Santa Claus

1959 Mexican Santa Claus movie

Rating: 3/20 (Jen: 1/20 [fell asleep]; Emma: 2/20 [fell asleep]; Abbey: 10/20)

Plot: Pretty much your standard Christmas story. It's Christmas Eve and Santa Claus is somewhere in space or heaven overseeing his sweatshop while children from many different cultures help him prepare for his magical flight. Of course, Satan wants to stop him and sends demon Pitch to tempt kids to be naughty and kill Santa. And of course, Santa has to get help from Merlin the magician to survive the night and ensure that the nice children wake up with a living room full of presents. Even the poor little girl who just wants a freakin' doll!

You have to love a Christmas movie that has the ability to punish viewers who fall asleep while watching it with hellish nightmares of holiday demons and laughing reindeer robots. This is bizarre from the get-go. It starts with a seemingly endless scene with Santa playing an organ while showcasing the variety of countries that the jolly old elf has apparently kidnapped children from to work in his sweatshop. For a moment, I thought I was watching a live-action film based on Disney's "It's a Small World," something I'm sure is on the horizon. Each group of children got to sing a little song that sounded like it could have come from the country they represent, and my favorite was when the American children did "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Seriously? That's the song that best represents America? It's not even a Christmas song! The next scene takes the viewer naturally to hell where the "King of Hades" lights a firecracker and leads a poorly-choreographed dance. Then it's back to Santa where we get a chance to see just how he knows if you've been sleeping or if you've been awake or if you've been bad or good. Apparently, he's got a big machine with giant lips, a telescope with an eyeball, and a satellite thing with a human ear attached. The surreal props and goofy sets show some creativity, but it also makes it obvious that the people who made this thing only had a rudimentary understanding of Santa Claus. I mean, there aren't even elves and his four reindeer are clunky robots. Speaking of those robots, at one point one of them laughs (he he he ha he ha ha ha ho he) and it might be the scariest thing I've heard in my entire life. Santa's almost nonstop maniacal laughter (nonstop except when the devil is trying to murder him) isn't much better though. There's just so much about this movie that is so awkward, and a lot about this movie that is downright unsettling. A pair of dream sequences--one with giant dancing dolls and one with a kid who opens up coffin-like presents containing his parents--are just weird, and almost every scene with Pitch gave me the chills. Of course, Pitch was a poorly-costumed red-painted demon, so I guess that was the desired effect. One of the scariest moments was when the little poor girl was having a repetitive conversation with the devil about stealing a doll. She must have said "No, I don't want to do evil" five or six times. The good characters, absent-minded Merlin and a magic-key-making blacksmith, are fun. Merlin's got this weird bouncing gait that makes Torgo's walk look normal, and the blacksmith has some hair glued to his chest to, I guess, make him look more blacksmithy. Nobody's going to mistake this for a Miracle on 34th Street or an It's a Wonderful Life, but this just might be my new favorite Christmas movie. Like those movies, you get to learn beautiful lessons like how "a dream is a wish that the heart makes" or how people on earth eat "even smoke and alcohol." Fun for the whole family unless some of your family members would rather not have Satan anywhere near their Christmas entertainment.