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Santa Claus Conquers Your Brain
12.24.2015
03:42 pm
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Here’s your alternative Yule log.

Santa Conquers The Martians is considered by many to be among the worst films ever made. Personally, I love this surrealistic mindbender that stars an eight-year-old Pia Zadora only slightly smaller than her adult self. Between the goofy D.I.Y. costumes and sets intercut with stock footage of jets and missiles, director Nicolas Webster’s 1964 holiday head trip is filled with as much bizarre wonderfulness as anything by David Lynch or Jack Smith.

Music by:

The Bubblemen
400 Blows
Neon
Shock
Cabaret Voltaire
Nitzer Ebb
23 Skiddoo
Hard Corp
Naked Lunch
Ledernacken And Band
Diseno Corbusier

This is what happens when I’m left alone in a room with video tapes, records, a bottle of Zinfandel and 50-year-old blotter acid. If you’ve never seen Santa Claus Conquers The Martians before, this is the lysergic version. The original may even be more trippy depending on your point of view.

Holiday greetings from Mars.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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12.24.2015
03:42 pm
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Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
09.06.2011
12:06 pm
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Like many Americans of a certain age, I saw Santa Claus Conquers the Martians in a movie theater. A later generation caught it as one of Mystery Science Theater 3000‘s favorites in the 90s. It’s routinely listed as one of the “worst films ever made,” thus insuring its status as a cult film for years to come. It also stars a young Pia Zadora, but she’s hardly even an answer in Trivial Pursuit anymore, is she?

So, yeah, I actually saw this movie, twice, in a movie theater. I viewed it both times, UN-ironically, too, I might add and loved every minute of it (It was 1971, I was five, okay?). Although it’s a Christmas film, of course, its yearly screening in my hometown of Wheeling, WV, came on Halloween weekend.  Santa Claus Conquers the Martians was the lead film of a traveling holiday “road show” and I doubt there were that many prints struck of it, so smaller towns like mine probably got it first before it moved on to larger ones. It was an event as far as I was concerned, at least until I moved on to James Bond films and rock music…

Here’s the synopsis, from Wikipedia:

The story involves the people of Mars, including Momar (“Mom Martian”) and Kimar (“King Martian”), They’re worried that their children Girmar (“Girl Martian”) and Bomar (“Boy Martian”) are watching too much Earth television, most notably station KID-TV’s interview with Santa Claus in his workshop at the North Pole. Consulting the ancient 800-year old Martian sage Chochem (a Yiddish word meaning “genius”), they are advised that the children of Mars are growing distracted due to the society’s overly rigid structure; from infancy, all their education is fed into their brains through machines and they are not allowed individuality or freedom of thought.

Chochem notes that he had seen this coming “for centuries”, and says the only way to help the children is to allow them their freedom and be allowed to have fun. To do this, they need a Santa Claus figure, like on Earth. Leaving the Chochem’s cave, the Martian leaders decide to abduct Santa Claus from Earth and bring him to Mars. As the Martians could not distingtuish between all the fakes Santas, they kidnapped two children to find the real one. Once this is accomplished, one Martian, Voldar, who strongly disagrees with the idea, repeatedly tries to kill Santa Claus along with two kidnapped Earth children. He believes that Santa is corrupting the children of Mars and turning them away from the race’s original glory.

When they arrive on Mars, Santa and the children build a factory to make toys for the children. However, Voldar and his assistants, Stobo and Shim, sabotage the factory and change the programming so that it makes the toys incorrectly. Meanwhile, Dropo, Kimar’s assistant has taken a great liking to Santa Claus and Christmas, puts on one of Santa’s spare suits and starts acting like Santa Claus. He goes to the toy factory to make toys, but Voldar mistakes him for Santa and kidnaps him.

When Santa and the children come back to the factory to make more toys, they discover the machines have been tampered with. Voldar and Stobo come back to the factory to make a deal with Kimar, but when they see the real Santa Claus they realize that their plan has been foiled. Dropo, held hostage in a cave, tricks his guard Shim and escapes. Kimar then arrests Voldar, Stobo and Shim. Santa notices Dropo acts like him, and says that Dropo would make a good Martian Santa. Kimar agrees to let Dropo be the Martian Santa Claus and sends Santa and the children back to Earth.

Eventually, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians started getting shown on low-rent UHF TV channels and on “Creature Feature” type shows. Today, of course, there’s no waiting around for a yearly holiday screening of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. You can view the entire thing at Hulu, on YouTube or even watch a speeded-up version of this stinker condensed into 11-minutes. You can find a DVD of it in a 99 Cents Only store, too.

Here’s the trailer. Notice how the film looks all faded? It looked that way back then, too (not a result of aging, probably just technical incompetence or maybe they were smoking Angel Dust or something?).
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.06.2011
12:06 pm
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