Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)

In further celebration of the Dope-A-Palooza, I present to you, dear reader, a review of a movie that holds a special place in both my heart and my DVD shelf. And you're about to find out why.

It's not every day that you can wander into your super-duper mega multiplex, plop down your hard-earned cash, buy a $12 bag of popcorn, turn off your cellphone, wander through a maze of hallways to find Theater #48 and sit in an uncomfortable plastic seat, try to ignore the geek behind you talking all through the movie and the teen couple next to you making out, all to watch a movie that will hopefully make every indignity you just went through worth it.

You have to be picky; you really do, for as much as tickets and snacks and so forth cost. No wonder people do all they can to get free passes, catch bargain matinees, smuggle in their own food and go to movies in the middle of the week to avoid all the annoying weekenders. Your time and money are too precious to have it ruined by price-gouging and stupidity.

Then, what if the movie sucks???

This is why watching flicks on your laptop is such a viable option.

Back in the day, however, this was not an option, and movie theaters knew it. When you shelled out your bucks for a movie, this was THE EVENT of the week for you; and it had better be a danged good one or, by golly, you'd complain to management - or better yet, go all the way to the top and complain to that guy who owns the lion that roars at the beginning of the movie. And theaters did everything they possibly could to make the experience pleasurable - nice comfy seats, cheap snacks, ushers who actually kept everybody quiet. In fact, the only thing they couldn't do to make the evening perfect was...make a bad movie better.

The thing is this: bad movies are a fact of life and, like it or not, even back in the day they had to have them if just to make the public-at-large appreciate your Citizen Kanes and Wizards of Oz and Gone With The Windses. Even then, it wasn't always quality; it was quantity. The more movies a studio had out there on your friendly neighborhood screen, the more you'd go out, hoping the next experience would be even better than the last - sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't - and who did this the most?

Kids.

After all, a lot of them had to go to the movies so that their folks could get things done around the house, do some shopping, mom could get her hair done, dad could get the car worked on, that kind of thing. During the holidays, movie theaters were even more a drop-off point for parents than a day care center. They kept the kids entertained while they did the Christmas shopping, the kids were entertained and everybody was happy.

And the theater owners? They were on Clouds 9, 10, 11 and 12.

The more kids that came in during the holidays, the more money they made and honestly, they didn't care if the movie was good - as long as it had the main things they were looking for, they were happy. The big three things they wanted were as follows:

1) lots of bright colors and/or lights,
2) characters they recognized,
3) grown-ups acting funny/stupid.

Going back to the holidays; film-makers realized that if they made a cheapo Christmas film for the kiddies to watch while Mommy and Daddy went out shopping for the little brats, there was a goldmine 'o money to be made. As long as they kept their budgets small, the casting reasonable and the story familiar. And they were right - with these things in check, there was a market for their product and money to be had.

This was a theory that was proven time and again during the holidays; look at films like 1959's Mexican import Santa Claus, with a dubbed Saint Nick relying on magic straight from Merlin the Magician to help him make his rounds and defeat the forces of Hell embodied by scrawny devil's minion Scratch. 1970's Santa and the 3 Bears had an animated tale of a mama bear and her two cubs struggling to stay awake to see Santa Claus, all while looking for everything like Yogi and Boo-Boo were gonna show up any second.

Then there was that shadowy time in the Sixties; a time when kids were starting to get a little more cynical - they cared more about outer space and rocket ships and aliens with scrooch guns than they did about Father Christmas, the holiday spirit and the North Pole. What was an enterprising producer to do?

Well, if your name was Joseph E. Levine, you combine 'em!

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is nothing more nor less than the simple mixture of Yuletide storytelling, razzle-dazzle science fiction and the screams of the soulless doomed echoing from the depths of hell...okay, maybe I was kidding about the "razzle-dazzle" part.

It all starts out simply with the adults of the planet Mars worrying about their children (all two of them) not getting enough sleep and sitting in front of their Martian TVs watching Earth transmissions (Hey! They stealin' our cable?) and since it's the holiday season here they happen to catch stories about the jolly old elf himself....

The Martians, led by Kimar - not the home of Blue Light Specials, but the leader of Mars (Leonard Hicks) - go to the oldest (and by default, wisest) man on Mars - who appears by way of lightning bolt (hey, I just tell what happens), looks like a seriously-addled Mahatma Gandhi and declares "Mars needs Santa Claus" then he disappears again, leaving the adults with one option only: kidnap Santa and force him to make all the Martians children (all two of them) happy again. Ahhh, THERE'S the holiday spirit!

So, Kimar and his men go down, kidnap a couple of kids (Victor Stiles, Donna Conforti) to show them the way and keep them aboard ship while they set out to the North Pole to kidnap the little Saint Nick (John Call, who seems to play his role by laughing out every line he says - just a mite TOO jolly if you ask me). The bad guys succeed in their mission, air-blast freezing anyone who gets in their way.

Naturally Santa takes it all in stride, chuckling and 'ho-ho-ho'-ing every few minutes, even when it doesn't make sense to. But what are you going to do, tell him to shut up and get a lump of coal?

The Martians all seem to take kindly to Pere Noel and find themselves warming to the Christmas Spirit embodied by him and his corny jokes ("Martian"-mallows, indeed).

Now, there's conspiracy in the ranks as bad guy Martian Voldar (Vincent Beck) grumbles and leers like a green Snidley Whiplash and tries to kill Santa and the Earth kids by getting them sucked out an air lock which they escape by crawling through an air vent therein (I didn't design the ship, don't ask me). They should have expected something bad from the only guy on Mars with a droopy black mustache.

Oh wait! I almost didn't mention Dropo! The laziest man on Mars! It's Bill McCutcheon, who many "chick-flick" aficionados may remember as Shirley MacLaine's beau Owen in Steel Magnolias. Well, here he plays a green-faced Pinky Lee and jumps, mugs, pratfalls and chortles his way from one scene to the next. Not fair to say he steals the film when no one was actually guarding it to begin with. But hey, he's a bright spot so let's go with that. Anyway, he shows up here and there whenever there's a slow spot in the script (but not nearly as much as he needs to).

When Santa and the Earth kids are brought to Mars to meet Momar - not Qadaffi, but Kimar's wife (Leila Martin), she greets them warmly with gentle little head-butts and the Martian kids (all two of them), Earth kids and Santa all laugh together. Loudly. And borderline psychotically. How sweet. And they also think to create a Martian toy factory for Santa to work in; push a few buttons, there's your toys!

Of course, when Voldar gets wind of this, he and his two henchmen (made up of Muldoon from "Car 54 Where are You?" and the BundleFly Machine version of Jamie Farr/Charlie Callas) try to sabotage the machine and end up kidnapping Dropo, who is dressed up like Santa for reasons too stupid to get into.

This leads to poorly-choreographed fight scenes, more mugging than in a Three Stooges marathon and a denouement that The Monkees would back off from as being too "out there". But by the end, lest they scar the kiddies in the audience any more then they already have, the film-makers set all aright on Mars, Dropo is made a Martian Santa (a bouncing, borderline psychotic one, but...) and Santa and the Earth kids are sent back to their home planet as Santa shouts another "Merry Christmas" to his homies. A few end credits and a sing-along later, and it's all over.

If this all sounds outlandish and the product of an addled mind, then congratulations: you've been paying attention. This is all created from a story by Paul L. Jacobson (who appears to be no stranger to fever dreams) and is presented by more-accustomed-to-TV director Nicholas Webster with bright flashy sets, outlandish costumes and lots of loud, brassy, repetitive music (courtesy of Milton DeLugg - and the Band with a Thug). I can sing the theme song in my sleep and often wake up screaming on doing so - S-A-N-T-A, C-L-A-U-S, HOORAY FOR SANTY CLAUS!!!! And yes, you have to yell it when you sing it; that's how it was written.

For a budget of $200,000, producer Levine proved he knew from whence he spoke as SCCTM went on to make money hand over fist every Christmas season it played. Rightly-thinking that even the cheapest and cheap-jack-est effort would be watched over and over again when offered at the right time, he made a nice little mountain of bucks for himself. Oh sure, this was the man who also produced films like The Graduate, The Lion In Winter and Carnal Knowledge, but we all gotta start somewhere....

I like SCCTM, though. Always have; in fact, this is the first movie I ever remember watching as a child...while mommy was out shopping for a new bra or somethin'. What impressionable little kid couldn't be changed for life by watching something like this; a movie whose featured attack by a polar bear refuses to hide the fact that this bear's hind legs are longer than its fronts and look suspiciously like some guy in a dumb suit with a fixed mask wandering around fake snow. Or a killer robot in a suit made of a trash can, dryer vent tubing, a coffee urn and headlights worn by a guy (maybe the same guy as the polar bear suit). And even a newscaster reporting that a flying saucer has been seen by many witnesses as it sailed merrily through the skies but "The Soviets claim no responsibility".

I'll love it, no matter the season. This is a classic and should not be regulated to one time of year - why can't the spirit of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians be with us all year around?

Oh, I forgot that it is: only we call it by its more-familiar name "Middle Ear Infection".

...but I kid the green-skinned Santa-kidnapping aliens.