Santa, Martians, Robots, And Pia Zadora, Too

Okay, okay, so Santa Claus Conquers The Martians isn't exactly White Christmas (it isn't exactly Black Christmas, either). But where else can you find...

There are Christmas flicks aplenty for this holiday season. For those who’d like a little bit of horror or sci-fi with the holiday hokum, there’s Tim Burton’s superb puppet-animation dual-holiday tribute The Nightmare Before Christmas. True, it’s only one "Scary Christmas" offering, but at least the Christmas stocking isn’t empty in that regard.

However, there is another "Scary Christmas" flick, one that many would consider the cinematic equivalent of finding coal in your Christmas stocking…we refer, of course, to the spaced-out Santa-saga, 1964’s Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (also released as Santa Claus Defeats The Aliens). It might as well have been entitled Mars Needs Santa, since Z-movie maven Larry Buchanan could very well have made it.

This cheapjack Christmas clunker isn’t despised by all, of course, despite its early Eighties mention in the Medved’s Golden Turkey Awards, a "bad-movie" designation that has dogged the film ever since. It certainly deserves the "bad" designation…although the film is in color, the dreary, impoverished sets, the dime-store props (the menacing Martian robot would hardly pass muster as an early Japanese tin toy), the threadbare costumes (particularly the high school production quality of the Martian attire matched by the goopy green makeup jobs), the corny acting that’s strictly Romper Room in its sophistication, the hackneyed script that works only slightly better in the comic-book version of the feature film…and then the truly Godawful title song "Hooray For Santa Claus" sung by a bunch of kids who desperately need their tonsils removed…well, the movie is in color. Allegedly, this film was lensed in an airplane hangar in Long Island, New York…well, we’ve seen ritzier airplane hangars.

Having viewed this magnum-oopus as a adolescent victim who also had to watch the bizarre Mexican film Santa Claus at the same mall theater while the parents shopped, I can attest that it was no treat even for us kids. We tossed more popcorn at the screen during the showing of Martians than we did even at an unfortunate earlier showing of Zebra In The Kitchen (the very epitome of rotten kiddie filmmaking). The stupid plot of Martians and the stilted acting that registered even on nine-year-old minds, along with the goofy Dropo, the "comic relief" Martian character that wasn’t comic and offered relief only when he wasn’t on-screen, was enough to make the buttered popcorn fairly leap from our cartons and onto the screen. That sticky popcorn sometimes managed to stay glued to the screen for a little while, and I pride myself at landing a piece of popcorn right smack on Dropo’s big nose during a close-up…giving him the only laughs from the audience during the entire movie.

Clearly, from the point of view of the audience the film was aimed at, Martians isn’t a fave. (I screened it for a group of pre-pubescents several years ago and within ten minutes the little tykes were hollering for mercy.) However, from the point of view of adults, this fractured holiday tale has become a sort of guilty pleasure, and is always rented briskly during the Christmas season. It’s also a killer at adult Christmas parties, especially at those that serve spirits stronger than eggnog. Why is this?

Well, the plot itself is enough the tickle the fancies of schlock film buffs. Get this: Some green-skinned Martian brats pick up Earth transmissions that indicate Earth kids have more fun and get free toys from a being called Santa Claus. The Martian kids want the same and pronto. The mean old Martian elders don’t want their green kiddies to become soft and spoiled like Earth kids, so they plot to kidnap Santa and force him to make toys on Mars. How this will maintain the Spartan Martian youth culture is never explained. Two Earth kids who define the word "precocious" (and the word "annoying") lead the Martian invaders to Santa Claus at the North Pole and are are kidnapped with him. On Mars, Santa spreads good cheer and sets up toymaking. A singularly unfunny imbecile Martian, Dropo, befriends Santa and the Earth kids, and before you can say "Ho-Ho-Ho," that jolly old elf organizes a rebellion, wages a battle that has to be the dopiest on film record—it makes a Three Stooges slapfest resemble The Battle Of The Bulge—and teaches the Martians that it’s good to have Christmas and spoil kids rotten. (He also teaches the advanced Martian civilization automated production, although they have the interplanetary rocket ships and the ray guns.) Santa and the Earth kids go back to Earth, and Dropo becomes the Martian Santa. The End.

That’s the plot that launched a hundred thousand kernels of popcorn across balconies in theaters nationwide. But, to some adults, it’s very abecedarian nature, it’s literal baseness, has a certain chintzy charm.

Then there’s the casting. Yes, that’s future goldigger, bad-film actress, and Vegas super-showgirl Pia Zadora playing one of the Martian moppets. She has about ten minutes of screen time and says about as many lines, if that many. She has nothing to be embarrassed about (aside from the costume and green makeup), and that speaks well for her in this flick. But it’s not exactly enough to merit sitting through the other 71 minutes of tedium. On the other hand, for lovers of Ecch-ademy Award acting, Martians offers a feast. We already mentioned the dopey Dropo, a rotund little alien portrayed by the equally rotund Bill McCutcheon. Many character actors have committed horrendous thespian crimes in the name of comedy relief, and the worst atrocities occur in kiddie films—in this blighted company, McCutcheon looms large. His Dropo is the essence of mendacious media kiddie clowns—whiny, gratuitously stupid, cowardly, and wholly unfunny.

Another View...

SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE WHAT?!!?

By Dave Duggins

You’ll have to excuse me if my comments are a bit damp on this one, folks. I have a sinus infection. This results in wide, sweeping fans of bright yellow snot in every direction when I talk. Say it, don’t spray it. Just consider yourself lucky that this is printed word rather than spoken.

Anyway, there is no better way to survive these vile illnesses than to curl up on the couch, box of tissue in one hand and bottle of menthol rub in the other, and dive into some really putrid viewing. And what I’m talking about here is not your ordinary bad science fiction flick. In fact, it would be fair to say that this is two bad movies in one (a claim not even Robot Monster can make). It’s a bad science fiction movie, and it’s a bad kids’ movie.

You might think that because it’s a flick for kids, its status as true science fiction could be disregarded from the outset. Kids’ sci-fi is always implausible, outlandish, and sophmoric, with only the barest nod to science, right? But no. Steven Spielberg proved that it’s not only possible to make an intelligent kids’ science fiction movie, it’s possible to make an intelligent scientifically plausible kids’ science fiction movie using classic archetypes. This is the kind of stuff that Joseph Campbell winds on and on about until we’re all ready to fall asleep. It’s the kind of stuff that George Lucas infused the Star Wars trilogy with (a series of films that has practically nothing at all to do with science fiction – arguments, anyone?). Classic archetypes make movies timeless, little pieces of history that each new generation can grasp and relate to. Like It’s a Wonderful Life. Poor George Bailey, right? Doesn’t really matter if it’s 1947 or 1999. Poor George Bailey. And poor ET. He just wants to go home. Any kid who’s ever been lost can relate to ET.

I digress, but only marginally. My point here is that nobody can relate to the kids in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. They are thoroughly inoffensive, utterly darling little moppets that would make any real kid – even the ‘60’s kids they were supposedly emulating–puke his bowl of Sugar Pops cereal all over his clean American kitchen. The Martian kids, who are apparently none the worse off for not having a Santa Claus to bring them Christmas presents, are certainly no more three-dimensional.

Which brings us to the adults. The poor acting of children might be considered excusable; after all, acting is a noble, complex art, enriched as much by experience as by effort, charisma, and the seamless merging of performer and part. In this case, however, the kids outdo their grown-up counterparts by doing something that is apparently beyond the adults – they have fun! The adults in the Martian roles lumber through their lines like half-mired mammoths in a tar pit. It’s excruciating to watch–and only slightly more excruciating to imagine the process of directing and shooting based on the turgid script.

Put simply: Nothing interesting happens.

There’s a scene at the beginning of the film Scrooged in which they show a trailer for a fictional film called "The Night the Reindeer Died." In it, Santa’s hideout is attacked by a bunch of Uzi-toting terrorists apparently bent on Santa’s ultimate destruction. Lee Majors shows up and bails him out, of course–with the help of a couple of well-placed rounds from a rocket launcher. Santa tops the whole absurdity off by telling Majors he’s been a "good boy this year." It’s hilarious.

Compared to the plot for "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians," it’s plausible. Hey, I’d buy terrorists looking to subvert an irreversably commericalized yuletide season by sabotaging the North Pole’s toy making operations before I’ll give the nod to kidnapping Santa because … because Martian kids need Santa too.

It makes you wonder what kind of drugs they were on. It makes you want to make sure you avoid those drugs in the future.

Have a drug-free Christmas … and I hope somebody puts some bad movies under your tree!

John Call, who portrays Kris Kringle, certainly has the right look as Santa. But Call, a theater hoofer and television day-player who starred in only a handful of films over a decade before he made Martians, is about as convincing in the role as a dime-store Santa. His "Ho-Ho-Ho's" are forced, his joviality is tissue thin, he makes exaggerated gestures as though he’s playing to the back row of the auditorium, and comes across as phony as laundry-soap snowflakes (which fill the screen during the North Pole sequences). Speaking of soap, soap bubbles rank as one of the film’s "special effects," which puts it in a league with another groaner, Robot Monster. Call made only a fleeting appearance in one movie after this, and not as Santa, a real Christmas present for audiences.

The smell of rancid greasepaint pervades the cast and crew of Martians. Many of the cast members were Broadway and television drudges who were evidently "between" engagements at the time. The producer, Paul Jacobson, is credited as being a one-time unit manager for the classic kiddie TV series Howdy Doody. Certainly, Buffalo Bob and Howdy and Clarabell never sunk this low, even with minuscule TV budgets and the pressure of daily episodes. Director Nicholas "Nick" Webster’s unremarkable career was largely TV-bound, with only an occasional foray into films. He directed another juvenile sci-fi film, Mission Mars, in 1968, which is almost as painfully bad and half-witted as Martians (e.g., the aliens look like Gumby). His direction is a perversion of the term—the actors hit their marks, say their lines, and cut! There’s not the slightest inspiration or craftsmanship evident in Webster’s helming of the film. The film’s technicians were TV hacks, who could ignite lights, roll film, and keep the boom mike out of most of the scenes and that’s about it. Overall, the production has a dark, drab look to it that belies its ostensible light-hearted holiday orientation. Aficionados of pedestrian filmmaking will find Martians to their liking…but nobody else will.

Then there’s the special effects; rather, the lack of same, with wire and model and black backdrop and twinkle bulb trips through space, blinking lights on painted cardboard "computers," and the robot, Tog—a tin-can creation that wouldn’t have passed muster at Monogram in the Thirties.

And yet, there’s still something special that many viewers experience while watching Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, aside from disbelief at it’s crudeness and gracelessness. There’s a harkening back to a simpler holiday season, when we were kiddies and hadn’t seen enough bad films to dull our cinematic palates, and even a Christmas that included having to watch sickening stuff like Martians also meant toys and goodies under the tree--and, perhaps, even a quiet belief in the existence of the jolly old elf. There was a magic to Christmas back then for us kiddies, and even unmagical remnants of those times like Santa Claus Conquers The Martians can bring them back, albeit fleetingly.

So, if you feel the need, don’t resist…pop a copy of it in your VCR, call in the kiddies, huddle together with the popcorn…and have plenty of glass cleaner handy to wipe the butter off the TV screen. If you aim carefully, you can pop a kernel on Dropo’s nose, too.