Ms. Velma, or Miss Velma, presumably heavily medicated, presents this gloriously awful, delusional holiday special, which appears to be unsure which holiday it is celebrating.
We begin with Ms. Velma waxing irrelevant while in a gargantuan-sized headdress in red, white, and blue ribbons, and what appear to be hubcaps, while talking to a small, red/ white/ blue, plastic tree, then a much large red/ white/ blue tree, interrupted by th National Anthem. Winter Wonderland is played eight minutes in, reminding everyone that this is, in fact, a Christmas special.
Ms. Velma proclaims "This ... is Christmas ... in America" several times throughout, in between her delusional ramblings, and painful, occasionally creepy looking singers. I laughed myself silly as Robin Lee warbled Silver Bells, in a sometimes painful sounding vibrato, and changed many of the lyrics. Did Robin plan on doing that, or was it accidental? And is Robin Lee male or female?
Moments later, Ms. Velma provides the voices of a red, white, and blue cow stuffed animal appearing in holes in the wall: "I am the cow. Mooo. Mooo. Mooo." Then a red, white, and blue coloured bull, "I am the bull. Bleeah"
I had to watch that scene a second time to make sure I had seen and heard it correctly.
Ms. Velma Trio creepily appear, looking like mindless drones under deep hypnosis, singing "Snowflakes keep falling on my head"- again, did they intentionally change the lyrics?
A text crawl invites us to "Universal World Church 123 N. Lake St, near Beverly and Alvarado, Los Angeles California" and "Free parking, admission Free" Was this a real event they wanted people to attend, even as Ms. Velma takes out a rifle and allegedly fires real bullets at the patriotic puppets from earlier? And why the bloody hell *does* she open fire on them? And why does she don a Native American headdress and start doing a rain dance in front of a red tree, a white tree, and a blue tree? Is this now a Thanksgiving show? She then plays a "hand organ", which sounds like intermittent bursts of static for appropriately 60 seconds, as she sways from side to side, in the wind of this television soundstage.
Ms. Velma's so-called" Youth Singers" (all of whom appear to be about 40 years old) assault our senses next, with putrid singing, unsynchronised dancing, and one of their number keeps dropping the lei they fling toward the camera at the end of their routine, before Ms. Velma is suspended from the rafters while wearing an angel costume of her own design! A 70 seconds-long shot of a trash bag ends with a hard segway into a staticy, echo-filled rendition of Hallelujah caps things off... I can barely stop laughing to compose my thoughts any longer.
The Cinema Snob reviewed it last week, and said it was made around the Bicentennial, 1976, but this http://lostmediaarchive.tumblr.com/post/39293689853/ismn-miss-velmas- Christmas-in-America-circa claims it was "circa 1983", and a YouTube posting of it displays (during its 59 minutes-long run time) a copyright date of either 1985 or '86 (it's a higher quality print than The Cinema Snob's was, but it is still a bit too blurry to read)
If there are more appearances of Miss Velma, they should be located and preserved, they are comedy gold. One of the most bizarre, unintentionally hilarious things I've ever watched, and something which I will doubtlessly revisit every Christmas.
