Cricket Crockett, the cricket of good luck! No, really!
Step on a crack and spill the salt
Cross a cat that's black,
Not a thing can halt your luck
When you have a lucky cricket
Cricket on the hearth
Cross a cat that's black,
Not a thing can halt your luck
When you have a lucky cricket
Cricket on the hearth
— Title Song
A 1967 Animated Adaptation of one Charles Dickens' lesser-known Christmas stories. Produced by Rankin/Bass and animated by the Japanese studio Eiken (then known as Television Corporation of Japan) and executive produced by Aaron Spelling and actor Danny Thomas, it is the second of Rankin/Bass' 18 Christmas specials. It first aired on NBC on December 18, 1967, as the twelfth episode of the anthology series The Danny Thomas Hour.
The story is told by Cricket Crockett (Roddy McDowall), who relates the tale of the year he met and moved in with the Plummer family, consisting of toy maker Caleb (Danny Thomas) and his daughter Bertha (Marlo Thomas). In spite of the fact that crickets are supposed to bring good luck, the following year turns out to be a complete disaster for the Plummers. News that her fiancé Edward (Ed Ames) has died at sea causes the grief-stricken Bertha to go blind, while Caleb loses the will to work, dives into deep debt and loses the family home. In desperation, Caleb ends up working for free for the greedy Mr. Tackleton (Hans Conried) in exchange for food and board. While Caleb struggles to keep Bertha happy despite their pitiable circumstances, Tackleton takes an interest in the girl... as does a curious old man who looks and sounds suspiciously like the deceased Edward. With a grim Christmas upon the hearth, somehow Cricket Crockett must fix this dour situation.
In contrast to the other Rankin/Bass specials, this one largely fell into obscurity after its initial airing, eventually resurfacing on PBS in the 2000s and as part of Freeform's 2019 "25 Days of Christmas" marathon. Along with the rest of the pre-1973 Rankin/Bass library, the special is currently owned by NBCUniversal, which has re-issued it on multiple home media formats.
This movie provides examples of:
- Adaptation Distillation: The special is only 49 minutes long, but based on a much longer novella. To simplify the plot, the original main characters, the Peerybingle family, are dropped in favor of the Plummer family, thus reducing the plot to only the ones focusing on Caleb, Bertha, and Edward. All of the other human characters were dropped as well save for Tackleton.
- Adaptation Induced Plothole: In the book, several characters see through Edward's disguise, but in the special, nobody does until the toys unveil him on Christmas Eve. This creates a lot of oddities as its clear in the book he's being caught because the disguise isn't very good while in the special, the disguise is still very bad but it seems to be meant to fool the viewer and the main cast anyway.
- Artistic License – Medicine: "Hysterical blindness", an outdated term for a form of neurological conversion disorder is a rare medical condition triggered by intense psychological stress. Though an episode can linger for weeks and recurring stress can cause the symptoms to recur, a conversion disorder would not create lifelong blindness as it does for Bertha in this special.
- Ascended Extra: The title of the book is meant to refer to a little cricket that lives in the Peerybingles' hearth that is said to be a guardian angel but otherwise does not impact the events and is just a normal cricket. Compared to this special where the cricket has been upgraded to main character status and is so anthromorphized that he talks to humans and wears clothing.
- Book Ends: Because the animated special first ran as an episode of The Danny Thomas Hour, it opens and closes with live action segments starring Thomas.
- Canon Foreigner: All of the talking animals (aside from Cricket Crockett) and the living toys are unique to this adaptation.
- The Chanteuse: Out of the blue, Uriah flies off to a full humanoid animal bar that includes a sultry cat singer named Maude, who proceed to sing a big band number about fish and chips.
- Character Narrator: Cricket Crockett narrates the story, though from many years in the future.
- Composite Character: Bertha is now a combination of the character of the same name from the book as well as Edward's original fiancé May Fielding. This is likely why Bertha starts out sighted but later becomes blind versus in the book where she was born blind.
- Disabled Means Helpless: Despite the fact that Bertha is simply blind and otherwise doesn't seem to have any other health problems (mental or physical) from the triggering incident, the story treats her as completely helpless and reliant on her father, who then starts creating an elaborate fake reality for her to hide the severity of their circumstances.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Uriah Caw, Strangler, and Slink bite it near the end of the special, which is especially noticeable for Strangler and Slink, who only had two scenes before getting offed.
- Empathy Doll Shot: A non-lethal version. When Bertha's grief-induced blindness is revealed, the camera pans over to the unfinished bride doll she was painting, revealing she never finished painting eyes on it, symbolizing both Bertha's loss of her sight and the loss of her fiancé.
- Expy: Apart from his British accent, Cricket Crockett is very similar to Jiminy Cricket: not only his species, but his style of clothing, his role as advisor to the other protagonists, and his status as a Character Narrator looking back on his past adventures.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: Uriah Caw and his two animal henchmen are shot to death by the crooked captain.
- Forgotten Fallen Friend: Tackleton completely forgets about Uriah Caw after their last scene together.
- Furry Confusion: The various animal characters in the special seem to vary in their level of anthromorphization. The title character Cricket Crockett has human hands and wears clothes on his top half, a top hat, and a pair of shoes appropriate for insect feet. He can speak to humans and be understood and nobody finds it strange. Uriah Caw the Crow however is just a normal crow, can only speak to other animals, and can only squawk at humans. On the exact opposite end are the fully anthromorphized animals at the brothel Uriah visits, who have mostly humanoid shapes, wear full clothing, and seem to have their own human-equivalent society where they get drunk and watch elaborate performances by sexy cat singers backed by a full band.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Cricket Crockett is the only one of the anthromorphic animals who isn't wearing full clothing - full coat and shirt, top hat and shoes, but no pants. He stands out more just because the other animals that wear clothing wear complete outfits.
- Heel–Face Turn: Dickens seems very fond of having miserable old misers find redemption on Christmas Day... but Tackleton's, at least in the special, is incredibly sudden. Bertha leaves him at the altar then when he shows up and cries over it, she tells him she'll always love and care for him, leading to him feeling so happy he instantly turns over a new leaf.
- Informed Ability: Despite the entire premise of the special being that crickets bring good luck, Cricket Crockett's presence in the Plummer home does nothing to prevent that cascade of misfortune that strikes the family... including losing the hearth he's supposed to be living on. His only actual contributions are quite small and just revolve around resolving the plotline with Bertha's marriage prospects. He prevents Tackleton from being able to receive Bertha's acceptance of her marriage proposal via putting pepper in his tea and making him leave in a sneezing fit. Later Cricket hangs out with the toys when they do all the work of revealing Edward's identity. His only contribution there is to finally get Edward to reveal the truth to Bertha. The only time we see something truly lucky happen is for Cricket himself, as a series of wild circumstances stack up at the final act leading to multiple different animals all helping him get back to the Plummers after his kidnapping.
- Just Eat Gilligan: The entire special would have been half as long if Edward had just told Bertha he was still alive immediately instead of wearing an elaborate disguise and masquerading as a different person. The story implies he felt guilty about causing her blindness, but as she went blind out of grief that a report by the government that he was dead, it should be obvious that showing her he was actually alive could actually help her.
- Had Uriah (a raven) just eaten Cricket Crockett (a cricket) instead of hiring a pair of animal thugs named Strangler and Slink to kill the bug/sell him to a captain, Uriah wouldn't have been shot to death by the captain.
- Karma Houdini: Tackleton gets off rather light for his abuse of Caleb and Bertha and multiple attempts at murdering Cricket Crockett. All that happens is he doesn't get to marry Bertha, but she still cares him about him enough that he even changes to become a better person! Too bad he got Uriah killed first and doesn't even care.
- Living Toys: Starting at midnight on Christmas Eve, the toys in the workshop come to life, though with a strict rule that humans are not allowed to see them. They helpfully explain though anthromorphic crickets don't count, allowing them to help out Cricket Crockett.
- Morally Bankrupt Banker: The money lender that Caleb is shown going to is drawn so evilly that he laughs with glee as he puts Caleb deeper into debt.
- Named by the Adaptation: The nameless cricket of the book is now Cricket Crockett.
- No Honor Among Thieves: Uriah teams up with a pair of animal thugs named Strangler and Slink to off Cricket Crockett. They decide to instead capture him and sell him to a captain that pays high prices for crickets to sell to China. The captain takes Cricket and then instead of paying the thieves, shoots all three of them.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: It is blindingly obvious that the old man is Edward in disguise as the disguise is really just wearing ragged clothes and a bad wig. It's even crazier that Bertha in particular can't identify him as by the time she meets the "old man", she's now blind and has to rely on recognizing people by their voices - and Edward does nothing to disguise his voice and even calls her by name when he supposedly hasn't met her yet.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: While this special still isn't very progressive towards people with disabilities, it at least drops the Victorian-era implications that Bertha, as a blind woman, must be prevented from marrying lest she pass her "defects" on to a future child. In this version she has two love interests and the viewer is definitely meant to root for her to marry the right guy.
- Runaway Bride: Apparently Bertha never bothered to tell Tackleton that she was marrying someone else and he storms in angry at being left at the church.
- Sound-Only Death: The camera pans out to the outside window when the Captain shoots Uriah, Strangler, and Slink, revealing only the sounds of the gunshots and the muzzle flashes from outside the window.
- The Scrooge: Charles Dickens definitely liked to give people what they wanted in a Christmas story, so naturally Caleb Plummer's miserly, cruel boss Tackleton hates children and Christmas. Complete with a Heel–Face Turn just before the ending credits.
- Special Occasions Are Magic: The hour of Midnight on Christmas Eve allows magical things to happen. Like toys coming to life only to deliver plot exposition and then go away. They have a rule that humans can't see them while animate, but crickets don't count.
- Tears of Joy: Bertha sings a song about this phenomenon, "Smiles Go with Tears."
- Unrelated in the Adaptation: In the book, Edward Plummer is Caleb's son and Bertha's brother. Since the Peerybingles and the Fieldings were dropped from this version, Edward was changed to Edward Benton and Bertha is now his unlucky fiancé. Aside from the change in his fiancé, his storyline is largely the same.
- When the Clock Strikes Twelve: Cricket explains that on midnight at Christmas Eve, magical things can happen for the next hour.
