In the early 70s, a Dallas-based ad exec named Joe Camp despaired over the state of family movies. Sure, there was Disney, but no other major studio was really making movies for the entire family to watch together, meaning that the slack was mostly taken up by low-budget, rather shoddy films apparently designed for the kiddie matinee circuit and no place else. Camp decided to make his own low-budget family movie, filmed in the suburbs north of Dallas, with a cast made up of local amateurs and 60s TV actors. It would all center around a dog. The result, Benji, became a sensation, earning roughly $45 million on a $500,000 budget, enough to make it the 9th-highest-grossing film released in 1974. Camp would use his newfound riches and influence to make a couple of projects without Benji, but most of his career would be devoted to turning out numerous projects with the scruffy mutt, whether it be theatrical sequels, TV specials, or TV series.
Of course, one of those specials would be a Christmas one. Benji's Very Own Christmas Story starts out seeming like a travelogue, as Benji and two cast members of the film, Patsy Garrett and Cynthia Smith (who played the little girl in the first movie and here looks to be about 13 or so) head off to a small town in Switzerland, where Benji is to serve as the grand marshal of the Christmas Parade. It does look to be an charming town, and Smith's voice-over proclamation that "there couldn't possibly be a more Christmassy place in all the world" seems pretty accurate. However, before they head to the parade, their sled driver, who introduces himself as Kris Kringle, asks if they could stop by and meet some of his friends who are too busy working to come to the parade and see Benji in person. This being a Christmas special, Smith and Garrett of course say yes, and subsequently learn that the guy playing Kris Kringle is the actual Kris Kringle, aka Santa Claus.
Kringle is played by Ron Moody, who a decade earlier had gotten an Oscar nomination for Oliver! His career didn't quite take off in the wake of the nomination, but he worked pretty steadily in movies and TV up to his retirement in 2012, as well as appearing on stage (he's be Tony nominated in 1984 for reprising his Oliver! role on Broadway). Moody is clearly having a ball playing Kringle, and ends up so dominating the proceedings that Benji becomes basically an afterthought in his own special. This one might be better called Ron Moody's Very Own Christmas Story with Special Guest Star Benji.
At any rate, Moody takes Smith, Garrett, and Benji to his workshop, which is actually in Switzerland, as its more centrally located than the North Pole. There, the special rather meanders, allowing Moody to do his thing while the plot very slowly builds up to the special's one big production number, in which Kringle sings about him being a "multiplicity" while dancing around with numerous "elves", nearly all of whom are clearly kids wearing fake noses, ears, and beards, and changing costumes about five different times during the one song.
There is a plot, which has something to do with Kris having broken his leg and therefore not being able to make deliveries this year (unlike the other 70s special with this plot, The Year Without a Santa Claus, this Kringle does make alternative arrangements). Of course, the plot gets such short shrift that when it suddenly comes back up in the final act, I had forgotten about it. And yet, it seems to have more screen time than Benji himself does.
While the outside shots were filmed on location in Switzerland, the interior shots were filmed in France, so it's presumably French kids playing the elves. With a couple of exceptions, the kids are all very white, which is noticeable given that said kids-as-elves are supposed to be representing every country in the world, including presumably China. To be fair, it was 1978, and no one probably thought too much about the fact that a bunch of white kids were playing Chinese elves.
After this, Camp would make more specials involving Benji, a whole TV series heavily influenced by Star Wars and E.T. (Benji has to protect an human-looking alien prince from the evil forces from his home planet trying to capture him), and a couple more movies. More recently, his son directed a remake of the original film for Netflix. That little mutt proved extremely lucrative.
Nostalgia for Benji--and the fact that Camp was an ad exec before he became a filmmaker--ensures that its easy to find almost every Benji project for sale, including this one, which is the rare 70s special not made by Rankin-Bass to still be widely available in 2023. Whether Benji's Very Own Christmas Story should be so widely available largely depends on how much you like Moody--and how much you don't care about Benji.
Next time: The secret word is "special"
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