For America, the misunderstanding was over the lyrics. Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Get Down” was assumed to be a nudge-nudge reference to oral sex, tied-in, perhaps, to the coincidental release of sex film, Deep Throat.

A surprised O’Sullivan explained his lyrics were:

‘...very British and to me the girl in “Get Down” is behaving like a dog - she’s jumping up on him, so “get down!”’

That’s his story, and he’s, you know. Though he did admit, if it had been about oral pleasures, then:

‘...we should sell 10 million and put it on the soundtrack of Deep Throat.’

Top of the Pops resident dance troupe, Pan’s People understood the song perfectly and reflected it in their innocent interpretation. With such a literal approach, the mind boggles how the girls would have choreographed the song if it had been about blow jobs.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Pan’s People interpret Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett’s ‘Monster Mash’ from 1973

Pan’s People: ‘Top of the Pops’ Legendary Dance Troupe

 
With thanks to Alison Wallace
 

 
This is The Beach Boys’ so called lost concert from March 1964. The line-up includes Brian Wilson, and in a 20 minute set, The Beach Boys rip through a selection of 9 superb songs, including tracks from their freshly released album, Shut Down Vol 2.

These are: “Fun Fun Fun”, “Long Tall Texan”, “Little Deuce Coupe”, “Surfer Girl”, “Surfin’ USA”, “Shut Down”, “In My Room”, “Papa Oom-Mow-Mow”, and “Hawaii”.
 

 
Moe, Curly and Larry slap, smack and poke their way through the other Stooges’ classic.

Nyuck, nyuck, nyuck.

The Seven Stooges - “I Wanna Be Your Dog” from The Rhino Brothers Present - The World’s Worst Records Vol. 1.
 

 
Feeling a little bit of the ol’ post-Christmas blues? Well, here’s something guaranteed to lift you up or send you spiraling into an even darker hole.

These Polyester flower children seem to exist for the sole purpose of showing the world that happiness can be as facile and ephemeral as a smiley face on a tie-dyed Snuggly. Like anti-depressants, this should come with a suicide warning.

From one of the first color shows broadcast on Canadian television (it looks they wanted to insure that every color got equal airtime), The Good Company sing a medley of “face” songs as the planet wobbles on an axis of bliss and the sky turns day-glow.
 

 
Alfred Hitchcock Presents…Back for Christmas, based on John Collier‘s story of a man who plans to murder his wife, and bury her in the cellar. Collier’s short story was originally printed in the New Yorker magazine in 1939, this was the story’s first TV outing, there were 3 different versions made for radio, including one with Peter Lorre, and was latter remade for Roald Dahl’s series Tales of the Unexpected in the 1970s.

Collier wrote dozens of stories, many of which were successfully produced for various radio, TV and film productions - including “Green Thoughts”, the basis for Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors. He also contributed to such screenplays as the Humphrey Bogart / Katharine Hepburn movie The African Queen and the play based on Christopher Isherwood’s “Berlin Stories” I Am A Camera. Towards the end of his life, Collier jokingly said of himself:

“I sometimes marvel that a third-rate writer like me has been able to palm himself off as a second-rate writer.”

Hitchock’s version of Back for Christmas stars John Williams as Herbert Carpenter and Isobel Elsom as Hermione Carpenter, and was first broadcast in March 1956.
 

 
Part 2, after the jump…
 

Photo by Steven Cheshire
 
Did you know that “Santa” is an anagram of “Satan”? The Divine David (now known simply as David Hoyle) certainly does. Here’s a couple of clips of David spreading his own particular brand of Christmas cheer, the first showing us how to alternatively decorate a Christmas tree:
 

 
Previously on DM:
It’s Christmas, the world is burning, let’s masturbate: the Divine David Hoyle

After the jump, The Divine David’s disturbing memories of Santa’s abattoir…

 
When Christmas comes around, I am the Grinch. My loved ones complain that I get surly, sarcastic and generally just plain unpleasant come the holidays. I can’t help it. Good cheer shouldn’t be mandatory. I don’t like to put on a happy face when I’m being force-fed tidings of comfort and joy. Allow me to be uncomfortable and not enjoy myself.

Now, having gotten that out of my system, I must admit to secretly getting a little warm and fuzzy when it comes to certain things Christmas. And among those things are kitsch Christmas specials and really weird/bad Christmas music, which Pee Wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special from 1988 has in stockings full. This is 100 proof egg nog with a sprinkle of peyote dust on top.

Have a manic Christmas with Pee Wee and his guests Annette Funicello, Grace Jones, Little Richard, Cher, The Del Rubio Triplettes, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Charo, k.d. lang and more!

The premise of the special is basically that Pee Wee, being the overgrown child that he is can’t seem to find happiness during the holidays. Instead of getting the things that he really wants, which is everything, he continues receive crummy gifts like fruitcake!

Pee Wee’s Christmas list of wants is so long in fact that Santa has to make a special visit to the playhouse to persuade Pee Wee to shorten his list. He tells Pee Wee that his list is so long that he doesn’t have toys left for other children. Santa teaches Pee Wee a very important lesson about Christmas.

Mmmm, that egg nog is good.
 

The jungle room at Graceland all decked out with Christmas cheer.

When he was cool, he was very cool. A black leather clad Elvis croons “Santa Claus Is Back In Town” & “Blue Christmas” as young girls swoon.

Some raw takes not included in the television broadcast version of Elvis’s “Comeback Special.” June 27, 1968
 

 
This is from the Dangerous Minds’ archives. Originally posted last Christmas Eve.

I’m probably among a handful of people who prefer the universally reviled Star Wars Holiday Special to any of the actual Star Wars movies. Broadcast once in 1978 on CBS and then quickly banished to TV purgatory, this holiday fiasco is one of the strangest things ever to be piped into the living rooms of an unsuspecting America. At 8 p.m. on November 17, 1978, Star War fans were plunged into stunned disbelief as their sacred mythology was reduced to something more akin to an earthbound shitfest than a spectacle in a galaxy far far away. The only thing missing from the special that would have transmutated its alchemy into the realm of the genuinely mindaltering would have been an appearance by Divine, Edie the Egg Lady and the ghost of Alfred Jarry.

In a highly amusing article that appeared in the December 2008 issue of Vanity Fair, writer Frank DiGiacomo describes George Lucas’s cathode ray bomb as…

[...] a campy 70s variety show that makes suspension of disbelief impossible. In between minutes-long stretches of guttural, untranslated Wookie dialog that could almost pass for avant-garde cinema, Maude’s Bea Arthur sings and dances with the aliens from the movie’s cantina scene; The Honeymooners’ Art Carney consoles Chewbacca’s family with such comedy chestnuts as “Why all the long, hairy faces?”; Harvey Korman mugs shamelessly as a multi-limbed intergalactic Julia Child cooking “Bantha Surprise”; the Jefferson Starship pops up to play a number about U.F.O.’s; and original Star Wars cast members Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill walk around looking cosmically miserable.”

I highly recommend you read the entire article by clicking here. It’s a lot of fun.

With a happy holiday heart, I present for your viewing pleasure the gloriously bizarre Star Wars Holiday Special, which has never been re-aired on TV or officially released on video. And as a bonus, this video includes all the original commercials for Star Wars merchandise.

The 50 second text crawl at the beginning is silent.
 

 
Close the door against the chill and draw yourself a little closer to the fire. There. Comfortable? Then we’ll begin…

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Vincent Price hosts this short TV adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, starring Taylor Holmes as Ebeneezer Scrooge, Pat White as Bob Cratchit, and Earl Lee as the Ghost of Jacob Marley, directed by Arthur Pierson, from 1949.