Commentary Track

12 Days of Christmas Movies: How The Grinch Stole Christmas

Posted by Kevin Carr (kevin@filmschoolrejects.com) on December 20, 2007

Things are very different today than they were when we were kids… or at least when I was a kid. Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, VCRs weren’t in the mass market. Now, kids can get DVDs and other home video products and watch films ad nauseum. And cable was in its infancy, so there weren’t the options back their either. In the old days, you just had to wait until things were aired on network television.

Each year, kids would wait anxiously await for the network of choice (usually CBS) to show a block of Christmas specials. Programs like A Charlie Brown Christmas, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, Frosty the Snowman and the stop-motion classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer would be on the line-up. It’d bet the talk of the playground, and it was a truly special night of television.

But no special holiday program was held in as much reverence as the original animated film Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

I’m not talking about the wretched Jim Carrey big-screen adaptation. I’m talking about the classic film that so embodied Dr. Seuss’ original work that it is still a top-seller on DVD at Christmas.

Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas was some of the best holiday movie-making, mixing the cute with the bizarre. With screen legend Boris Karloff narrating, animation god Chuck Jones directing and Tony the Tiger voice actor Thurl Ravenscroft belting out the theme song, you don’t get any closer to perfection in a holiday special.