The team of Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass first struck gold with their maiden holiday special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), and their output kicked into high gear after Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town (1970). With their visually attractive animation and warm, clever scripts by Romeo Muller, these shows typically spun original myths around Christmas's secular aspects. The memorable characters were usually designed by Paul Coker, Jr. and the shows were actually animated in Japan, though Rankin and Bass seemed reluctant to fully disclose this in their shows' credits, implying they themselves directed the animation.** Maury Laws wrote the scores for most of these shows, which are at times exceptionally good.

However, by 1977 the company had milked the holiday myth-making genre dry. They had even already gone to the Easter well once before, for a 1971 special entitled Here Comes Peter Cottontail, which featured the voices of Danny Kaye and Vincent Price. Ironically, The Easter Bunny Is Comin' to the Town features the voice of Fritz the Cat, Skip Hinnant, in the title role.

The script is structured very much like Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, an attempt at nostalgia that only underscores its relative weaknesses, with Astaire's S. D. Kluger once again trying to answer the myriad questions kids have about the Easter Bunny. And once again the plot revolves around an orphaned hero, Sunny the Bunny (sigh) and his helpers trying to bring a little sunshine to a gray, Warsaw-like city lorded over by an oppressive ruler, in this case Lily Longtooth (voiced by Meg Sargent), the austere, domineering aunt of child-King Bruce (James Spies). (Lily's character seems directly patterned after Anna Quayle's in the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.) Other characters include Hallelujah Jones (Ron Marshall), a friendly bum, and Chugs (Bob McFadden), the little engine that could.

The most immediate problem plaguing The Easter Bunny Is Comin' to Town is that it's as fresh as day-old bread and completely uninspired. The origins of colored eggs, egg-rolling, jelly beans, and chocolate bunnies are dutifully explained, but where in the best Rankin/Bass special these revelations were clever and surprising, especially to little kids, here they fall flat like stale jokes delivered by a third-rate comedian. It's one thing to talk about the magic of Christmas and the spirit of giving, and another, as happens here, to have an interminable discussion about eating eggs.

The bigger problem though is that Easter just doesn't carry the sentimental weight of Christmas. It just doesn't conjure up that holiday's sweeping emotions, and Muller's clearly struggling to come up with a mythology about such mundane matters as chocolate bunnies. (What, nothing about the origins of Peeps?) For most, emotionally the secular Easter aspects are probably closer to George Washington's Birthday than they are to Christmas.

The show strains in other ways, such as some awkwardly inserted Bible references that really have no place here: the modern Easter Bunny is a resolutely secular, arguably even commercial figure designed to sell candy, with only the murkiest ties both Christian and pagan faiths.

Video & Audio

The Good News: The Easter Bunny Is Comin' to Town looks fantastic, perhaps the best-looking Rankin/Bass puppet special out on DVD. Obviously this original negative didn't get a lot of wear: the full frame image is nearly flawless and the colors vibrant. The original mono track is likewise clean, accompanied by optional English subtitles.

Extra Features

The Bad News: The supplements here, in a word, stink. Billed as "3 Family-Friendly Selections" (I guess that means no Fritz the Cat), "The Magic of Stop Motion" is, ahem, brought to life with three original shorts: Breakfast of Magicians, Floating Through Daydream Garden, and The Easter Express. Shot on video, I'll bet the filmmakers spent at least 20 minutes producing each short. It's the kind of thing an amateur fooling around with his video camera in the backyard could improve upon with minimal effort and imagination. Coming from a major studio label, this so-called extra is a real insult to the intelligence of both kids and their parents.

Parting Thoughts

The Easter Bunny Is Comin' to Town on its own isn't terrible: the animation is nice and some of the character and set design is attractive. The songs are generally bland, but it's always nice to hear Fred Astaire sing, even well past his prime as is the case here. But, alas, the show itself lays a big fat egg and only the most desperate parents will want to Rent It.

** In at least one instance Rankin co-opted a credit not rightly his, claiming to be the producer/director on the live-action Japanese feature King Kong Escapes (1967). In fact his company did little more than license a few characters and later dubbed it into English; it's possible he didn't even go to Japan while this was being made. His name doesn't appear in the Japanese version but on the American posters Rankin's prominent credit replaces the film's actual producer and director entirely.

　 Film historian Stuart Galbraith IV's latest books, Japanese Cinema and The Toho Studios Story, are now available for pre-order.