Santa Claus Conquers The Martians

Martian Santa-Hunter

Santa Claus
Conquers The Martians
Directed by Nicholas Webster
USA 1964 (released 1966)
Public Domain

Wow, this is terrible. Cheaply made and badly written and... I dunno... somehow completely charming and captivating.

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians is a film I’ve been meaning to get around to seeing for a good four decades or more and, it’s really not what I was expecting. I mean, I was expecting more of a family film but it became apparent very quickly that this one is aimed squarely at the kiddies. Which is fine.

A quick summary of the plot. You have Santa, played really well and likeably by a guy named John Call, getting ready with his elves for Christmas but, something is happening to the kids on Mars, who are being all depressed and despondent, even as they watch television broadcasts from Earth and enjoy the documentary interviews with Santa by a news crew. The martian leader Kimar, played by Leonard Hicks, goes to see the surprisingly sinister (for a kids movie) elder martian who says they need to get their own Santa Claus to teach the kids of Mars how to play and have fun. So, with a few plot wrinkles, Kimar, along with some of his martians including bad guy Martian Voldar (played convincingly mean spiritedly by Vincent Beck) and atrocious comic relief martian Dropo (played by Bill McCutcheon), head to Earth where they kidnap a couple of children and also Santa Claus, to set up a toy factory on Mars (one of the martians seem particular enamoured of a toy they describe which is a Slinky, which was back in vogue at the time).

Despite Voldar trying to blast all three of them out into space, they survive the trip and help out the martians, also stopping Voldar’s uprising and, in the process, teaching Dropo how to dress up and play as Santa, so he can take over and they are free to return to Earth, just in time for Christmas Eve.

And it really is a cheap mess, all shot on interior sets (four days shooting in an airplane hangar, apparently)... while at the same time being bizarrely addictive.

Some things I found interesting are... well, for starters, the colours are going for bright greens and reds but the film stock isn’t exactly technicolour (okay, just looked it up, it’s Pathécolor apparently) and so it all looks incredibly muted, even though it’s trying to be bright. Like a dulled down pastel variant of Christmas which, I have to say, I really liked.

The documentary newscasts which come in are interesting in that, at no time is it suggested that anyone on Earth does not believe in Santa Claus, He’s a newsworthy celebrity and these opening segments where he and his wife, Mrs. Claus, are being interviewed, seem really unusual. By the way this is apparently the first movie to depict a Mrs. Claus... a shame she’s not called Mary... you know, like in Mary Christmas... but still, relatively early days, I guess. The newsreel footage is also used to provide a series of narratives on the martian ‘UFO’ and so stock footage of various military responses can be montaged in with this really bland but, again, likeable soundtrack... literally to help pad the movie running time out every now and again. Although, the last you hear of the military is when they are trying to trail the martian ship to Mars... then they simply drop out of the narrative with no explanation.

Also, there are not that many people seen on Mars, it has to be said. Maybe seven or eight including the only two children (of the apparently many) you’ll catch a glimpse of on Mars... one of them being played by a young Pia Zadora in her debut movie role. When I was a kid in the 1970s, Zadora seemed more well known for films with more erotic content, if memory recalls... but here she’s just another green painted kid with not much personality.

Now, the film is studio bound but it does spend hunks of time in fake, outdoor painted environments standing in for locations like the martian landscape and the North Pole. It looks okay though but... the special effects are something else. The big, fairly useless but aesthetically pleasing hunter robot Torg looks like it's straight out of a Japanese tin toy store but it’s likeable enough. As for the fierce polar bear that bothers the kids and scares a martian off, however, well it’s hilarious. Literally a man crawling around on his knees wearing a polar bear head with a furry sheet thrown over him. This was never going to convince anyone but, honestly, from this side of history, it all just adds to the charm of the thing as far as I’m concerned... as does the saccharine opening and closing credits song... Hooray For Santy Claus.

And that’s me done with Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, I think. It’s bloody awful and cheap looking and probably an embarrassment for most of the actors working on it but... I kinda loved it and would certainly not mind seeing it again. At the moment, the Blu Ray of this is pretty expensive but, maybe it’ll come down in price in a few years time. I can’t really, in all good conscience, recommend this one to most people but... all I’m saying is that it kept me smiling, possibly for a lot of the wrong reasons. And I’ll leave it at that.