‘Box of Delights’ unique holiday viewing

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It’s that drowsy week between Christmas and New Year’s, when you’re still in a festive mood but you’ve run out of options for holiday viewing you haven’t already seen.

You’ve already watched “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “It’s a Wonderful Life,” you know the various adaptations of “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” and “A Christmas Carol” by heart, and you can pretty much predict the plot beats of any Hallmark Christmas movie.

Unless you’re a specific type of nerd, I guarantee you haven’t seen anything quite like “The Box of Delights” before.

In 1984, the BBC aired a six-part TV miniseries adaptation of John Masefield’s 1935 children’s fantasy novel of the same name, combining traditional Christmas trappings with English folklore, pagan mythology and obscure bits of real-life history. It includes pre-CGI special effects that aren’t too shabby, even today, and lush hand-drawn animated sequences that more than hold up to modern standards.

It’s the winter of 1934, and a bright-eyed Kay Harker (Devin Stanfield) is riding the train home from boarding school to celebrate Christmas at his family’s estate in the pastoral English countryside, when he finds himself caught up in a secret war of magical forces.

A chance encounter with an old vagabond-looking Punch-and-Judy puppeteer named Cole Hawlings (Patrick Troughton, the second “Doctor Who”) leads the old man to tell Kay, “The wolves are running.”

This cryptic warning is neither the first nor last supernatural omen Kay encounters. He’s joined by his family’s friends, the equally adventurous quartet of Jones children, in safeguarding Hawlings’ “Box of Delights” from the old man’s rival magician, the menacing gangster Abner Brown (Robert Stephens).

Kay learns the backstories of both Hawlings and the box are tied into some fascinating medieval and pre-Christian history, since the box enables its possessor to shrink in size, shape-shift and fly, and travel back in time — all powers Brown would use for evil.

“The Box of Delights” is perfect holiday viewing for the whole family, offering enough dramatic tension and unexpected twists to keep adults engaged, while still taking care to be circumspect toward more sensitive children.

Brown’s motley crew of animalistic and mystical henchmen are imaginatively realized through their eye-catching costumes and broad performances, and they are intimidating enough to pose a credible threat to our young heroes, without being too scary for younger viewers.

Perhaps the most frightening part of “The Box of Delights” is Stephens’ glowering, ranting performance as Abner Brown, which skips straight over camp overacting into sheer rage at being continually thwarted by both Cole Hawlings and Kay Harker.

If there are any moments when little ones might feel the need to snuggle closer to their parents, they’ll probably be during one of Brown’s scenes, even though the most fearsome thing about him is his volume.

Troughton is in top form as the mischievous and mysterious Cole Hawlings, evoking the best of his “Doctor Who” persona by balancing between being neither too sinister nor too safe for curious children.

He’s a wizened mentor, with the sort of twinkle in his eye that makes him both irresistible and less than entirely trustworthy.

All this, plus unicorns, Roman centurions, King Arthur, Herne the Hunter, Britain’s Father Christmas and the recipe for a hot posset add up to make “The Box of Delights” a rewarding viewing experience for children of all ages.

Admittedly, this film is a bit difficult to track down, but I’ve never failed to locate a streaming source for it online during the holidays.