creature from the Black Lagoon movies.**

Extra Features

The very marginal supplements include Project: Blizzard, the type of rudimentary video game best left to that industry; Snow Globe Creator a baffling screen-saver feature of unfathomable interest; and Holiday Family Treats, a set of eight Christmastime dessert recipes.

Parting Thoughts

Santa vs. the Snowman is fun family entertainment. Both the show and the 3-D process are well above average, and a refreshing change of pace from the usual annual holiday fare.

** Black and white movies generally play much better in anaglyphic 3-D than color ones. A few movies the major labels could and should release to DVD (in both 2- and 3-D/anaglyphic format): It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon and Revenge of the Creature (all Universal); The Mad Magician, Man in the Dark, Down the Hatch, Spooks and Pardon My Backfire (the latter two Three Stooges shorts) (all Columbia/TriStar); The Maze (originally Monogram, presumably now owned by Warner Bros.); and The Moonlighter (Warner Bros.). If done right they'd likely prove a smashing success.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Los Angeles and Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf -- The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. His new book, Cinema Nippon will be published by Taschen in 2005.