I'm sick again. But it's a good kind of sick this time as I got my COVID booster yesterday, so not y'know a cold or the Omicron variant or whatever, and you could say, by getting the booster we are all SAVING CHRISTMAS which is the name of the 2014 movie I wanted to cover for this years Christmas special, but what do you know; it's suddenly not available on every fucking streaming platform ever. Well, to UK subscribers anyway. Maybe I should treat myself to NordVPN for Christmas... So instead, we are covering Santa Claus vs The Devil, a 1959 movie I've dredged up from archive.org which is one of the best places on the internet ever, because if we are going to get festive here it has to fit one of 2 criteria; be an absolute steaming pile of reindeer droppings, or be a slightly dodgy, slightly unsettling sci-fi movie from the 50's. Last year I covered Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, which genuinely ended up turning out mostly ok... this year the big man in red takes on the dark lord incarnate; Morningstar, Lucifer, Satan, he who goes by many names. Let's see how this works out for him!
After an opening montage of teams of children from every conceivable location on the fucking planet sing culturally significant songs painfully out of tune - seriously, this opening 10 minutes could be used as a form of torture in Guantanamo Bay. You'd soon have the name and addresses of every known terrorist ringleader in no time... - we cut back to Santa Claus (José Elías Moreno) having a jolly old belly laugh when suddenly we are in hell and Lucifer; Prince of Hades commands that Pitch (José Luis Aguirre - if you're starting to spot a trend, this is a Mexican movie...) rise from hell and torment Santa, sending Pitch, or the Devil, to Earth. The Devil sets about his evil plan, convincing 3 boys to throw rocks a window display of Santa, meanwhile the man in red himself watches on... from space... and curses the Devil, wishing he could go down to teach him a lesson, but can only travel to Earth on Christmas Eve. Fair enough. With Santa watching on from his space observatory, I guess, we watch as the Devil tries but fails to convince Lupita (Lupita Quezadas) to steal the only thing she wants for Christmas; a doll, and Santa is overjoyed that somebody has managed to ignore the Devil, proclaiming that all they need to do is be "good in spirit". Santa then proceeds to watch the dream of a rich boy opening presents containing his parents for Christmas... ok... before moving back to Lupita who is just trying to get some sleep with her parents watching over her, when the Devil shows up again and starts tormenting her. What a red bellend. Meanwhile Lupita is having some kind of fucked up fever induced nightmare where human sized versions of the doll she saw earlier are dancing around. She genuinely looks terrified and like she has no fucking idea what the hell is going on around her throughout the entire scene... Santa swears he will get revenge on the Devil for tormenting Lupita (I like that name, it's growing on me...) then instructs his child slaves to look for the 3 boys from earlier who broke the window where he listens in on them slandering him and talking about doing evil stuff, like stealing toys. After a bit of filler with kids writing letters to Santa and Santa filing them in the correct boxes, Santa proceeds to warn his child slaves that Christmas Eve is fast approaching and they need to work harder, before paying a visit, in a painfully drawn out scene, to his most trusted helper; Merlin the Wizard (Armando Arriola), presumably the same guy who hung around with King Arthur, where he picks up stuff to make people fall asleep, and a flower that makes him disappear. Sounds pretty rapey if you ask me. He then collects a golden key to open every door from "The Keymaker" a man so unimportant he doesn't even bother to get a name, before we cut to Santa's child army preparing his sleigh for the impending invasion of Earth. Departing from his celestial base, Santa proceeds to make his way to Earth, narrowly missing the Moon along the way, and arrives first at Mexico City, where the Devil tries to thwart him by moving the chimney of the house he's visiting out of the way, but Santa easily outthinks him by using a tiny parasol to drift to the ground instead. Almost getting discovered by the 2 boys in the house, Santa uses his dream dust stuff and the boys flake out immediately, before getting his own back on the Devil by blowing soot up the chimney in his face. However, undeterred, the Devil continues to make things difficult for Santa at his next house calling. First starting a fire in the fireplace so that Santa can't use the chimney and then making the metal door handle red hot so Santa can't use his key, but Santa just mugs him off and lets himself in through the window instead... and then uses a toy cannon to fire a dart in the Devils arse. After a stop over at the rich boys house, where he grants his wish of spending Christmas with his parents by visiting them at a swanky club and guilting them into going home to spend time with their child... Santa continues his journey stopping off to give those 3 little dipshits from earlier some coal in a shoe, and whilst making his next stop, the Devil climbs up to his sleigh and snips open Santa's potion sack, leaving Santa without any of his magic sleeping dust or his flower that makes him disappear! Arriving at his next location, the Devil sicks a nasty dog on Santa who, unable to make it sleep or him disappear has to climb a tree to avoid a vicious mauling. Meanwhile, the Devil proceeds to wake up everyone in the house as Santa tries to shoo the dog away! Crying out for Merlin he eventually manages to catch his attention.. from space... where Merlin tells him to use a wind up cat to get rid of the dog, which actually works, and Santa is just able to avoid being found as the family crash out the door followed by the police, the fire department and the ambulance service all turning up at the house at once! Finally set free Santa is just able to make it to Lupita in time and give her a doll, and as she wakes up and fetches it from the porch, her family look on aghast, as Lupita leans out of the window and says goodbye to Santa.
Maybe it's because I'm not feeling great, but that last scene with Lupita getting her doll, genuinely almost made me well up! Girl just wanted a dolly and she finally got one! But uhh apart from that this was a seriously dodgy movie. The scene with the giant dancing dolls was genuine nightmare fuel. No wonder little Lupita looked so fucking terrified. Also it genuinely felt like it was an entire movie of padding, save for about the last 20 minutes. The first 10 minutes are just out-of-tune song and out-of-tune song, it was like having your toenails pulled off. That and Merlin might just be the most irritating and annoying character I've seen in any movie yet.
That being said, the portrayal of Santa was genuinely pretty good. Big jolly chap, laughing alot, and alot of the role was all about the facial expressions which José nailed perfectly. The Devil character was also a pretty good portrayal. Again, most of the role being told through facial expressions, he genuinely filled the part as the creator of mischief quite well, and although it was slightly amusing him basically being a man in red pyjamas with some horns glued to his hood his character did grow on me slightly and become likeable, despite, y'know being the villain of the piece!
Music-wise as well, everything felt very festive and apt for the aesthetic of the movie, save for the downright unlistenable choir pieces at the beginning which were the musical equivalent of being slowly disembowelled. With a spoon. But other than that, the rest of the accompanying music was perfectly suited, and I err... genuinely do feel a little bit more festive now after watching it.
However those points aside the movie is very thin on plot. Half the movie, nearly 2 thirds, is Santa getting ready to go to Earth, the last, 20 odd minutes I think is just him on Earth visiting everybody. I appreciate it had to sort of set up the back story with the children but there was a lot that just didn't need to be there. It felt like the plot was just meandering around waiting for the bit where Santa goes to Earth. I know that's sort of the point of these films, to see how it all goes down backstage before the big day, but it kinda felt like it went nowhere and instead of the movie being about Santa thwarting the Devil it instead was far more about being just another Christmas movie, with the Devil basically being an extra detail they sprinkled in from time to time.
This wasn't a good movie. Even in retrospect. And to a degree there is probably a lot of it that get's lost in translation; this was a Mexican movie with English dub, and by all accounts, according to Wikipedia, it did pretty well for itself, so what do I know? Maybe the Mexican kids are really into this kind of stuff, or err... were, 60 odd years ago, but for me it just felt like a sequence of events with no real plot development until the last third of the movie. I did like that they at least made an effort to underlay a moralistic tale to the whole film; the bad boys got coal, little Lupita who was good and obedient got the doll she wanted so y'know, there's a moral to the whole tale.
Although, all the above taken into account, I've said before on this blog that I will never rag on a movie that is a trier. And Santa Claus vs The Devil is a trier. It's very clear there was a minimal budget for this piece, and Merlin might have been the most un-necessary and insufferable character in the history of modern cinematography, and there was certainly a slightly racist and culturally insensitive undertone, most obvious in the first 10 minutes, but there was effort. At least some effort to make a Christmas movie and do all the Christmas troupes. And although I found the first 2 thirds of the movie completely uninteresting and I stopped taking it serious almost immediately, I was at least mildly captivated and won back in the final third. Unfortunately though, this just wasn't very good really. 1 out of 5. Merry Christmas y'all!
