In monthly column The A-to-Z of Trash, bad movie lover Eliza Janssen takes us on an alphabetically-ordered trip through the best bits of the worst films ever. This month, beat the heat with a visit to the dubious winter wonderland of 2002’s unbelievable Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa.
Santa came early this year! I know it’s only March, but since I’m sweating my way through an autumn heatwave right now, a transporting jaunt to the northern hemisphere’s frosty, charming Christmastime is in order. Unfortunately, I must have already been an extremely evil child this year, because the only thing Saint Nick has in his sack right now is Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa.
I first watched this lump of coal about 10 years ago, screening it as part of a bad Christmas movie marathon, but it was Flicks’ own Liam Maguren who suggested it for this column’s ‘R’ slot. Liam is a champion of both animation and family films as storytelling media, believing that kids cartoons can be beautiful, intelligent and important. Screened with shame on a few Warner Bros. TV channels in 2002 and never released onto home video, RSK: BIS gets three big red crosses by those metrics.
In fact, why don’t you go ahead and tear off the gift wrapping right now for a first-hand look? The film is available in its entirety on YouTube:
The animation, which can charitably be compared to 1998 bowling alley decoration or something you’d find in a DeviantArt forum for people with some confounding geometrical fetish, comes courtesy of Wolf Tracer Studios, a small company with only one other feature to their name. Believe in Santa was the first of two planned features starring the Bash Street Kids—but nope, that name was taken, as was ‘Rhapsody Street Kids’, and so here we are. Production is estimated to have cost $650k and to have lasted between three and four months. Wolf Tracer’s head honcho was Colin Slater, an enigmatic industry insider who was at one point a manager of “the Bay City Rollers Ltd.”. He was also a Scientologist, which may explain how he got Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, involved, perhaps roping in some of her legit voice actor pals in the process.
In a memorial Tweet for the late Slater, someone named JR Horsting commented that the animator “paid voice talent what they wanted, and got the best”, also excusing that Wolf Tracer’s projects used a “very limited” software called 3D Choreographer. I’d like to make note of these obstacles and accomplishments as I tear the fuck into this hilarious Yuletide log.
A snowflake-flecked Christmas parable clearly modelled on the charm and simplicity of Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts, Believe in Santa follows a lifeless throng of children as they affirm their faith in the reason for the season. Dreadlocked Ricky (Walter Emmanuel Jones) is established as our hero, selflessly giving his beloved toy bear to snobby rich girl Nicole (Paige O’Hara) as a Christmas gift only to have it thrown back in his face. Then he kinda disappears for the rest of the special, only serving as a sounding board for the whole ordeal’s best character: Great Grandma (Debra Wilson), who speaks in long glitchy keyboard-mash sentences capped off with the exclamation “christmoiisssohh!”
The second best/worst character in RSK: BIS is Smithy (Eddie Driscoll). The Chunk of the group, if you will. He loves hoagies and ice-skating very fast. Once school’s out for the holidays, he cheers that he can “skate bigger and faster than my mom can make the biggest sandwich in the world!”
Bewildering exchanges like this elevate the film from merely an abortive Kid Pix experiment to something transcendent in its poor execution: did so many adults, established voice actors and brave animators working with new technology, really spend so many painstaking hours on this? A teacher reminds her students, “things in order teaches you good life skills”. Okay?? The evil Nicole chants at her mother: “you know I’m the bestest kid in the world, mommy!” Smithy later sneaks up on her and gives her a fright, and then whoops: “I loooove creeping out creepy girls!” For some savage context, Pixar put out Monsters Inc. only the year before. The music video for Eiffel 65’s “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” was released three years prior.
I hope I’m not Grinching out too much by highlighting this rightfully obscure and superficially wholesome project. It’s not even really a movie, running for less than 50 minutes and airing only on a handful of TV channels more than two decades ago. But this thing has multiple Disney princesses in its voice cast, plus Mark Hamill and Clint Howard. Its story of a redemptive faith in Santa Claus ruling a small community’s lives and minds feels of a piece with the meta story of its production: the misguided faith of good, wise people deluding themselves into putting on a show for the holidays. For the kids.
Do not watch it with your kids, though. All these years later, Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa locates the true meaning of Christmas in giving eggnog-infused, loser adults like me something to piss ourselves over during the holidays. It gives us something to believe in.
