Santa Claus

Santa Claus (1959)

Runtime: 94 minutes

Directed by: Rene Cardona

Starring: Jose Elias Moreno, Cesareo Quezadas, Jose Luis Aguirre, Nora Veryan

From: Cinematografica Calderon S.A.

Here is the movie I referenced in the last post. It’s a movie best known for appearing on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (during the 5th season) but just this past Friday on TCM Underground on Turner Classic Movies-it appeals to wacky people, like well, me!-it made its debut in its original English dub format. You see, K. Gordon Murray, an American producer, took some Mexican films in the late 50’s and early 60’s and dubbed them into English. The thing is, the films he picked were extremely strange children’s Mexican films! They got released anyhow in the U.S. and probably traumatized young kids who are now in their 40’s. This one isn’t even the strangest, by any means. I plan on talking about one of those at the very end of this year, as a matter of fact.

I understand that the concept of Santa isn’t that popular in Mexico, especially back then. That may be why this interpretation of jolly ole Saint Nick is so bizarre. Santa lives in space, first off! Then, you notice that often his skin appears to be blue. You know, like the guy who drank so much colloidal silver his skin turned blue permanently.

He has a Toyland that is populated by child workers who represent various stereotypes from across the world; for example, “Africa” is represented by African-American children wearing leopard-skin loincloths, bones in the air, dancing around wearing bongos; hey, don’t get mad. I didn’t come up with the scene! That’s one of a few scenes which goes on for far too long in order to pad out the running time. He can look into the dreams of children (gee, that’s not creepy at all) and his telescope for looking at children is a tube with an eyeball at the other end! He battles Satan and in this particular case, a fey-acting demon named Pitch-literally dressed like a stereotypical devil, with the red clothing, red face, and the horns-which arrives at Earth and his plan to ruin Christmas is… messing around with a few kids in Mexico City. How did they come up with this stuff?

After it’s established that Santa spied… er, I mean watched over the kids being targeted by Pitch, he got ready to go on his Christmas Eve flight, which includes a visit to Merlin the Wizard… please don’t ask for an explanation, because the movie doesn’t give one. You then see Santa on Earth dealing with that dastardly Pitch, in ways that are insulting even to the target audience of this movie.

The movie is really, really bad. It’s totally amateur hour in terms of everything related to movie-making. It’s also quite creepy watching this f’ed up movie unfold in front of your eyes. I mean, near the end Santa has to try and escape being seen by some cops and firemen! What a motion picture.

There’s a surprisingly detailed page for the movie at Wikipedia. And, if you look around Google Video, you can find the movie in full on there (or divided in parts) so that you can enjoy the madness yourself.

I'll be back Friday night with not a Christmas review, but rather a review related to a movie coming out the same day.