Almost Worthless: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

My last review, The Mind Snatchers, was the first half of a double feature, but I'm going to postpone my coverage of the second film, The Paper Man. This is for two reasons:

1. The movie is bad. Not bad in a good way, not even mediocre, just bad. Then again, I only saw the first 10 minutes, so maybe it will pull a Mind Snatchers and redeem itself, but I doubt it.

2. The Christmas season is now upon us, so now's the time to review a Christmas movie.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is considered a cult classic, so I was surprised to find it at the dollar store. It's a DigiView DVD, not EastWest, and its packaging looks shockingly normal. Well, as normal as it could possibly be.

The movie is famous for being really stupid, but also because it has an early appearance by Pia Zadora. Who's Pia Zadora? No one's really sure. She sort of sings and kind of acts, but in her prime, she really made a living looking kind-of-sort-of hot.

Anyway, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians came out in 1964. It is currently ranked 77th in the imdb Bottom 100, meaning it's considered one of the hundred worst movies of all time. It is also part of The 100 Most Amusingly Bad Movies Ever Made in the Official Razzie Movie Guide and is included in The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and how they got that way) by Harry Medved and Randy Lowell. On a slightly more positive note, it did get a new popularity after receiving the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. And it does play a crucial role in the underappreciated comedy Screwed as the inspiration for a kidnapping plot.

So let's see what the hype's about:

First off, you know you're watching a great movie when the opening credits spell things wrong. ("Custume Designer?" I guess it could be worse.)

I'm also not going to ask about the 91 degree subzero temperature. Since the movie's about Santa Claus and Martians, everything must be believed. The immobile pipe hanging from Santa's mouth? That could happen. I learned from experience that many carpenters smoke like chimneys. It's not much of a stretch to think a magical toymaker would have one welded to his mouth.

This movie already makes no sense, but at the same time, it's very conventional for 1950's/1960's sci-fi. The tight suits, the food pills, the green makeup. It's as if a meeting was held--around an octangonal table with a board of blinking lights in the background, of course--and everyone agreed on a set of rules for what's supposed to be unknown. And of course, there's that requisite lack of knowledge about love. It's a safe bet that little Pia Zadora will learn what tender loving care is in the end, though it could just be the phrase she doesn't understand. Her parents worry about their children, so they're capable of empathy.

I hate to say it, but so far, I'm not impressed. My expectations were probably just too high, but this isn't so horrible. Mr. Piper was ten times more amusingly bad than this. It's unfortunate that he came into my life so early in my project, because he's become the measure of all amusing badness.

I'll admit, I was getting bored there for a while, but then this happened:

Some stupid Earth children are wandering around the North Pole when what looks like the Snuggle Bear comes to eat them. UNFORTUNATELY, IT DOESN'T. Betty, the little girl, isn't all that scared. Sure, she whines, "I'm scared" but it's in the same tone as "I'm cold". The Martian girl may not know what tender loving care is, but it's Betty who isn't acquainted with fear. Sadly, Snuggle Bear doesn't change that.

The Earth boy is just as irritating. Bobby or Billy or Jimmy or whatever his name is doesn't fear anything, because he knows exactly what to do in any situation. Of course. He's a boy with a girl to protect. He has to stay strong for both of them.

Then the robot shows up:

And from that point on, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is all the fun I'd hoped it would be. This truly is an amusingly bad movie, which, if you think about it, doesn't make it a bad movie at all. Unlike a lot of bad movies, this one doesn't take itself too seriously. The acting's bad but not abysmal. The story's stupid, but so is everything else about it. Besides, you should know what you're getting with something called Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. It deserves ridicule, but I wouldn't call it one of the worst movies of all time.

Every Christmas movie deals with some variation of a villain stealing Christmas. In this case, with the exception of one Martian who's bent on sucking all the happiness from the Red Planet, the villians' intentions are good. Even Santa isn't too concerned when the Martians kidnap him. He just goes along with it. I like to think it's not because of bad acting or callousness towards children, but out of naivete. Santa trusts that the Martians are basically good because he's filled with Christmas spirit. That doesn't make a lot of sense, but it is closer to a rational explanation than anything else in the movie.

After all, the lesson that Santa Claus Conquers the Martians constantly beats into the viewer's brains is that children should be allowed to be naive, to be children. It's a message that most Christmas movies don't have. It's delivered in the most ludicrous way possible, but it's still there. That's worth maybe ten cents. The rest is just campy fun that, if not priceless, is still worth at least ninety cents.

Merry Christmas, everyone.