SANTA CLAUS
CONQUERS THE MARTIANS
   
STARRING: John Call, Leonard
Hicks, Vincent Beck, Donna Conforti
1964, 80 Minutes, Directed by: Nicholas Webster
Santa
Claus Conquers the Martians doesn’t exactly fall into the “so bad, it’s good
category”. It’s bad all right, but what often makes for a “so bad, it’s good”
movie is that the viewer often goes “what on Earth convinced them (the
film-makers) that that would be scary/ funny/ exciting/ whatever?”
Sure, Santa Claus Conquers
the Martians has a plot written by a five-year-old: the Martians kids (see
pic included!) are morose and surly from watching too many TV broadcasts from
Earth. (Actually this sounds like most Earth kids too, but anyway . . .) In a
case of circuitous logic, the Martian adults decide that the solution to the
problem would be to introduce rampant consumerism and spiritual emptiness into
their kids’ lives. Yup, we’re talking about Christmas here, that great
Capitalist . . . er, sorry, Christian holiday here. However, to make Christmas a
reality they don’t need cheaply produced goods from Third World sweatshops, no,
instead they need Santa Claus himself . . .
Thus they send off a mission to
Earth to kidnap the jolly old oaf. Only problem is that there seems to be a
Santa on every street corner. So the Martians decide to kidnap two Earth kids (a
boy and his sister) and make the kids show them the way to the North Pole. Much
easier to consult a map you’d think, but anyway. Soon a kidnapped Santa is off
to Mars in a hokey-looking spaceship and a subplot about a disgruntled Martian
traitor with an obligatory villain moustache kicks in.
"Better than Mars Needs Women, but worse than Teenagers
from Outer Space!" |
See? I told you the plot might
as well have been written by a five-year-old. Except unlike, let’s say
Battlefield Earth, it was written for
five-year-olds
—
Battlefield Earth in contrast had a plot written by a five-year-old for a
film intended for adults! And it is for this reason that Santa Claus Conquers
the Martians doesn’t make for an enjoyable bad movie in the way
Wild Women
of Wongo and
Queen of the
Amazons does. One never goes "what on Earth made them decide that would be
funny?" because it is after all difficult to laugh at something that
was intended for small children in the first place.
Made for a mere $200,000 (it
was shot entirely in an abandoned airport hangar in Long Island, NY to save on
costs) the film also extensively used stock footage of U.S. Fighter jets to pad
the running time. (Interestingly enough the same footage was used by director
Stanley Kubrick for Dr. Strangelove that same year.)
Throughout the years the film has gained such a reputation for being a bad movie
classic that it even found its way into more respectable film reference works
such as Leonard Maltin’s for instance (try finding Gog in
that same guide one day). Its reputation was cemented when it was featured as an
episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the TV show
that lampooned bad movies.)
Is
it that bad? Well, like I said: it was intended as a kiddies movie in the
mid-1960s and on that level it probably hits the mark. (Apparently it did some
good box office business
—
I suppose that kids didn’t know any better back then.) It wasn’t really intended
for adults, who’d be quite bored like I was after the first twenty minutes or
so. Of course, today’s more media savvy kids used to more slick and professional
entertainment like Shrek and The Incredibles
would obviously also be bored stiff with it.
However, I can see the same
goofy and silly story working on a pantomime stage setting for smaller children.
(After all, the production designs and special effects of the movie are on the
level on a children’s pantomime show in any case!)
Better than
Mars Needs Women (another cheapo movie that uses endless USAAF stock
footage), but worse than Teenagers from Outer Space,
you’d be renting this particular Christmas movie for your kids at your own risk
however . . .
(I wasn’t even going to mention how this movie features now-faded starlet Pia
Zadora as one of the Martian kids, but I suppose that I simply had to.)
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