Big strong apologies for not getting any new movies in this month, even I can't believe how busy this holiday season has gotten. But never dettered and with an itch to watch Mystery Science Theater of late, I have decided to give two strange cult Christmas movies a fair shake. Starting first with the 1959 film from Mexico purely titled Santa Claus, and now I am endlessly curious how other countries view Santa after this. Cause what in the literal nine circles of Hades was that?? I'm not even rightly sure how to explain what I saw, it is an odd tale and I feel like I've indulged in some hard substance abuse so bear with me. Okay, so Santa Claus lives up in the heavens in a castle on a cloud where he has children from every country on Earth as essential slave labor to make toys (Jesus wept, that is a bigger yikes than you can believe!), and on his nightly trip to deliver presents is hounded by a literal demon in service to Satan who not only wants Santa to fail but also to corrupt children to be eeeeevil! You got all that? Well it only gets weirder from there. Now I know, it's a lower budget movie and they had to work with what they got. The sets are basic but never feel empty, and in the case of Santa's castle in the sky (how I'd rather be watching that movie) is downright trippy yet albeit imaginative shall we say. The dubbing is...not very good and I feel watching it in it's native spanish would be a huge upgrade. The pacing is mutilatingly slow, I feel I could literally freeze to death like Jack Torrence faster and this movie is just a bit over an hour and a half, and if it wasn't for the talents of Mike and the Bots I would be hitting the booze hard to numb the pain. The actors kinda range but I feel every performance was directed to be a certain way, Santa has probably the creepiest laugh I've ever heard in my laugh but the actor José Elías Moreno still has the heart buried under all the wacked out weird stuff like robotic reindeer and being friends with THE Merlin, it has these little glimmers of heart when he interacts with kids and shows that he does care for them always and does want them to have happy lives. That's wonderful stuff but the rest of the movie is so try hard and just fails spectacularly at being cute and happy at every other turn. The demon Pitch played by José Luis Aguirre is so out there, practically pantomime in his evil performance and the makeup is even more outlandish, but I do have to admit he looks like he's having a ball prancing about being an infernal thorn in Santa's backside. The sorta kinda main girl we follow amidst all this Lupita played appropriately by Lupita Quezadas is so gosh darn, holy moly, cutest most precious little thing and she barely has to act, seeing her meager surroundings coming from a poor family and having concerns she won't get a doll, it gets me. It's such a clash of real world situations and moments of heartfelt emotions along with this saccharine weird ass nonsense. I feel this movie could be remade and it could kinda work, seeing Santa take up his Saint status to battle hellish evil while delivering gifts. That's not a horrible concept and frankly an original one! And the funny part is, the movie was fairly well recieved when it came out and got repeat showings on TV! But now it's just a curious oddity of the holiday season, 1.5 stars, 4.5/10. We got an equally weird one next time for you too, shifting from adversaries in the bowels of the earth to creatures from another world as Santa Claus Conquers The Martians!
