The Little Drummer Boy

Aaron is a small boy who hates people after his parents are killed and speaks only to his animals. A travelling show abducts him and makes him drum in front of an audience. When he escapes he meets a caravan in the desert; three men following a star. He goes with them, and where they arrive he realises he has nothing to give. Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr. direct. It is one of the stop motion television specials Rankin and Bass produced; the same team made Rudolph. The source is the song of the same name, written in the fifties and taken into the Christmas repertoire. The film turns the idea of the song into a story. Anger is at the centre. Aaron is not presented as a sweet child; the loss has hardened him and the film does not soften that in the first half. The puppets were made by hand and moved frame by frame, an expensive and laborious technique in the television production of the time. Greer Garson narrates and the Vienna Boys' Choir sings. It runs about twenty five minutes and was repeated every Christmas on American television for many years. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Christmas programmes and stop motion animation. Who it is not for: the religious narrative is direct, the story is very short, and some passages are sadder than expected for small children.