I never knew that Rod Sterling (Twilight Zone) wrote a modern (1964) version of Dicken’s A Christmas Carol for the United Nations film series on ABC underwritten by Xerox. Originally it was shown once and then 48 years later TCM started to show it on their channel. This was the first of ultimately 4 movies produced and shown on ABC by the Xerox Corporation and the UN. It is still a pretty powerful version of A Christmas Carol and still relevant today… some things are dated just because of time… like the traveling back to WWI but the underlying meaning and message is still true. And in some ways the part played by Peter Sellers of The “Imperial Me” and the faction (cult) of the Imperial Me groupies… was in a way a foreshadowing of the trivialization of the internet age. I wonder if Mike Judge ever saw this film or part of it while he was working on his film Idiocracy. If you have a chance to see this film I would highly recommend it.

A Christmas Carol enters the Twilight Zone in the United Nations propaganda film _Carol For Another Christmas_. Written by Rod Serling, wealthy businessman Daniel Grudge, who’s become an isolationist following the death of his son in World War II, is visited by three spirits on Christmas who try to persuade him that isolationism is not the way. Charles Dickens’ Carol has been adapted in myriad ways, but this goes too far and isn’t really in the spirit of the story. Grudge isn’t cruel or uncaring toward is fellow man or the poor, he just has a different political outlook. It truly is some of Serling’s worst writing, coming off as subtle as a punch to the face. Yet the acting’s not that bad and the actors do their level best to make the martial work. And director Joseph L. Mankiewicz does a good job at setting an atmosphere tone, and at creating haunting imagery. An interesting failure (but a failure nonetheless), _Carol For Another Christmas_ was a bad idea from the start that’s made infinitely worse by its heavy handed preachiness.