Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)

I'll freely admit that I prefer the quirkier Christmas movies over the more traditional ones. I'd pick A Christmas Story before It's a Wonderful Life, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation before Miracle on 34th Street, and Scrooged before any other version of A Christmas Carol. But of all the wacky Christmas movies I've seen over the years, the wackiest is definitely Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Yes, you read that title right.

This little gem from 1964 boasts some of the goofiest acting, lamest special effects, and one of the most preposterous concepts for a story ever captured on film. It's also become some of a cult classic, especially after it was featured on a 1993 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. And let me tell you, folks, the movie is a whole lot of dumb.

Mars isn't doing so hot. Children all across the planet are parking themselves for hours on end in front of their televisions, doing nothing but watching Earth broadcasts all day and night. This especially worries Kimar (Leonard Hicks), the king of Mars, whose own children are so addicted to Earth's TV shows that they've stopped eating and sleeping. When he consults Chochem (Carl Don), an ancient Martian sage, Kimar learns that the planet's rigid structure has effectively robbed children of their childhoods, causing them to have midlife crises during adolescence. The only solution is to bring Santa Claus into the mix and teach the kids of Mars to have a little fun.

So instead of creating a Santa of Mars's own, Kimar figures he'll come here and kidnap ours. Why have a copy when you can just go get the real thing? He and a crew of fellow Martians all pile into a spaceship and head to Earth. But believe it or not, finding fat bearded guys in red suits is pretty easy around Christmas. Not knowing just where to find the real Santa Claus, the Martians ask two siblings, Billy (Victor Stiles) and Betty Foster (Donna Conferth), for directions and are quickly pointed towards the North Pole. To show their appreciation, the Martians kidnap Billy and Betty to make sure they don't tell the cops about their nefarious plans.

The Martians successfully kidnap Santa and head back to the fourth rock from the sun. They even set him up in his own automated workshop to crank out gifts for the good boys and girls of Mars. He's all too happy to help out a planet in a bind, and things start going swimmingly. But this doesn't sit too well with Voldar (Vincent Beck), a villainous Martian who thoroughly hates the idea of Santa Claus and Christmas and all that other stuff. He hates it so much that he'll kill Santa Claus if he has to, as long as Mars stays the way it was. Will he succeed, or will Santa Claus truly conquer the Martians?

That is the actual plot of the movie. I am not kidding. If it sounds too insane to actually be real, don't worry. I've seen the thing and I can barely comprehend any of it. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is, without a doubt, one of the most insane, stupid, and downright silly movies I've ever seen. The fact that somebody actually came up with the concept, turned it into a script, and went on to produce it as an actual movie is mind-boggling. What kind of drugs do you need to take to think up a movie where Santa Claus is kidnapped by Martians? It had to be some trippy stuff, in the very least.

I'm not even sure where to begin reviewing this movie. The whole thing is such a mess that I don't think that I can actually break it down and single out just what went wrong. It's a movie made for children, which makes it harder to really knock the movie. It's almost too easy a target, you know? And for all I know, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians was supposed to be intentionally inept. I mean, there's no way to take a serious approach to the movie's concept. It would have made for a heck of a sci-fi parody, but it looks like they played it straight. And playing it straight means they ended up with a movie that's "so bad it's good." The characters are awful, the production looks unbelievably cheap, the special effects are laughable, and the acting is pretty much what you'd expect (i.e. it sucks out loud).

The movie was directed by Nicholas Webster, who'd spend pretty much the rest of his career as a television director. I'm actually quite happy about that, because it means we wouldn't see him directing any more feature films. The movie is just plain dull to look at. Beyond the climactic scene where the Martian and human kids team up to defeat Voldar, which feels like what would happen if the end of Requiem for a Dream was a bad Christmas movie from the '60s, you kinda get the feeling that Webster simply didn't care.

It doesn't help anything that the movie looks like it has a budget of whatever loose change the producers could scrounge together at a given time. I'm just amazed by how awful everything looks. For one thing, it's apparent that nobody thought to hire a proofreader for the movie, since whoever did the credits apparently thinks "costume" is spelled "custume." (Though I can overlook the scene where a newspaper headline spells the word "kidnapped" with one P, since it's a less egregious error.)

And another thing, the Martians all look like really stupid rip-offs of The Great Gazoo from The Flintstones, only with hoses and wire coat hangers instead of antennae. (That's really saying something, since the movie came out a year before Gazoo's first appearance.) And a lot of the time, it appears that the lights are causing their makeup to melt off. Pay close enough attention, and you'll notice.

I also thought it was odd that the Martian technology looked like poorly-made knockoffs of what you'd find in Adam West's Batcave, but perhaps the stupidest things are the polar bear and the robot at the North Pole. The polar bear is very obviously a guy wearing a ugly bear suit, and the robot costume is basically a cardboard box for the torso and a metal wastebasket for a head. I've seen a lot of cheap-looking things in movies before, but these absolutely take the cake. They're right up there with creating flying saucers by hanging pie plates on fishing line. It's apparent that the movie had a low budget, so I can't really fault it if those lame costumes were all that could be afforded. But come on, couldn't they have found something more convincing within their financial constraints?

I feel like I should also point out the movie's horrible theme song, composed by Roy Alfred and Milton Delugg. Titled "Hooray for Santa Claus," the song is so annoying, so nerve-grating, that you'll hate yourself when it gets stuck in your head for hours after you hear it. It's bad enough that the chorus of off-key children brought in to sing it aren't even singing at all, instead shouting the lyrics. That doesn't get old quickly, not at all. But the dumbest thing about it is the lyrics. Despite the fact that the song's chorus spells out Santa's name numerous times, it's apparently supposed to be pronounced "Santy Claus." I don't know why that bugs me so much, but every time I hear the song, it annoys the hell out of me.

Let's move on, or else I'll never get this review done. Up next is the script, credited to Glenville Mareth working from a story by Paul Jacobson. How they came up with the idea for this, I have no clue. But either way, this script is awful. Even when you try to excuse it as a movie made for kids who won't care either way, it's still unbelievably stupid. The characters are all pretty terrible, the dialogue is preposterous, and the whole thing is one bizarre scene after another.

Even the names of some of the characters show just how lazy this script is. I can forgive the cardboard box robot being named "Torg" (an apparent play on Gort, the robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still), since that isn't so bad. But Kimar, his wife Momar, and their children, Bomar and Girmar? The names are short for "King Martian," "Mom Martian," "Boy Martian," and "Girl Martian." That's either incredibly lazy writing or an extreme lack of creativity, perhaps a little of both.

And to tell you the truth, nothing in the movie really makes any sort of sense from a narrative standpoint. The script is basically the movie equivalent of watching a friend who is intensely drunk ramble incoherently for an hour and a half. You have no clue what they're talking about (and they probably have no idea either), but you just can't let yourself look away.

And last on my list is the acting, which is pretty darn horrible. For example, the children, both the ones playing humans and the ones playing Martians, are awful. Their performances are wooden and contribute nothing whatsoever to the movie. The adults don't fare much better, though. As our designated villain, Vincent Beck is hammy and over the top. Watching him is like watching Snidely Whiplash audition for the Batman TV show. If he'd tied Santa Claus to some train tracks while twirling his mustache, he would have been complete.

John Call fares a little better as the titular Santa Claus, though he's still no great shakes. He actually plays Santa as if he's been sneaking a few sips of gin between takes. I don't have a problem with a happy Santa, but Call's Santa comes across as a little too happy. It's like he never quite grasps the gravity of any bad situation. Got kidnapped by aliens and essentially forced into slavery? Why, that's no problem at all. Narrowly avoid being murdered via being shot out the spaceship's airlock by Voldar? It was all a harmless misunderstanding. Most of Call's silly performance is probably due to the writing, so I can accept that. But he's at least fun, so I can't complain. Call is overshadowed, though, by the really good performance of Leonard Hicks. He plays the role rather stoically, and is actually pretty likable. Hicks is believable in the role, and his commitment is commendable.

But the quality of Hicks's performance is counterbalanced by just how awful Bill McCutcheon is. McCutcheon appears in the movie as Dropo, the movie's designated comic relief. The thing is, though, is that he's the least funny comic relief ever. Whatever the opposite of comedy is, Dropo is it. McCutcheon plays Dropo as if he were a horrific cross between Gilligan and Ed Grimley, with the stupidity cranked up to eleven. I honestly hated, hated, hated, hated, hated every second he was on the screen. Dropo is so annoying and McCutcheon's performance is so terrible that I desperately wanted to jump into the movie and beat him like he was that broken fax machine from Office Space.

So that's Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. I don't really know what else I could say that Mystery Science Theater 3000 and other online reviewers haven't. It's an awful movie, most definitely. But it's inoffensive and actually kinda charming in a weird way. I couldn't help but find myself being entertained by this thoroughly ludicrous movie. If you love crappy B-movies, you owe it to yourself to hunt down both the movie and the corresponding MST3K episode. Hit Netflix or YouTube or somewhere like that as soon as you finish reading this if you haven't seen it. And if you think you're tough enough, I dare you to go the whole movie without wanting to stab Dropo. I say it can't be done, but try to prove me wrong.

Final Rating: *½