Jules Bass
This made-for-television animated film was directed by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr.
SilverHawks is an American animated television series developed by Rankin/Bass Productions and distributed by Lorimar-Telepictures in 1986. The animation was provided by Japanese studio Pacific Animation Corporation. In total, 65 episodes were made. It was created as a space-bound equivalent of their previous series, ThunderCats. As was the case with ThunderCats, there was also a SilverHawks comic book series published by then-Marvel Comics imprint Star Comics. Currently, Warner Bros. owns the rights to the series.
The Great Ak calls a council of the Immortals to ask that Santa Claus be given immortality. And to justify it, he tells the history of Santa Claus. The Ak found an abandoned baby and gave it to a lioness and a fairy to raise, who named him Claus. When Claus grew up, the Great Ak showed him the evil and hardship in the world and Claus decides to live there and relieve some of the suffering. He decides to make toys for orphans, but King Awgwa, the ruler of the valley where Claus lives doesn't want the children to be happy, and there is a great battle among Immortals.
The inhabitants of the planet Thundera evacuate just before it is destroyed. They were pursued by a band of mutants. All but one of their escape ships was destroyed. Only a small group of Thunderans (Thundercats) remained. With only half engine power, the group, which was led by Jaga, had to set a course for the nearest planet. Jaga commanded their ship while the other seven were in their stasis tubes. Jaga died on their journey to Third Earth and their ship crashed there. Soon they made friends with various groups in the area and they designed a fortress. Mumm-Ra the centuries-old embodiment of evil, along with the mutants that destroyed the rest of the Thunderans are a constant threat. But Lion-O, the new leader of the Thundercats, with his weapon the "Sword of Omens" will help the Thundercats to have a standing chance.
In this animated pilot based on the SNL sketch, The Coneheads come to conquer Earth but they soon find themselves becoming domesticated.
The realm of magic is being threatened by the realm of logic, so Carolinus, the green wizard decides to shield it for all time. Ommadon, the evil red wizard, stands in his way. Carolinus then calls for a quest that is to be led by a man named Peter Dickinson, who is the first man of both the realms of science and magic. It is Peter's job to defeat Ommadon.
From a riddle-speaking butterfly, a unicorn learns that she is supposedly the last of her kind, all the others having been herded away by the Red Bull. The unicorn sets out to discover the truth behind the butterfly's words. She is eventually joined on her quest by Schmendrick, a second-rate magician, and Molly Grue, a now middle-aged woman who dreamed all her life of seeing a unicorn. Their journey leads them far from home, all the way to the castle of King Haggard.
The Leprechauns' Christmas Gold Sent in search of a Christmas tree, cabin boy Dinty Doyl lands on a mysterious, uncharted Irish island where he accidentally releases a bad-tempered banshee from her pinetree prison. Leprechaun Blarney Kilakilarney knows that in order to survive, the banshee will try to swipe his clan's pot of Christmas gold. With some magical assistance from Lord Patrick, the king of the wee folk, Dinty and Blarney make a plan to outwit the gold-hungry hag before Christmas morning dawns.
Geppetto prepare for Christmas, Pinocchio joins a puppet show to earn money for a present. There he meets and elopes with the beautiful girl puppet Julietta, leaving Geppetto alone and worried.
Two Hobbits struggle to destroy the Ring in Mount Doom while their friends desperately fight evil Lord Sauron's forces in a final battle.
Long ago the Lady Borealis placed the evil Winterbolt under a magic spell, and put the last of her magic into the nose of a newborn reindeer: Rudolph. But now Winterbolt's awake. He gives Frosty's family magic amulets to keep them from melting until the Fourth of July so that Frosty and Rudolph can help Lilly's circus and Milton can marry his girlfriend on the high-wire, and Santa will use his sleigh to make sure everybody gets back to the North Pole in time...which leaves Winterbolt alone at the North Pole on the Fourth...
Pardon-me Pete, the official groundhog of Groundhog Day, tells the story of Jack Frost, who falls in love with a beautiful young woman and begs Father Winter to make him human so that she can see him. His request is granted, but only on the condition that by the spring he has a house, a bag of gold, a horse and a wife. But Jack finds that life as a human is more complicated then he thought.
This cartoon version of A Christmas Carol hails from the production house of Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass--the team that brought you just about every other Christmas special you saw as a kid (including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer). Reinvented as a 49-minute musical ghost story, Stingiest stars the voice of Walter Matthau as the bedeviled Scrooge and Tom Bosley as the Jiminy Cricket-type narrator, B. Humbug, Esq.
Scientists investigating the briny deep are threatened by a giant turtle and the spirit of a young brunette swimmer in the Bermuda Triangle.
The Mailman decides to stop another deluge of letters by answering questions about the Easter Bunny: Sunny, a baby rabbit found and adopted by Kidville (a town of only kids--even a kid mailman). And when Sunny goes delivering eggs to the nearby town (which he has to dye to fool Gadzooks, the mean bear on the mountain), he discovers that there are no kids in the town, and that the rightful (kid) ruler is being suppressed by his aunt. But the young king likes Sunny's dyed eggs and jelly beans. So Kidsville, with the help of an old train engine, makes a few plans (and a decoy chocolate rabbit) to distribute them.
Wealthy big game hunter (Boone), along with his group, gets trapped in pre-historic times where they are stalked by a ferocious dinosaur.
Bilbo Baggins the Hobbit was just minding his own business, when his occasional visitor Gandalf the Wizard drops in one night. One by one, a whole group of dwarves drop in, and before he knows it, Bilbo has joined their quest to reclaim their kingdom, taken from them by the evil dragon Smaug. The only problem is that Gandalf has told the dwarves that Bilbo is an expert burglar, but he isn't...
A beloved toy stuffed rabbit is rescued by a fairy to be the first Easter Rabbit.
Rudolph must find Happy, the baby new year, before the midnight of New Year's Eve.
Aaron, the drummer boy, struggles to protect a bellmaker's great silver bells from seizure by Roman soldiers
Years have passed since Frosty left for the North Pole, but his promise is kept when he hears news of the first snowfall of the season, and decides to return.
A young shepherd, Lucas, is blinded by lightening, and some kindly nuns at a nearby abbey take him in. Sister Catherine describes snow to Lucas, who has never seen it. Lucas gets chosen to play an angel in the abbey's Christmas pageant, and the Christmas snow that falls during the pageant works a small miracle.
When a town learns that Santa Claus has struck it off his delivery schedule due to an insulting letter, a way must be found to change his mind.
Feeling forgotten by the children of the world, old St. Nick decides to skip his gift-giving journey and take a vacation. Mrs. Claus and two spunky little elves, Jingle and Jangle, set out to see to where all the season's cheer has disappeared. Aided by a magical snowfall, they reawaken the spirit of Christmas in children's hearts and put Santa back in action.
Annie Marie imagines herself in the stories "Alice in Wonderland", "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", "The Wizard of Oz" and "Cinderella".
This animated feature casts the Red Baron as a hero, in a world of heroic anthropomorphic dogs and villainous anthropomorphic cats.
A leprechaun, who had changed himself into a pumpkin seed to hibernate for the winter, comes to life as Mr. Jack O'Lantern, who then uses his pumpkin shell to help scare away Zelda the Witch and Archibald the Warlock.
A guardian angel agrees to help Willie Mays win the National League Pennant if Mays agrees to take care of Veronica, a lonely, mischievous orphan girl. Veronica makes Mays' life difficult, but when relatives show up to claim her after hearing that she's inherited money, Mays' heart softens.
This is one of the 'Animagical' titles from the children's film archive of Rankin/Bass. The story line is reminiscent of an earlier 1966 R/B Animagic film, 'The Daydreamer', both of which chronicles the fairy tales of Danish author, Hans Christian Andersen.
With the help of Charles Dickens, two young children attempt to save the essence of Christmas from the evil Mantu.
Peter Cottontail wants to be the #1 chief Easter Bunny, and everyone in April Valley agrees...except for Evil Irontail. Peter must deliver more eggs than this archrival to earn the top spot...and save Easter for children everywhere!
The Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians is a 1970 American animated television special produced by Rankin/Bass Productions. After the Christmas special Frosty the Snowman (1969), it was Rankin/Bass' second hand-drawn animated work to be outsourced to Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Production in Tokyo, Japan. The show aired on ABC on April 7, 1970 before the airing of that year's Oscars. It was a tribute to early vaudeville, and featured animated reworkings of various famous comedians' acts.
A postman, S.D. Kluger, decides to answer some of the most common questions about Santa Claus, and tells us about a small baby named Kris who is raised by a family of elf toymakers named Kringle. When Kris grew up, he wanted to deliver toys to the children of Sombertown. But its Mayor is too mean to let that happen. And to make things worse, the Winter Warlock who lives between the Kringles and Sombertown, but Kris manages to melt the Warlock's heart and deliver his toys.
A discarded silk top-hat becomes the focus of a struggle between a washed-up stage magician and a group of schoolchildren, after it magically brings a snowman to life. Realizing that newly-living Frosty will melt in spring unless he takes refuge in a colder climate, Frosty and Karen, a young girl who he befriends, stow away on a freight train headed for the north pole. Little do they know that the magician is following them, and he wants his hat back!
The famous ship called Mayflower is trapped amidst a huge storm. The entire story is narrated by a church-mouse called Willum, from his viewpoint. The tale begins with the pilgrim preachers deciding to move to America and getting aboard the Mayflower. However, because of the huge storm, the ship gets on the verge of sinking. Then, Willum, the pilgrim mouse, comes up with an idea to save the ship. When the pilgrims land safely, they write the Mayflower Compact and start constructing their new church and colony. However, it is already the autumn season and they do not have much food stored for the winter. The pilgrims then learn to plant crops during the spring season and celebrate a big feast toward the onset of the autumn season or fall. This is their first Thanksgiving celebration.
A young orphaned drummer boy is kidnapped. After he escapes he searches for his camel and finds him in the Nativity of the Baby Jesus. He gives Baby Jesus the only gift he has a song on his drum. This song is the only gift Baby Jesus responds to.
When Dr Frankenstein decides to retire from the monster-making business, he calls an international roster of monsters to a creepy convention to elect his successor. Everyone is there including Dracula, The Werewolf, The Creature, Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde and many more. But Frankenstein's title is not all that is at stake. The famous doctor has also discovered the secret of total destruction that must not fall into the wrong hands!
In this animated children's film, Mother Goose and her fairytale friends must stop a group of sneaky spies.
A delightful, animated musical version of Charles Dickens' classic tale. A Cricket on the Hearth, tells the story of a poor toymaker and his daughter whom a helpful Cricket named Crocket befriends on Christmas morning. When tragedy strikes the family, it's Crocket who comes to the rescue and restores peace and happiness.
The King Kong Show is an American/Japanese children's animated television series produced in 1966 by Videocraft of the USA, and Japan's Toei Animation and is the first anime series produced in Japan for an American company. ABC ran the series in the US between September 10, 1966, and August 31, 1969. This series is an animated adaptation of the famous movie monster King Kong with character designs by Jack Davis and Rod Willis. In this series, the giant ape befriends the Bond Family, with whom he goes on various adventures, saving the world from monsters, robots, aliens, mad scientists and other threats. Included is a comical cartoon show called Tom of T.H.U.M.B., about a three inch tall secret agent for the Tiny Human Underground Military Bureau named Tom and his equally tiny Asian sidekick Swinging Jack who are sent out in a variety of miniature vehicles by their bad-tempered boss Chief Homer J. Chief to foil the fiendish plots of M.A.D., an evil organization made up of black-cloaked scientists out to destroy the world. In Japan, the first two episodes were combined into a 56-minute special, titled King of the World: The King Kong Show, and was broadcast on NET on December 31, 1966. The rest of the series, with the inclusion of Tom of T.H.U.M.B., was broadcast on NET as King Kong & 001/7 Tom Thumb, and aired on April 5 to October 4, 1967, with a total of 26 episodes.
A fictional account of a teen-aged Hans Christian Anderson. In this film, young Hans runs away from home and each time he falls asleep he experiences in his dreams the different characters he would later write about including The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina and The Ugly Duckling.
The Ballad of Smokey the Bear tells the story, or a story of Smokey the Bear. The premise has Smokey’s big brother, voiced by James Cagney, telling the story of how his brother got his name. It’s a long winded and rambling tale that has very little Smokey and a great deal of a cranky Jimmy. The story has the animals trying to find out who set a forest fire and is poisoning the water. Its not giving anything away to say it’s an escaped circus gorilla that smokes cigars.
Little Willy McBean joins up with a Mexican monkey named Pablo to travel back in time and stop the evil Prof. von Rotten from changing history.
The Beatles is an American animated television series featuring the fanciful and musical misadventures of the popular English rock band of the same name. It ran from 1965 to 1969 on ABC in the US. The series debuted on September 25, 1965 and ended on September 7, 1969. A total of 39 episodes were produced. The series was shown on Saturday mornings at 10:30 AM EST until the 1967 third season when it was moved to 12:00 PM EST. For the fourth season, which consisted of reruns, the series was shown at 9:30 AM EST on Sunday mornings. Each episode has a name of a Beatles song, so the story is based on its lyrics and it is also played at some time in the episode. The original series was rebroadcast in syndication by MTV in 1986 and 1987 and on the Disney Channel. The series was a historical milestone as the first weekly television series to feature animated versions of real, living people.
Sam the snowman tells us the story of a young red-nosed reindeer who, after being ousted from the reindeer games because of his glowing nose, teams up with Hermey, an elf who wants to be a dentist, and Yukon Cornelius, the prospector. They run into the Abominable Snowman and find a whole island of misfit toys. Rudoph vows to see if he can get Santa to help the toys, and he goes back to the North Pole on Christmas Eve. But Santa's sleigh is fogged in. But when Santa looks over Rudolph, he gets a very bright idea...
