HORRAY FOR SANTY CLAUS! It's bloody Christmas ain't it. And I had a handful of terrible Christmas movies to choose from but I wanted to go with something 'on brand', something you folks would expect a blog mostly about terrible Science Fiction movies to cover, and also something to set the tone for my first inaugural Christmas feature. So I opted for Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
Kimar (Leonard Hicks), King of the Martians is worried that his kids aren't acting right so consulting the Martian Sage, he learns that all the kids of Mars are missing joy and happiness from their existence and the only way to solve it: bring Santa Claus and the spirit of Christmas to Mars! So off they set with their giant robot to kidnap Santa (John Call), picking up children Billy (Victor Styles) and Betty (Donna Conforti) along the way. Handily capturing Santa / convincing him to come to Mars they return home but Voldar (Vincent Beck) is worried that bringing Santa to Mars will ruin the children and make them soft. So he plots to dispose of Santa and sabotage the entire mission, eventually getting figured out and caught by Kimar, queuing one of the worst fight scenes I've ever seen... he flees the ship and goes into hiding. Voldar and his goons later attack Santa's new workshop on Mars kidnapping "Santa" in the process, but it turns out to be Martian Dropo (Bill McCutcheon) dressed up as Santa, and thinking he has the upper hand Voldar returns to the toy shop to demand it's destruction and that Santa and the kids get sent home, but getting the drop on him the kids fight back until Voldar is arrested by Kimar and Dropo can go on to be the Martian Santa and the humans can go back to Earth, and everyone can go on to have a Merry Christmas!
I will never rag on a movie for being low budget if they try their hardest... or at least try... and this movie is a try-er. It was obviously made on a shoe string budget, no doubt; peppered with stock footage of army drills and rocket launches, gimmicky cheaply produced costumes and sound effects, and containing the trappings of a pacy, quick production schedule. But they at least try. They put the effort in. And despite the budget b-movie production it still makes for an entertaining film, if for nothing else, for just the sake of curiosity.
The plot regrettably doesn't quite live up to the title; I fully went into this expecting a film about Santa shooting aliens, but instead; "conquers" here is supposed to be taken metaphorically, with Santa pretty much accepting the demands of the Martians straightaway and in fact enjoying his visit to Mars and working for the Martians, only to win them round in the end and get to go home. It's a Christmas movie I guess, so ruthlessly slaughtering an alien race was probably off the agenda... but that being said, it's enjoyable enough and not entirely a tepid, stereotypical predictable story and the characters bring it to life enough to make it convincing.
No complaints either to be made about the cast. John Call does a good job as Santa, although never once laughs like "ho ho ho" y'know, like Santa, despite Dropo pretending to imitate him by doing the same... you had one job guys... the Martians were all pretty much above par; Dropo particularly was so over-the-top jolly that it was a dead ringer he would go on to be Martian Santa, and the kids did a pretty decent job as well. For a low budget flick, everybody put the effort in. Sure that fight scene was dreadful but they at least tried to look like they were fighting.
This movie regularly rolls up on worst Christmas movie lists, and worst movie altogether lists, but to be honest it's difficult to hate it and difficult to criticise it purely on the merits (or lack of merits...) of it being a low budget flick. It's clear they tried the best with the resources they had, and to be honest, because of this, it was slightly endearing. Maybe I'm going soft, or the spirit of Christmas cheer has well and truly infected me, but I don't feel like beating on something when they tried the best they could. 2 out of 5. Merry Christmas people!
