Welp! As regular viewers may be aware, and…do keep this to yourself, but…i’m quite the fan of looking into the world of obscure and forgotten movies. From “Alien Species” to “Riverbend”, while I don’t ACTIVELY seek out films that no one’s ever heard of, when they’re quite literally dropped in front of me I’m definitely not one to refuse. And today’s film is a perfect example of this, though I do rather think I may well have actually hit a bit of a brick wall with this one. So buckle up because…well…this ones looking to be a bit shorter than usual.

“Santas Pocket Watch” (apparently known in some parts of the world as “Santas time piece”) exists…and thats really about the beginning and end of what I can give you in terms of the history on this thing. Seriously, the credits list for this film is tiny, and beyond the fact that it was released to the public, I can’t find ANY concrete information on it past a title,BBFC certification and runtime. Adding to the headache, the director is also the writer, lead animator AND editor and as far as I can tell this is literally his only credit and his animation studio did nothing else before or after this release. the only other information about who this mystery creator could be being a slide at the end of the feature listing a company that helped fund the creation of the short which no longer exists and has almost NO online presence outside of acknowledging that they gave him money to make this at one point.

So; “Santas pocket watch” is a 21 minute short film presented with leading narration from actor Willy Rushton, the plot follows Sam a young boy who’s big wish this christmas is to meet Santa. After his mother tells him to go to bed on Christmas eve, Sam sneaks back downstairs and stays up with the hope of actually trying to meet the big guy himself! Santa meanwhile has his elves loading up his slay ready for the big global trip while also mentioning that a massive party is going to take place when he gets back to celebrate another christmas well delivered! And the elves are delighted.

Santa heads out and starts his run, he gets to Sams house and Sam is amazed to be able to see the man. Thinking quickly he climbs into Santas sack hoping that he’ll take Sam to the north pole. Santa heads back to his sleigh and leaves unknowingly with Sam in tow, theres a complication and the sleigh crashes, hurling Sam into a tree. Santa spots Sam hanging about and isn’t mad that Sam basically stowed away, instead; he offers to take Sam to the north pole for a guided tour of the workshop AND he invites him to the big christmas party! And thats exactly what happens! Sam goes back to the north pole with Santa, helps the elves prepare for the party and then, they have an absolute ball eating rich food and laughing and joking, they all open presents and when Sam and Santa realise that Sams presents are all back at his house, Santa gives Sam his trusty pocket watch as an extra gift and a memento of his visit to the north pole!

After all that fun, Sam falls asleep on Santa’s lap and wakes up back at his house, only, he realises that he still has Santa’s pocket watch! He heads back to bed but not before some carollers sing us out as we sweep out into the heavens. And thats the WHOLE movie. All 21 minutes of it..well..barring 3 or 4 slides worth of end credits. Told you this one was going to be short!

Script wise, well…there honestly isnt a lot to say, it’s not so much a 3 act structure, more a 2 act structure with a resolution stapled onto it. It’s concise to the point of malnourishment. It tells a story and I think the story it DOES tell is fine, but this thing REALLY doesnt overstay its welcome and I think it’d probably have benefitted from being just a little bit longer and having just a little bit more room to breath. In fact; the fact that it’s SO underwritten I actually found quite charming and quaint in places because, at the beginning of the film everyones SO excited about the big christmas party thats going to happen and the film REALLY bigs up that this is going to be something REALLY impressive, so in my mind I was thinking, music, toys, games, noise, party food crazy fun times for all. So, when the big crazy christmas party turns out to be jelly and christmas pudding, some carol singing and a present opening session where everyone gets ONE gift and is BEYOND grateful for it. It kind of melted my heart a little bit.

It reminded me of pre-internet christmas, of days where you wouldnt know what you wanted for christmas until you saw it in a shop or a shopping catalogue. A time when christmas (in the UK at least) was inexplicably tied to tat and schmaltz, cheap and cheerful. Where some nice food, a good present and some light entertainment WAS christmas day, and it wasnt about piles of presents, a larder that could feed a small 3rd world country and making the house look like a christmas card. You’d just napalm the front room with the most flammable tinsel you could find, hang some weird shit off the ceiling and call it a day! And in finding a film that was able to so effortlessly capture that feeling, as a brit…well, I found it rather lovely.

Im by NO means saying this should be a christmas staple you understand, I think most will find this thing deathly dull. But to me? It’s small points that,in the moment were JUUUUST unique enough to endear me to it. Like the Elves all having unique names and characteristics like “Conk” the elf who has a big nose, Pockets; the elf who’s animators couldnt be bothered to move his arms or Socks; the elf who wears a sock on his head. Its little details like the fact santa has a reindeer called Garry Baldi (after the biscuit) who loves eating cherrys. Or the extended, but charming carolling sequences.

In almost every sense, it’s not trying to be flashy or grand or even really attention seeking, this to me is a script thats just more than happy to do its own thing in a quiet little part of the animation sphere and I kind of have to respect that.Given this is a film with very little plot it’s got a breakneck pace, the dialogue feels relatively naturalistic and given the biggest peril in this thing is Sam almost falling out of a tree, its incredibly gentle as a work.

In fact, all I can really say against the film is, it maybe would have been a bit nicer had the party been a bit more of a party rather than just an evening meal with some presents being opened. And I also feel the ending is a little underwhelming, it maybe would have been nice to see what happened at the workshop after Santa got back from dropping Sam off or Sams actual christmas day or maybe even had there been some kind of outro monologue wishing people a merry christmas in the same way they do an intro monologue to set the scene. I just felt the closing moments of this were a bit abrupt and probably could have been a bit better reinforced…but otherwise. While only probably enjoyable to a VERY small audience. I came away from this with a feeling of nostalgia that I haven’t felt since the mid 90s. Which I found tremendously comforting.

This entire thing (from what I can find online) seems to have been more or less created by a Mr. Pete Parsons. Pete has been seemingly confused on IMDB with two other Pete Parsons one a senior representative of video game company Bungie and the other a video game composer. I tried my absolute DAMNDEST to try and find ANY information on Pete that I could. But I couldn’t find a single thing related to him outside of this project.

The closest I got in terms of a match after a while of looking was a Pete Parsons that DID turn up who would have been about 18 years old at the time that this was made but he lived in australia and predominantly worked in ceramics…and he died in 1993. It is ENTIRELY possible that THIS Pete Parsons did some kind of studying in the UK, made a short animation piece and then decided it wasn’t for him and went back to Australia to work in ceramics. But I find it unlikely. That being said, given the only other options I could find online were an 80+ year old professor of greek history and a 94 year old Dead gastroenterologist, i’m fairly convinced the world may never get to meet the REAL Pete Parsons.

The art direction here is, I thought rather charming, they’ve gone for a bit of an odd contrast of making backgrounds fairly minimalist, but giving forgrounds some quite nice additional details. Im not going to lie when I booted this up for the first time I was fully expecting 8 frames a second and things only moving if they absolutely had to, but surprisingly the animation is pleasant, decently fluid and theres a nice amount of moving detail throughout, which really caught me off guard. It’s VERY much a representative of that kind of era of animation that spawned shows like “Roobarb and Custard” or “Henry’s cat” its a similar field…just…on a budget.

The characters have decent animation on expression and, while again; I don’t want to big this thing up too much as it really is VERY basic in terms of what it wants to do. It would be amiss of me not to say that, given how many absolutely trashy animated christmas specials I’ve sat through over the years, it’s nice to just…see something that gets the basic elements of visual storytelling comfortably right.

The framing of the animation is also pretty nicely handled, composition of the sequences are functional, but pleasant enough, it’s a rather lacking production really and it ties back in to what I was saying about the script in the sense that, had the script chosen to do more, they maybe could have gotten a bit more creative with how we move through the animation. That being said there’s a nice transition into the end credits that I thought was quite interesting and this short does have the odd flourish of creativity in terms of how it gets us from scene to scene. so…I’d honestly say it was just above passable…just.

Performance wise, We have Willy Rushton providing narration and voices for all our characters and this man gives…just…a total hug of a performance, he’s warm, charismatic, curmudgeonly in places. He’s just an absolute delight, and the fact he actually bothered to put that bit more effort into actually emoting the characters was just a really nice touch. Again; i’ve seen WAY too many animated specials where cast members just sound bored or aloof. Willy here though is positively charming and is probably the best thing about this special all together.

And finally! The soundtrack! And it’s a quite nice acoustic, border orchestral stringy type arrangement with a distinct festive twist! Apart from half a dozen “Special thanks” credits that literally just name people on first name terms only, the only other credit attached to this special is Stephen Caudel and this was his only credit. I think he honestly does a quite lovely job, the music is *mostly* woven into the animation punctuating key moments wonderfully. It’s a bit odd to see what would be considered a “modern” christmas special utilising largely classical and folk style compositions. But I feel it works fine enough here. If I had to grumble I’d say there are some moments where they don’t add a score to the background and it can leave the film feeling a little hollow…but then; I put that more down to the fact that as a modern cinema go’er we’ve kind of been compelled towards treating silence in film as being something meaningful. So when it turns up just because they forgot to dub any sound in, or they didn’t feel it was essential…well; it comes across as a bit off.

I have no idea when “Santa’s pocket watch” was first put out into the world largely because I can’t nail down what decade it was even produced in. having looked into it, I feel fairly confident it was released at some point in the 70’s, the BBFC has it listed as 1970 Which I feel may be a tad earlier than expected but looking at some of the various releases this film had It does ultimately feel like as good a guess as any… I can confirm it DEFINITELY was broadcast on television in the 80’s most likely on BBC2 as the BBC Genome project has it listed as being repeated around christmas in 1989 and 1990. Because theres no copyright notice at the end of the film theres no definitive way to date it and the only hint included in the short is a passing reference to “Elton John Glasses” which isn’t the “help” you’d think it would be because Elton John’s first solo album and tours started in April 1970 so it could be any time after that honestly. what I CAN tell you is that its had multiple VHS releases over the years in 1989, 1990, 1991 and it’s last VHS release was as late as 2001 which is the copy I own. The earliest copy I can find came from 1988 and was released by “Abbey Home Entertainment” on their children’s “Tempo Video” line.

Bizarrely it’s also had multiple DVD releases in both the UK and US between 2001 and as late as 2016! Most of these releases don’t even have distributor information available so nailing down exactly who’s put what out and when is proving to be BEYOND difficult. The only one that I can properly nail down is a US release from a company called “Front Row Entertainment” who put their copy of the film out on DVD at the EXACT same time that my VHS copy from “Just Entertainment” got released in the UK. given that almost all of these releases are literally just the 20 minute short dumped on Tape or disc. I find it amazing they charged full RRP for this thing…that being said, its been re-released more than “We wish you a turtle christmas” and “Alpha’s magical christmas” combined. So it clearly must have developed something of a following and honesty; having seen it now…I can kind of see the appeal.

Santa’s pocket watch isnt for everyone. Its specifically built for a very niche audience and I feel it really wouldnt sit well with anyone under 25 just purely for how inane and basic it really honestly is. That being said, for anyone over 30, this is a short but sweet time corridor to a much MUCH simpler time and while it is ultra basic and honestly only barely has enough going for it to constitute it being classified as a film. I’d be lying if I said I didnt kind of just enjoy this sweet little movie doing its own slightly odd thing in the corner. Im glad I’ve seen this film, I cant recommend it. Not to a general population. But if you’ve liked what you’ve seen and heard in this unusually short review…I’d say maybe try and dig a copy out, it’s quite cheap online and I think I may well hang on to my VHS copy for a time yet…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/santas-pocket-watch/