On the Fourth Day 'til Christmas…

Next in the series of Holiday animated treats is “It’s A Very Merry Eek’s-Mas” from the Fox Kids series Eek! The Cat.

This episode originally aired December 11th, 1993 and is notable in that it was the only one of the series to air during prime time, and it’s one of my favorites from the entire Eek! series as well (which is less than notable). The plot involves Eek trying to reunite Sharky the Shark Dog with his family and help Santa save Christmas after being abandoned by his elves and reindeer (and left with a broken leg too).

It’s chock full o’cartoony fun goodness, and you really have to watch it more than once to catch all the visual gags, clever puns (like “Elmo the Brown-Nose Reindeer”), cultural references and Holiday-special spoofiness. Even the musical score includes some subtle gags.

It also features great comedic performances by the cast. They are included below so as not to spoil anything for those who haven’t seen this.

With that said, please enjoy all that is “It’s A Very Merry Eek’s-Mas”:

Last I heard, Disney owns the rights to this series, which means there’s a snowman’s chance in hades it will ever be released on DVD. But here’s hoping anyway.

As for the voice credits… unfortunately, there’s very little data available to identify the voices individually. IMDb and Wikipedia had practically nothing on this episode, and even on the most comprehensive Eek fan site the voice credits are limited to trivia bits.

And since the actual screen credits list only the cast names (and two of them are misspelled), I’ve made the effort to I.D. the voices by ear:

– Bill Kopp as Eek, Skyhawk-1, addl. Reindeer and Elf voices
– Tawny Kitaen as Annabelle
– Savage Steve Holland as Elmo the Elk
– Bobcat Goldthwait as Rudolph
– The Barbi Twins as Themselves (aka, “The Greatest Minds in the World”)
– E.G. Daily as Delores (Little Girl)
– Gary Owens as Clive Buttburn (TV Reporter)
– Brad Garrett as Big Brother Roy, “Hat Rack” Reindeer, “Bird Dog” Fighter Pilot
– Anita Dangler as Mrs. Claus
– and William Shatner as Santa, Larry (Talk Show Host)

…with additional Reindeer and Elf voices by Charlie Adler, John Kassir, and Cam Clarke.

I’ve also found two sources crediting Tim Curry as the voice of the narrator (IMDb, TV.com), but he’s not mentioned in the actual screen credits. Furthermore, the Boris Karloff-esque “Grinch” imitation in this episode doesn’t sound much like Curry to my ear. I’ll check with Bill Kopp to verify this, and maybe I can coax him into sharing some behind-the-scenes details on this episode while I’m at it. (I’ll provide an update on his reply.)

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