Gremlins (1984)

It was Christmas Eve. I was 9 years old. Me and Mom were decorating the tree, waiting for Dad to come home from work. A couple hours went by. Dad wasn't home. So Mom called the office. No answer. Christmas Day came and went, and still nothing. So the police began a search. Four or five days went by. Neither one of us could eat or sleep. Everything was falling apart. It was snowing outside. The house was freezing, so I went to try to light up the fire...and that's when I noticed the smell. The firemen came and broke through the chimney top, and me and Mom were expecting them to pull out a dead cat or a bird...and instead they pulled out my father. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit. He'd been climbing down the chimney on Christmas Eve, his arms loaded with presents. He was gonna surprise us. He slipped and broke his neck, died instantly. And that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus.
--Kate Beringer

Ahh, it's Christmastime again. The most wonderful time of the year. The season of joy and giving, of warm feelings and happy memories, of holly and mistletoe and eggnog and presents and figgy pudding.

Let's do a horror movie.

Written by the director of the first two Harry Potter films as well as the only two Home Alone movies that anyone really remembers, Gremlins is one of several movies from the early 1980s, along with Poltergeist, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and a few others, which drew fire from critics and patrons for some particular scenes of violence and horror that many felt pushed the boundaries of a PG-rated film at the time. The complaints eventually got so loud it led filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who produced and/or directed many of those movies, including this one, to petition the MPAA for a new rating for films that were not PG, not quite an R. They agreed, and two months later Red Dawn became the first film ever to be released with the brand new PG-13 rating.

Thank you, Santa Spielberg.

In the nondescript Midwestern town of Kingston Falls, USA, a town that is so straight out of the past it may as well be Bedford Falls or the set from Back to the Future, lives an aspiring cartoonist named Billy, played by Zach Galligan, the son of an inventor with high aspirations whose inventions never work quite right and should probably just stick to acting and country singing since, well, he's Hoyt Axton. Every day he gets up and goes to work at the savings and loan and has to put up with the daily threats and rantings of the richest cat lady in town, Mrs. Deagle (played by Polly Holliday a.k.a. Flo from Alice), the resident grumpy old bat who enjoys metaphorically whizzing on poor people, drenching carolers and stringing up people's pets on their front porches every time they poop on her lawn. Then he goes to a bar to drink away work stress and listen to his suck-up coworker lord over his new house and how he'll usurp the bank once the boss dies and how superior he thinks he is in every way.

I wouldn't sell this kid short, though. I mean, not only is he a talented artist, but look who he's getting drawing tips from:

"Yeah, I know how you feel, Billy. I've dealt with Grinches before."

The things that keep him going every day are his art (more power to him), a coworker at his bank by the name of Kate Beringer (Phoebe Cates out of Fast Times at Ridgemont High) whom he is trying to work up the nerve to ask out on a date, and quite recently a new addition to his household: a small, furry, pointy-eared new pet his father has given him as an early Christmas present. Purchased at a curio shop within the Chinatown district of the nearest major city to Kingston Falls via the grandson of its more hesitant curator, the creature is a "mogwai" (the Cantonese word for "demon") and is just the cutest-wootest widdle ball of fwuff you could ever lay eyes on.

He also comes with three very important rules for his proper care which I'm assuming every 80's movie nut knows by heart but I'm repeating here anyway: don't expose him to bright lights as sunlight in particular will kill him, don't get him wet, and absolutely under no circumstances feed him after midnight.

"For every piece of poop I find on my lawn...I BOIL A KITTEN."

Seems easy enough. The adorable little nummy-muffin is given the name Gizmo, and he and Billy become fast friends. He sits around on Billy's bed a lot watching old movies on TV and being pwecious.

Of course the thing is, with movies that revolve around rules that absolutely positively must not be broken under any circumstance, one or more of them will at some point in its running time, be broken, for if not, the plot would not naturally progress. And I'm afraid that this film is no exception. The trouble starts around the time when Corey Feldman stops by to deliver a Christmas tree and accidentally knocks a paintbrush jar full of water on the poor creature.

All together now...AWWWWWWWWWWWW.

As it happens, pouring water on these creatures causes them to reproduce, which raises a lot of questions as to what kind of mammals bore offspring via skin growths which drop off the body and sprout brand new creatures whenever they get wet. Then questions are further raised when Billy accidentally feeds these newborns past midnight, discovering too late that his alarm clock's wires have been eaten through. This has the result of the gremlin babies forming chrysaliseseses...chrysalees...chrysalii?...that hatch before too long and form larger, scaly-skinned creatures that have somehow lost all their fur. And these new creatures are less like the docile, harmless little fuzzball voiced by Skeeter from Muppet Babies and more like monstrous, foul-tempered, mischievous little trolls voiced by Optimus Prime, Megatron and that one guy from the Police Academy movies. One in particular has a mohawk and is named Stripe for ease of convenience.

That poor gingerbread man. Have they no scruples?

Before long, the entire town is waist-deep in an army of these voracious affronts to God and nature raising untold amounts of hell upon the population. Billy's mother finds three in the kitchen and minces one in the food processor, stabs a second and explodes a third in the microwave in true PG-13 fashion before a fourth attacks her from inside the Christmas tree. A snowplow is driven into the living room of snowplow driver Mr. Futterman (Dick Miller), a character who ironically announced his detest of imported goods as he believed they weren't made as properly. ("They put gremlins in everything!") A group of them pose as Christmas carolers to scare the crap out of Mrs. Deagle while one gives her a speedy ride on a stair lift chair. Even poor Kate has her hands full during her night job as a waitress at Dorry's Tavern, where many of these blighted little hellbeasts are in for a night of drinking, dancing, card playing and quick sight gags. She has only just made her escape with the help of a flash bulb off a Polaroid camera when Billy and cutie-wootie Gizmo arrive to pull her out of there.

And of course, during all this, Billy's father is out of town at an inventor's convention and it's no use going to the police because, frankly, a story about how his grandmother got run down by Santa's sleigh would have been more plausible to them. They don't realize he's telling the truth until a ghastly bit of proof that Mother Nature has a sick sense of humor fiddles with his brakes.

Damn American-made snowplows!

Right about here, we get the movie's most famous piece of dialogue, after those three rules, of course. Holed up in the bank with Billy and Gizmo, Kate picks this moment to talk about a traumatic event in her childhood that explains why she doesn't celebrate Christmas. I need not go into too much detail here, as I have recreated her monologue at the top of this page. I'm not exactly sure what it has to do with the rest of the film, apart from a need of the filmmakers to inject a bit of dark comedy into what is already a darkly comedic film.

I have holiday depression now.

During Kate's tale of woe, we find that the beastly little mutants have retreated from the bright lights of downtown Kingston Falls (though as Billy and Kate were running away from the bar, it seemed that they were running around attacking people just fine without fear of injury) and have retreated into the only movie theater in town. Some of them have even defied their own evolutionary process to rig up the projector to play a reel of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and being too savage to grasp the corporate culture of the Walt Disney Company, they all seem to be enjoying themselves.

At the very least, it provides the perfect distraction for Billy, Kate and Gizmo to rig the theater to explode with a flaming rag and a gas leak in the boiler room and incinerate the little buggers.

Unfortunately, the one named Stripe has escaped his deserved burnination by escaping ahead of time into the town's neighborhood Montgomery Ward (remember that place?) setting up a final showdown in, appropriately enough, a department store, the most modern-looking (circa 1984) building in town. Thus begins what turns out to be a race to the working water fixture in the gardening section that would start this whole movie all over again. Billy battles Sprite, Kate gets the lights working, and Gizmo eventually wins the day for good guy cuteness by opening up the blinds to the bright lights of a convenient winter's morning to send the unholy abomination back to Hell where it belongs.

Finally, at the end of the film, on Christmas Day, I assume, the Peltzers and Kate are watching TV news coverage of the aftermath when the Chinatown curio shop owner suddenly appears to take Gizmo back and to deliver the message of this film, saying that man with his modern technology has a tendency to abuse nature's gifts, and they are not ready for the responsibilities of something as delicate as a mogwai. But noticing Gizmo's attachment to Billy, he says that one day HE may be ready.

Maybe around the time Gremlins 2: The New Batch comes out.

These new Muppets look DREADFUL.

The thing that sticks out the most to me about Gremlins, more than the puppetry or the horror-comedy aspect, is its message.

Part of that has to do with its setting - nearly every building in town could easily come straight out of It's a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Story, Billy's car looks more vintage than anything, and I swear the only channel they get on cable out there is Turner Classic Movies. If not for the odd 1980s technological advancement, or the department store in the film's climax, or Billy's father's malfuntioning inventions all over his house, I could have sworn this movie took place in the fifties. It sets up a general theme of the introduction of new technology in an old environment.

And then there are the gremlins themselves, obviously named for a term used for a failure in something mechanical like a "bug" or a "kink" as Mr. Futterman is nice to point out for us. Most of the time they are terrorizing people it's something technological, like tinkering with wiring or screwing with traffic lights or hotwiring snowplows. I'm surprised they managed to start up a movie projector.

And of course it takes place on Christmas. The most commercialized holiday on the Gregorian calendar.

Take away the animatronic creatures and the microwave explosions and the chimney story and that's what Gremlins is - a message film about technology and nature. Or you could, you know, leave all that stuff in and get an entertaining movie regardless.

Hmmm...not everyone can successfully lose weight for their New Year's resolution. Maybe they're not so bad after all.

"Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" (2000)

I hate the goody-goody feelings of Christmas! All this caring and sharing! So I kidnapped Grandma and made Santa Claus the fall guy so I could get all his money! Hey, I deserve to be rich.
--Cousin Mel

It seems with every holiday that comes along, there are always certain unanswered questions to go with them.

Like, why do they call those little candy bars kids get trick-or-treating on Halloween "fun-sized" when everyone knows there's nothing "fun" about a smaller candy bar?

Why do they make grape-flavored Starburst jelly beans every Easter and not grape-flavored Starburst year-round?

But it always seems to be Christmas that has the most curiosity surrounding it.

How can a fat guy in a sleigh fit down a chimney, let alone deliver presents to everyone in the world in one night?

Why does he always deliver the bigger gifts to the kids in a higher tax bracket?

Is Die Hard really a Christmas movie?

But for me, the same question keeps popping up year after year:

WHO THE HELL THOUGHT THAT A NOVELTY CHRISTMAS SONG ABOUT A DEAD RELATIVE WOULD MAKE THE PERFECT FAMILY HOLIDAY SPECIAL?

Yes, they made a TV special out of the 1979 Elmo and Patsy song about vehicular geriatricide on Christmas.

And it is AWFUL.

I'm not just saying this because I have an aversion to corny holiday specials. It is truly bad.

How bad is it? Well, let me put it this way...I hate the song now. That's right. This special has turned me off of it. FOREVER. I can't hear it anymore without thinking of this steaming pile of elf vomit. It is right down there with WHAM's "Last Christmas", that Mariah Carey song and that annoying one with the singing chipmunks.

Directed by television animation legend Phil Roman (you executive produced Garfield and Friends and co-directed Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown, what were you THINKING, man!?) and starring the voice of Elmo Shropshire himself who was also co-writer (J'ACCUSE!!), it was first unleashed on unsuspecting television audiences on the WB (now the CW) in Christmas of 2000. And no one has the common sense to take it off the air yet. They and their partners in crime at Cartoon Network have been showing this multiple times every year since then, for no other reason than to fill up holiday airtime. It has regularly aired on television every Christmas for more than a decade now. It JUST WON'T DIE.

So why would I want to waste my time watching this lukewarm glass of congealed eggnog?

Because nothing says Christmas like a heartwarming TV special about love and caring and family.

And if I have to suffer through it, then so shall you all.

Somewhere there's a Dairy Queen that's missing its mascot.

It all starts in the quaint little town of...Cityville. The town is literally named Cityville. They actually couldn't think of a better name than Cityville. I'm guessing this ISN'T the town with the three super-powered kindergartners and the evil hyper-intelligent monkey with the big hat.

It gets worse. The special focuses on a family named...*snrrkk*...Spankenheimer.

That pretty much sets the tone.

Yeah, they actually had their name legally changed years ago. Before that, they were the Fondlebergs.

Welcome to the Spankenheimer family store, where the staff is friendly, the prices are cheap and you can also get away with shoplifting, because your credit's always good with its proprietor Grandma Spankenheimer.

By the way, her name really is "Grandma." Probably says so on her birth certificate. Turns out her parents were just as unimaginative as the writers.

Well, since there's no point in learning any of the other characters' names, we'll just give you the principal cast. We already know the grandma who I'm guessing at one point in this special will in fact get run over by a reindeer. There's also Jake, the annoying "I-do-believe-in-Santa-Claus-I-do-I-do-I-do-I-do" kid who passes as this story's hero. There's Santa Claus, of course, to encourage this kid's wild imagination. There's a grandpa named Grandpa who mostly sings crappy songs and doesn't really do much anything else. And then there's Cousin Mel, the family entrepreneur who helps run the store with a Southern accent and poorly drawn hair. You can already tell she's the villain from her first line--she's more interested in money and profits and being rich and couldn't care less about warmth and family and giving and stuff.

Her dialogue in a nutshell: "Evil evil evil, rich rich rich, money, money, money...y'all."

Grandma is constantly being made offers to sell the store by the stereotypical CEO of the mega-multi-million-dollar conglomerate who already owns everything else in Cityville. HIS name is Mr. Bucks. Yep, B-U-C-K-S. As in, the synonym for dollars. I'd strangle this cartoon if I could.

Cousin Mel, naturally, has a differing opinion to this, and gets the idea that if people stopped coming to Grandma's store, business would go south and she'd have no choice but to sell it, so she pours some unknown liquid from a perfume bottle into the fruitcake that Grandma distributes every year to customers so as to kill--I mean, SICKEN unsuspecting innocent people.

Yeahhhhhhhh, there's no way that's going to work. Because as it turns out, nobody really eats Grandma's fruitcake. Or even likes it. And they're all too polite to tell it to her face. There's even a song that drives this point home with a series of lame fruitcake gags. As if gags about fruitcake not being safe for human consumption were still funny.

SEE!?! EVEN THE DOG HATES FRUITCAKE! IT'S FUNNY!!!

Anyway, on Christmas Eve, the cast go and reenact the titular song word-for-word, and Grandma has her inevitable accident. Jake sees the whole thing from his bedroom window, but seeing as he's not just the only witness but also an impressionable child, nobody believes him. At least not until morning, when two police officers arrive (one of whom I swear is straight out of Fargo) and find sleigh tracks and a silhouette-shaped Grandma-sized hole in the snow.

Anyway, time passes, Grandma's still missing, her face turns up on milk cartons, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda, etc., etc., etc.

We're in September now, and Cousin Mel still wants to sell the family store. I'm kinda surprised she hasn't done it yet. So she has Grandpa take her to her favorite restaurant and asks him to sign the paper.

But he announces that he'd rather sing.

How the hell do you get "sing" from "sign"? I suppose you could just switch two of the letters, but that joke only works when it's WRITTEN OUT. It doesn't make sense when you say it out loud.

Anyway, Grandpa sees this botched attempt at a wordplay gag as an excuse to sing about Grandma being dead and partying up in heaven with Elvis and all the other dead celebrities.

This was made for KIDS, can you believe it?

"This Grandma is no more, she has ceased to be, she has expired and gone to meet her maker..."

Meanwhile, after nine months of searching, Jake eventually gets the idea that Santa MIGHT have an email address--it turns out he does--and shoots him a post asking him about Grandma. (Why didn't you do this SOONER?!?! Like, maybe RIGHT AFTER THE ACCIDENT!!!) As it happens, Grandma's at the North Pole now, STILL recuperating from her accident and now with a slight case of amnesia. Santa's been taking care of her this whole time.

Speaking of Santa Claus:

This is our Santa Claus? I always thought Santa was plump and jolly with a loving smile on his face. This guy just looks like a hobo in a Santa suit.

Anyway, right now Santa's so obsessed with Cityville being too wrapped up with themselves to think about him, as opposed to the rest of the world, to the point where he's considering canceling Christmas there (not if the church, white Republicans and Bill O'Reilly have anything to say about it) when Quincy, his chief elf, conveniently shows up with a printout of the email identifying "Grandma X", as he calls her. Santa perks right up and has Quincy pick Jake up to take to see Santa while a corny song about Christmas and sharing and such crap plays in the background.

And now your annual dose of Christmas creepiness.

Santa, Jake and Quincy rush Grandma back to Cityville corporate headquarters so they can stop the sale of the store, but dadgummit, Grandma gets lost again thanks to Cousin Mel's transparently evil lawyer. Fortunately, Santa just being there is good enough, so he proves himself to Mr. Bucks, explains what happened, the sale is called off, the store is saved and everyone lives happily ever after.





Oh, wait, there's still twenty minutes left. Cousin Mel drops a bomb on everyone by asking that Santa be arrested for kidnapping, and Jake does his Anakin-at-the-end-of-Episode-III impression.

Oh dear. Christmas the religious holiday is ruined because its most popular secular icon is going to jail.

Incidentally, Cousin Mel's lawyer's name is "I. M. Slime." ...you know, for a Christmas special that takes place in the town of Cityville, I'm not surprised in the least.

Serves him right, taking Christmas away from Jesus.

Meanwhile, in their cabin hideout deep in the mountains--the only mountain in North America where it snows in early autumn--Cousin Mel and her lawyer contemplate Santa Claus rotting in jail and the two of them winning his entire Yuletide operation in front of Grandma, her mind still a blur, and then calculate how much money they could make off it. Let's see, he spends ten or fifteen dollars on every kid on his Nice list, so just multiply that by the millions of kids in the world that are ON his Nice list and...



Okay, I've heard Carrie Fisher's drug-induced solo at the end of the Star Wars Holiday Special. I've heard St. Nick's off-key aria in that Mexican Santa Claus movie. I've heard "Hooray for Santy Claus".

But THIS is the worst song I've ever heard in a Christmas special:

OHHH IT HURTS!! IT HURTS SO MUCH!!! THESE SONGS ARE TERRIBLE!!

WHAT IS THE POINT OF IT!! WHY IS IT A CARMEN MIRANDA NUMBER!! WHY ARE THEY DRESSED LIKE THAT!! WHY ARE THEY MOVING THEIR HIPS BACK AND FORTH!! WHY!!!!!!

That's it. From now on, I'm only celebrating the winter solstice.

Anyway, Santa's trial lasts clear to December, conveniently threatening Christmas. Back at home Jake's dog Doofus smells something in Mel's backpack as she's leaving the house, so Jake has him follow the scent all the way to Mel's cabin hideout.

...Okay, where does this special take place? Where IS Cityville? Midwestern Police Lady is the only person with a northern accent, Cousin Mel is the only person with a southern accent, and yet Jake can just WALK up into the mountains?

With help from Quincy, who has suddenly reappeared, Jake gets Mel out of the cabin long enough to get Grandma and smuggle her back to the store, where he desperately tries to cure her amnesia. Only a whiff of her infamous toxic fruitcake FINALLY restores her memory. (Hey, her fruitcake's finally good for SOMETHING now, right? ...HA!)

Satan plays this special at the end of his holiday parties when he wants all the guests to leave.

At the courthouse, the judge is about to send Kringle up the river when Jake and Grandma conveniently reveal some last-minute evidence, one of which is that Grandma is in fact alive and kicking. Cousin Mel's plan begins to crumble when results of a forensics test are given on the fruitcake found at the scene of the accident (turns out Mel inadvertently slipped "reindeer nip" into her fruitcake, go fig). And when Grandpa brings in a note left at the scene explaining what happened, which Mel also hid, she sings like a canary, admitting that she arranged this whole thing for no other reason than that she likes being rich and she hates Christmas and all this caring and sharing stuff. Well, if that isn't motive enough, I don't know what is.

Santa is acquitted of all charges as Midwestern Police Lady slaps the cuffs on Mel for "almost ruining Christmas", and then chimes in with "that's what you get for being selfish and stupid." You hear that, kids at home?

Mr. Bucks returns with a new proposition to franchise Grandma's store and put her in charge of the potential chain (meaning she'd still have to sell it to him), the whole family has a big hug, and Grandma gets run over one more time when she opens the tainted fruitcake dish on accident. You know, since it was so funny the first time. Sadly, the credits roll before Santa can circle back and run down the rest of them.

"I don't know why we're making a big deal about this. I CLEARLY had the right of way!"

Check out that one guy on the right. "HOLY @#&!! IS THAT REINDEER TALKING?!"
...Yes, that reindeer does talk. Don't ask.

A major hangup I have with specials like this is the cheesy, ham-fisted messages they give about the celebrations meaning nothing and family being the ONLY true meaning of Christmas. I'm not gonna argue, its heart is in the right place, and I too have problems with the over-commercialization of the holiday season, but consider the alternative--if people REALLY took the morals of specials like this seriously, then nobody would buy any gifts or decorations or anything, and I would think that many a childhood memory of Christmas would include the lights, the tree, the presents and the food as well as the whole "getting together as a family" thing. Not to mention sales would plummet and some stores would financially get hit hard, including small home-grown independent stores like Grandma's that have more to lose. The U.S. economy would very well go into recession and millions of people--who have families to support--would be unemployed. I'm not gonna disagree about corporate bigwigs being soulless money-grubbing bastards--let's face it, many of them are--but I don't think everyone's going to buy into a moral as anvilicious as this while we all have mouths to feed and bills to pay the OTHER eleven months of the year. Plus, there's a hint of irony here, considering the rights to these specials are usually owned by big publicly-traded entertainment companies like Disney, Viacom and Time Warner, who I'm sure make SOMETHING off their home video sales.

And that is this special's only GOOD POINT. Never mind the fact that making a lighthearted family TV special about a song as dark as "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" is generally a bad idea to begin with, the animation is piss-poor, the characters are cookie-cutter, the voices are grating, especially Jake's, the story is ridiculous and the songs range from in poor taste to just unbearable. It isn't funny. It isn't heart-warming. It isn't even entertaining. It's like waking up on Christmas morning and finding one of Santa's reindeer took a dump in your stocking.

And yet there is one thing--ONE THING--keeping me from ranking it above the Star Wars Holiday Special as the all-time worst Christmas special ever made...

No gratuitous Wookiee masturbation.

They say Christmas is a time for miracles.

Bah, humbug.

Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)

The Prophecy has come to pass, that there would come to us a Chosen One, and that he, having no child of his own, would love all children everywhere, and that he himself would be an artisan, and a craftsman, and a skilled maker of toys.
...
From this day on, now and forever, you will bring all our gifts to all the children in all the world, and all this to be done on Christmas Eve.
...
The night of the world is a passage of endless night for you, until your mission is done. This is your legacy, and your gift, as is the gift of flight. Now, all those within the sound of my voice, and all those on this Earth everywhere know that henceforth, you will be called...Santa Claus. And now, everyone, Merry Christmas.

ANOTHER Santa Claus movie? Well, if it's Christmas...

Yes, conceived by the production team who gave you the first three Superman movies and directed by Jeannot Szwarc, whose name I still haven't learned to pronounce since I reviewed Supergirl last spring, it's Santa Claus: THE MOVIE. That's right. You can forget Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. You can forget the mystical train wreck that was Mexican Santa Claus. You can forget both the original Miracle on 34th Street AND its remake. You can forget every holiday special you've ever seen. Nope, this movie is it. The DEFINITIVE Santa Claus movie. I'm fairly certain they wouldn't have added "THE MOVIE" in the title if it weren't so.

Don't let the above title card fool you. This is Santa Claus: THE MOVIE. Finito. The end. Done.

Now then, the best way to approach this movie I've found would be to split it into two parts, since the first part of the film is very loosely connected to the second. As it's a movie about the origins of Santa Claus, I'm thinking a nice ITALIC font will suit it wonderfully. Also, you might want to bring your children closer to the screen and pretend that I'm reading this to them out loud in a warm, friendly voice.

Here we go...*ahem*

Once upon a time, many years ago somewhere in northern Europe, there lived a kindly old toy-maker and his wife (played by David Huddleston and Judy Cornwell) in a village deep in the forests. This toy-maker was particularly fond of children, but not in the kind of way that gets you sent to prison, and every year around the winter solstice, he and his wife would ride around in their reindeer-driven sleigh and give out toys to all the children of the village.

One year, there was a terrible blizzard, which did not deter the toy-maker and his wife from giving away their toys as they did every year. But while they were out there, the snow blew so hard that the reindeer could not continue, and it looked like the old couple would freeze to death in the blinding snow. Luckily, some unseen force rescues them and deposits them at the North Pole, where they are greeted by a clan of short-statured people known as "Vendequm" (or elves, if you like) who take them back to their big house sitting at the top of the world.

"It's only a model."
"Shh!"

The elves, as it happens, are toy-makers themselves, and have been seeking a middle-aged childless couple who love children dearly to help them give their toys to all the children of the world. With the help of some magical reindeer feed, he and his sleigh driven by eight tiny reindeer will fly all over the world to distribute all of the toys in one night, the shroud of nighttime travelling with him until his job is done.

Finally, the big day arrives, and as the toy-maker is about to set off, he, his wife and the elves are visited by a wise and ancient elf, played by Burgess Meredith, who gives him the name that the whole world will know him by--Santa Claus.

And so, throughout the centuries, every Christmas Eve Santa Claus and his reindeer flew all over the world giving toys to all the children, and his legend was spread to the four corners of the Earth.

All time zones meet at the North Pole, and it's always 4:20 somewhere, dudes!

Of course, over time some minor adjustments were made to the system, including the introduction of "naughty" and "nice" lists to make sure that only the good children received gifts, and Santa at one point was put on a diet after a certain poet described him as having a belly that shook like a bowl full of jelly, but nonetheless Christmas cheer was spread throughout the planet.

Well, except for the Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim households, but I'm sure their children were still very happy.

"By the way, if you see a man dressed in a caped bat costume, kindly run him over for me, would you? Thanks."

*cough cough* Ullggh. Never doing THAT again.

Part two takes place when we finally get to the late 20th Century and involves two children named Joe and Cornelia. Joe is a homeless boy who mostly hangs around Cornelia's house and stares through her window (this is not creepy in the slightest), and Cornelia is a rich little girl who frequently leaves some food out for him and would later go on to star in The Parent Trap II. It also helps to know one of the elves whom we were introduced to in part one - the one named Patch (Dudley Moore), an inventive elf who's all about technology, modernity and bad elf puns.

And now we meet the villain of our story, a evil cigar-sucking businessman (oh, what other type is there?) named B.Z., played by 3rd Rock's John Lithgow. He makes toys too...only his aren't built as well. In fact, as a Senate hearing scene teaches us, his dolls are more flammable than napalm and his plush toys are stuffed with glass shards, nails and sawdust. Not like he cares or anything; the more profit he makes the better. He's evil, after all.

"Now let's find Donald Trump and spit on his head! Ho ho ho!"

It seems that after centuries of making and delivering toys, the parents of the world are making children too fast for Santa to keep up, so he decides to make one of his elves his assistant. The top two elves for the job are Patch and some other guy whose name I can't remember, and Patch easily wins thanks to a factory-style toy making machine he builds. While delivering these toys, Santa finds Joe, gives him a joyride in his sleigh (NOT CREEPY), tries to impress him with a reindeer trick known as the "Super Duper Looper", a 360-degree loop-de-loop trick but can't when one of his reindeer has a touch of acrophobia, then drops him off at Cornelia's.

Unfortunately for Patch, his machine doesn't prove to be as efficient as he thought, and when his new toys are returned in pieces, Patch, sensing he is to be fired, not only resigns his post, but runs away from the workshop in shame. He arrives in New York City, finds B.Z., and having no knowledge of such things as recalls, lawsuits and product safety regulations, offers to make him some money--I mean, TOYS, make him some toys--to prove himself to Santa somehow.

Five seconds of that commercial and suddenly you're too old to believe in Santa Claus. B.Z. is an evil GENIUS.

Patch's idea is to make lollipops sprinkled with reindeer feed that will make whomever eats them float in the air a la Ed Wynn from Mary Poppins. (Yeah yeah, "you should hear about what they put in hot dogs", I know.) He also builds himself a silly-looking rocket-powered sleigh to deliver them to children. B.Z. reluctantly agrees to give these lollipops away as long as he get to use the classic dope-dealer "first-batch-is-free-the-second-one-will-cost-ya" business model.

Ehh, I prefer happy thoughts and pixie dust. Organic ingredients, fewer calories and no added sugar.

Despite the lack of FDA tests for possibly harmful ingredients, and the fact that the kids are basically eating reindeer chow, the lollipops are a big hit and people all over the country are floating several feet in the air. In fact, they're so popular that apparently the police forgot all about those unsafe toy claims and B.Z. is contemplating starting a second Christmas in March to market some reindeer chow-sprinkled candy canes (I think you'd have to talk to the church about that), while back at the North Pole word of Patch's success sends Santa into a bit of a depression.

Well, maybe kids would like you more if you didn't make all of your toys out of wood. I mean, nothing against wood, it has its charm, but it's the late 20th century and I think most of the major toy manufacturers have moved on to plastics now. I mean, wood DOES have its disadvantages--it's more flammable, it doesn't break as easily, there's a risk of splinters...

Meanwhile, Cornelia wishes a merry Christmas to her step-uncle:

BUM BUM BUMMMM DRAMATIC REVERB!!

One night, while Cornelia brings a sickly Joe inside to warm up, B.Z.'s lackey Towser (Jeffrey Kramer) makes an urgent late-night house call conveniently within earshot. The kids listen as B.Z. vocally anticipating overthrowing Santa Claus and taking over Christmas to where kids will be writing to HIM for presents. Sadly, Joe sneezes, gets caught and is dragged away by the chauffeur to be bound and gagged in the toy factory (apparently the kid's movie equivalent of cement shoes), so he misses the part where Towser mentions that the candy canes explode when exposed to heat.

Cornelia, however, does not.

As they leave, B.Z. is entertaining the idea of covering up this "minor" defect, running away to Brazil and letting Patch take the fall.

It's nice and all, but do the rims keep spinning when it stops?

Patch finds Joe at the factory, discovers Santa gave him a wood carving of himself as a gift (whereas I'm sure a loving family would have sufficed in a heartwarming holiday story such as this), he takes Joe with him to the North Pole on his rocket sleigh to take the candy canes to Santa to deliver for next year. Cornelia contacts Santa for help, and the two of them chase after the rocket sleigh, which is riding along blissfully unaware that the candy canes in the back are starting to get hot.

Meanwhile, at B.Z.'s toy factory, Cornelia has tipped off the police and they've come to arrest him. After snarfing down a handful of his candy canes hidden in his desk drawer, B.Z. attempts to fly out the window to elude the cops...and quickly floats straight upwards into the Earth's atmosphere.

I think we'd better recall those Fizzy Lifting Drinks.

Back to the chase, eventually the rocket sleigh explodes in midair, sending Patch and Joe flying through the air towards certain doom, and only resolving the slightly hinted-at subplot of Santa's reindeer overcoming their fear of heights and pulling off the "Super Duper Looper" can save them!

Apparently.

The story ends back at the workshop, where Patch is welcomed home, the Clauses adopt Joe and Cornelia is allowed to stay until next Christmas. Then they all dance around in celebration.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Except for B.Z., who will eventually die of asphyxiation in the vacuum of space while his lifeless body enters a low orbit around the Earth.

"You will bow down before me, Kringle! You and one day your heirs!"

Since its release, many film critics have called Santa Claus: THE MOVIE as one of the worst Christmas movies ever, accusing the thin plot and so-called "garish" production design, while those who grew up with the film consider it a holiday favorite.

Me?

Well...I liked the first part. The filmmakers honestly try to pull off a decent Santa Claus origin story, and for the most part, it's actually pretty solid. David Huddleston does a pretty good Santa, and the special effects and the interiors of Santa's workshop certainly don't hurt. There were some things they don't really explain, though, like why all the elves gathered in one spot directly underneath a telescope and waited for a snowfall for something they called "season's greetings" which came off as kinda superfluous, but it still had its charm.

As for the second part, I can't really make up my mind about it. It is nice in places, like the parts with the kids, but as demonstrated there were some bits and pieces I couldn't help but nitpick. And John Lithgow's B.Z.--good grief. There's over the top, and then there's...that. There's evil, and then there's stuffing teddy bears with nails and sawdust and not giving a damn. There's overacting, and then there's...John Lithgow's B.Z. He comes right out of a freaking cartoon. His character is so typecast that they honestly forgot to give him some other motive than "overthrow Santa Claus."

Regardless, Santa Claus: THE MOVIE isn't really a bad film to sit through at the yuletide season. It's a little bit silly, but not to the extent of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, and I can say a considerable amount of effort was put into it. It's a gentle, mostly harmless film, at least for children.

And the best part is we're in international waters - no adoption papers to sign!

A Muppet Family Christmas (1987)

Well, they certainly seem to be having a good time out there, Sprocket. Yep, I like it when they have a good time. But tell you what, somebody'll have to do something about these dishes, Sprocket. C'mon. I'll wash, you dry, okay?
--for me to know and you to find out

...What?

What are you doing here? I've got people coming over today! It's Christmas!

Oh, right! One more Christmas review! Okay, this will be a quick one:

Some Christmas movies and specials you see all the time every year. Miracle on 34th Street, It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Charlie Brown, the Grinch, you know the ones.

A Muppet Family Christmas, shockingly, is not one of them and has not been one of them since some time in the 1990s, which is just totally unfair since this is a rare gem in the history of television. You don't see crossovers much on TV, at least without the motive of corporate synergy or when one popular show just happens to pull in some guest stars from one of its spinoffs, or when one of those guest stars just shows up for a brief cameo appearance. And to have as many of your favorite characters from your favorite shows as possible in one hour-long TV special...this is more than just the best Christmas present ever. This is like Christmas, your birthday, and your alma mater's basketball team winning the national championship all at once.

The whole special takes place at Fozzie's mother's farmhouse in the country. And guess who's just about to leave to spend the holidays in Malibu:

And guess whose son is dropping in for a visit, bringing as many of his friends as he can fit in the back of a pickup truck.

And guess who Fozzie's mother has rented the house out to:

For those who didn't grow up in the better part of the 80s, those would be the eccentric inventor Doc (Gerry Parkes) and his Muppet dog Sprocket from the wildly popular Canadian Muppet show Fraggle Rock. They're renting Mama Fozzie's place for the holidays, looking to spend a nice quiet Christmas in the country. Incidentally, this was Doc's first appearance on UK TV when this premiered across the pond, since Sprocket's owner was a lighthouse keeper in the British version.

And it only gets better.

Fozzie, Kermit and all his Muppet Show cohorts arrive much to the surprise of everyone in the house, and from here we get this special's running gag - there's an icy patch on the front porch which no one can avoid slipping on, as everybody comes in single file and slips on it.

During the course of the special, some things happen:

Miss Piggy, to add a bit of tension, gets waylaid with a photo session and some last-minute Christmas shopping en route to the farmhouse, and then gets caught in a blizzard.

Fozzie duets with a snowman, and the two of them form a comedy duo which Statler and Waldorf quickly shoot down.

Everybody watches some home movies of the Muppet Babies (not in cartoon form, but rather in live-action) sing "Santa Claus is Coming To Town".

They had such big imaginations back in the day.

During the proceedings, some carolers drop by--AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

You are looking at the all-felt cast of Sesame Street, circa 1987, before the Great Elmo Takeover. Oscar the Grouch, who refuses to join in on "Deck the Halls", is there as well, in the center of the shot. Guess Bob and Maria and everyone else had their own families to visit. That, and Mr. Hooper had been dead for four years.

The Sesame Street gang put on a pageant, where Ernie reads "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and Bert wears women's pajamas while that two-headed monster whose collective name I cannot remember play Santa Claus riding a sleigh pulled by other monsters.

The Swedish Chef has "invited" a turkey to Christmas dinner who makes every attempt to avoid getting cooked by convincing the Chef that other animals in the house are turkeys, including Sprocket. When he persuades the Chef to cook Big Bird instead, the oversized fowl inadvertently gets himself out of danger with the gift of chocolate covered birdseed. Then they sing a bilingual version of "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" before the Chef makes a last-minute menu change: shredded wheat and cranberry sauce. Big Bird's favorite.

Somewhere in all this, the subplot about Mama Fozzie's trip to Malibu is never mentioned again.

As Kermit still worries about Piggy, Doc, who has taken a liking to his strange new housemates, goes out to look for her, while Robin explores the cellar and shows Kermit an unusually sized hole in the wall.

Wait a minute. Muppets? Hole in the wall? YOU DON'T MEAN...

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! THE UNIVERSES ARE COLLIDING!!!

Yes, those are Fraggles. The very same Fraggles whose show came to an end not too long before this special came out. And as luck would have it, they're in the middle of celebrating a holiday sort of like Christmas, where they give each other the same pebble as a gift. And yes, they sing a song. It's from their own show, too. Quite nice.

Doc finally returns with Miss Piggy via dog sled (such a prima donna) and after she too slips on the icy patch, Mama Fozzie gathers everyone in the living room to say that they're running out of room in the house, and two of her guests will have to sleep on hangers hung on wall hooks, which Gonzo and Animal don't seem to mind. After that, much of the rest of the special is a medley of Christmas songs, and the Fraggles make another appearance as well.

After about ten minutes of jovial musical merriment, Kermit gives Piggy a mink for Christmas. A living, breathing mink...who is her number one fan. Piggy loves it. Then Doc comes in dressed as Santa Claus and starts handing out gifts as everybody joins in one last chorus of "We Wish You a Merry--AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

...I think I just crapped myself.

All right, gotta wrap this up. My guests will be here any minute.

The last time this special came out on home video was back in 2001, when the Muppets were owned by a German corporation and weren't seeing much action. The version which was released had some scenes cut out of it because of some copyright issues with the songs performed in them, in particular Fozzie and the snowman singing "Sleigh Ride" and almost the entire baby Muppet segment; your best bet to find an uncut edition would be to find a copy released in Canada or overseas and have it imported. Couple this with the fact that the Muppets, Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock are all now owned by three different corporate entities (Disney, Sesame Workshop and the Henson company, respectively) and you've pretty much summed up its chances of ever re-appearing on DVD or television again.

A crying shame, really, because for a hardcore Muppet fan, this special is a DEFINITE must-see. Nowhere else in the history of mankind are you ever going to see characters from three of the greatest childhood-defining TV shows ever conceived quite literally under the same roof. Never again might you see Doc making small talk with Bert and Ernie about what letter his name starts with, or Oscar hitting it off with Rizzo, or even Animal befriending Cookie Monster.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have relatives coming over today and I need to go change my shorts. Happy holidays, everybody!

Wait, didn't Doc meet the Fraggles at the end of the series?
And where was Uncle Traveling Matt during all this?
...ah, screw it. It's Christmas.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)

"...And Mrs. Santa Claus has positively identified the kidnappers as Martians. Never in the history of mankind have the nations of the world reacted with such unanimity and cooperation. Tonight, the lights will burn until dawn in the United Nations building as the leaders of the world map a course of action."

I was going to think up a nice introduction for this review, but then I remembered that the title of this movie is Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

I'll pause for a moment to let that sink in a little.









Okay, let's get started.

We begin in a house on Mars, circa mid-20th Century judging by the decor, where we see two Martian children Bomar and Girmar (played by Chris Month and a young Pia Zadora) watch some Nickelodeon TV channel as they send a reporter to a certain workshop at the North Pole for an exclusive interview with Santa Claus himself (John Call).

At least we get a workshop with elves on terra firma this time. Last Christmas movie I watched, he lived in a castle-slash-child-sweatshop in the sky. We even get a Mrs. Claus.

Back on Mars, we see Kimar (Leonard Hicks), the king of the Martians, who is concerned for his two young children. They are both glued to the video set all day watching Earth TV shows. They're listless, they don't want to sleep, they don't even want to eat their food pills.

Kimar's wife Momar (Leila Martin) suggests that he and the other Martian bigwigs ask the advice of Chochum (Carl Don), the oldest Martian on the planet who lives deep in a Martian forest which looks like a Star Trek set. Chochum explains that on Earth it is close to Christmas, a time of the Earth year where children eagerly await the arrival of a man called Santa Claus. He goes on to say that Martian children are raised as adults through electronic teaching devices and are being robbed of their childhoods with no idea of what it means to have fun, and suggests that Mars needs a Santa Claus of their own before exploding.

Personally, though, I blame Martian fast food.

Based on this advice, Kimar decides that the best thing would be to bring Santa Claus to Mars. They fly a spaceship to Earth but see multiple Santa Clauses on every street corner at the first city they come across. They touch down at Nameless City Park, where they question two Earth children, Billy and Betty Foster (Victor Stiles and Donna Conforti), about Santa Claus...and then kidnap them.

A clumsy, idiotic Martian named Dropo (Bill McCutcheon) hides the kids in the radar box in the cockpit as the Martians arrive at the North Pole to capture jolly old St. Nick. While they're gone, Billy and Betty escape the ship to try and warn him, but get lost and cold and chased around by a man in the world's cheapest polar bear costume before the Martians' giant cardboard box robot recaptures them. Meanwhile, Kimar and the others find Santa's workshop and shoot everybody inside with a freeze gun while Mr. Claus goes quietly.

During all this, a second news anchor gives us up-to-the-minute coverage of what we've just seen, followed by several minutes of military stock footage.

How do you "kidnape" someone? Did they kidnap and then RAPE him, or what?

On the way back to Mars, Voldar (Vincent Beck), Kimar's military-minded subordinate who is paranoid of absolutely everything and was against this whole Santa Claus thing from the onset, gives a VERY MUCH TOO TRUSTING Santa and the kids a tour of the spaceship which includes a long walk out of a short airlock. The Martian Dick Cheney's plans are foiled, however, when Santa and company reappear, having snuck out of an air duct though some unexplained magic moments before the airlock doors opened.

After landing, Santa, Billy and Betty meet Momar and her Martian kids, who start laughing uncontrollably albeit for the first time ever when Santa simply enters the room. The plan is to set up a workshop similar to the one on Earth, only an automatic one controlled by a push-button console, so Santa can make toys for good little Martian children. The whole Christmas routine is so inspiring that Dropo, silly little numbskull that he is, stuffs a pillow down his pants and starts dressing up as Santa Claus. Then he gets captured by Voldar and two of the Martian Three Stooges as they sabotage the workshop, mistaking the little moron for Father Christmas himself and clearly unaware of the tubes and antennae that are sticking out of his head that are JUST LIKE THE ONES STICKING OUT OF THEIR HEADS!!! And neither Santa, the Earth kids, nor any of the Martians suspect that something is up until they fire up the toy shop and a doll and a teddy bear come out with each other's heads.

At least there's no pinball machine with lips.

Voldar thinks he has the upper hand until Kimar shows him something off-camera in the workshop which convinces him that Santa has escaped, and then locks him and his accompanying underling up in the janitor's closet. Meanwhile, Dropo escapes from Voldar's least attentive crony and his "nucular curtain" (his words, not mine), Voldar escapes from the closet and Santa repairs his toy machine. Billy overhears Voldar scheming to kill Santa, and he and the kids come up with a plan to ambush Voldar with the toys in the shop. Then we get a bizarre montage of the kids shooting things at Voldar, hitting him with things and throwing things at him until Kimar and Dropo call a cease fire and have the mustachioed villain taken away.

So Santa, Billy and Betty say goodbye to the Martians, the annoying Dropo becomes the official Santa Claus of Mars, and Kimar gives them a ship, I imagine, to get them back to Earth just in time for Christmas. We end on a reprise of the opening song, which contains such questionable lyrics as "Hang up that mistletoe/Soon you'll hear ho ho ho."

He looks happy for a guy who was nearly shot out of an airlock into the vacuum of space just now.

So that's that not-so-lovable holiday classic and beloved MST3K staple Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. It's a silly little flick at heart, despite its many, MANY flaws and shortcomings. Like, for instance, the many questions it raises about Martian civilization, such as why Martians have food pills that come in Earth flavors like beef stew and chocolate ice cream and how Martians can instantaneously receive and understand Earth television programs. Or why this extraterrestrial task force of great intelligence and highly-advanced technology pack Wham-O Air Blasters and take along a man dressed in a cardboard robot costume, let alone employ someone with a deep voice who is so very obviously evil and is not above killing two innocent children. Or why the movie's theme song is titled "Hooray for Santa Claus" and even spells out Santa's name in the chorus when its children's choir sing "Santy Claus".

It could be said that this is one of those movies where the filmmakers did not feel it necessary to take things too seriously. It certainly has a light-hearted nature to it, as we see Santa bring instant joy and happiness to everyone surrounding him. Matter of fact, it might even be TOO silly for its own good. Maybe that's why people regard it as one of the most infamous movies ever.

It's so silly, I'm not even sure you need me telling you about it. It's in the public domain, so you can find it anywhere on the Internet and see it for yourself.

In a proposed sequel, they bring Coca-Cola to Mars and put Dropo on all their cans.

Santa Claus (1959)

Be off, my reindeer, and fly through the heavens as fast as you can go! May my palace of gold and crystal enjoy peace, and Jesus, the son of God, join us on Earth so that we can all have joy and good will!
--English-dubbed Mexican Santa Claus

When Santa laughs, the whole world shakes its head.
--Crow T. Robot

Quick quiz - what's the worst Christmas movie you've ever seen?

How many of you thought of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians just now?

Maybe The Star Wars Holiday Special...which technically isn't a movie?

Dudley Moore's Santa Claus: The Movie, perhaps?

What about Disney's all-zombie Christmas Carol last year?

Yeah, those are all suitable candidates. But how many of you even considered THIS one?

This lesser-known and badly dubbed import from Mexico has something of a special place in my Christmas psyche. I know it shouldn't, but it just does. It has been featured in one of two holiday episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 along with the more infamous Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, and between the two of them I cannot help to like the episode this one was in a little more. I'm not even sure I can call this the worst Christmas movie I've seen--everything in it is just so bizarre that it actually makes it kinda fun.

And who do we have to thank for this warm cup of spiked eggnog? None other than K. Gordon Murray, a Florida-based film producer who spent much of his career importing low-budget fairy tale, horror and exploitation films from other countries, dubbing them into English and releasing them in American theaters. Santa Claus was the first fantasy film he released in America, and surprisingly it was a major hit with family audiences when his English adaptation came out in 1960. It was so successful that he started putting out more family films in the years to follow, earning him the title "King of the Kiddie Matinee" by the time the business was beginning to peter out in the 1970s. Santa Claus in particular flourished, and theaters continued to show it again and again every few years for a staggering THREE DECADES, nearly ten years after Murray's death by heart attack in 1979.

The movie starts off by shattering every idea you've ever had about Santa Claus. For example, according to the screenwriter, he does NOT have a workshop at the North Pole which he staffs with pointy-eared elves three apples tall. Instead, he lives, according to a narrator, "away up in the heavens, far out in space in a beautiful gold and crystal palace right above the North Pole", which is staffed by a multitude of children from all over the world. Or rather, the same children dressed up in different ethnic costumes, as shown in a "parade of nations" segment at the start of the film where kids (often the same kids) sing ethnic songs horrendously off-key while Santa (Joseph Elias Moreno) accompanies on the organ, squirming strangely in his seat all the while.

APOLOGIES TO EVERY NATIONALITY EVERYWHERE.

A devil-shaped firecracker provides a segue to a rather strange location for a movie about Santa Claus: the ninth level of Hell.

Satan himself, represented by a disembodied voice and a shot of flames, assigns Pitch, chief of all demons (José Luis Aguirre) to travel up to Earth and attempt to thwart Santa Claus' efforts and make all the children of the world do evil, threatening to feed him chocolate ice cream, which Pitch claims is bad for his delicate digestion, if he fails.

Meanwhile, it wouldn't be a Santa Claus movie without some children in it, and this film focuses on five in particular. One is a rich little boy whose parents are never around. Then we have a cute, thick-accented little girl named Lupita whose family is poor; her only goal in life is to have a dolly to play with. Finally, there are three bad, evil, nasty little brothers whom Pitch immediately latches onto.

Through the so-called wondrous instruments in Santa's magic observatory, which include a telescope with a snake-eye attachment, a pinball machine with big red lips, and a Pop-o-matic bubble which lets you look in on what children are dreaming about, we learn a little more about these kids. Peeping in on the rich little boy's dream, Santa learns that all he wants for Christmas is to be with his parents. Through his earscope (an oscillating fan with Van Gogh's missing ear attached to it) he hears the three little street urchins make fun of him and tells them off in a loud, booming, disembodied voice.

But more importantly, we see Lupita caught between moral grounds when she is tempted to steal a doll from a sidewalk marketplace, with a little nudging from Pitch. After she decides to put the doll back, Pitch follows her home and blows in her ear while she is sleeping, which causes her to have a nightmare. In this dream Lupita sings to a little doll in a room full of smoke surrounded by several giant boxes. The boxes open, and several freakish man-sized dolls dance awkwardly around the confused little girl, one of whom engages her in conversation about the negative ramifications of her honesty when presented with an opportunity to illicitly relieve herself of a consequence of her family's desperate, impoverished living conditions. In other words, "why don't you steal a doll?"

I'm willing to wager the smoke isn't from a fog machine.

Next we see a montage of kids writing and mailing letters to Santa which magically rise out of the post office incinerator with the power of rolling film backwards and up into Santa's crystal castle. These letters he divides into three boxes: "verdad surtase" (telling the truth), "mentira tirese" (lying) and a third slot delivering letters to the metaphorical stork for kids who want little brothers and sisters.

Then we visit Santa's crystal meth lab where Merlin the Magician (yes, THE Merlin the Magician) provides him with a magic flower which will make him invisible when he sniffs it, as well as a special dreaming powder which will send anyone still awake when he arrives to sleep, dreaming dreams of joy and good will. Next a magic blacksmith and keymaker provides Santa with a magic key with the power to open any lock on any door, presumably for houses without chimneys.

Now we come to Santa's training room, where we learn that he does in fact NOT have a belly that shakes like a bowl full of jelly - no, he has to keep his waistline in check so he can fit down any chimney. During all this Santa continues to laugh unprovoked, probably because he is the jolly old elf that he is, but I can't help but suspect he's taken one too many sniffs on that magic flower.

"First batch is free. The second one'll cost ya."

And now it's time for Santa to make his annual Christmas Eve rounds. As he prepares his sleigh, a clever little child with a poncho and sombrero whom I suspect the dubbers of having named Pedro warns Santa that he must be back at the castle before sunrise (he doesn't mention in which time zone) or else his FOUR NAMELESS MECHANIZED PHOTOSENSITIVE REINDEER will turn to dust, and Santa would perish on an Earth diet of "most of the animals, the plants, the flowers, the roots, the birds, even smoke and alcohol" instead of the "pastries and ice cream made of soft clouds" he normally eats. A parade of Santa's child labor form a line to his sleigh and start loading his great big seemingly bottomless sack of toys, singing a song with strange lyrics all the while. Santa joins in a couple of verses, singing "Hurry up my children, get on with your packing, it's the night for Santa Claus to fill all those stockings" in a VERY DEEP, VERY OFF-KEY VOICE which must be heard to be believed. I'd call this the worst Christmas-related song I've ever heard if not for Carrie Fisher's drug-induced crooning at the end of The Star Wars Holiday Special, and the fact that it's the most unintentionally hilarious bit in the whole movie.

Then after he winds up his reindeer, one of which joins him in a magic flower-induced fit of laughter which, again, must be heard to be believed, he finally sets out to deliver the presents.

Santa's first stop is--here's a shocker--Mexico City, where Pitch is waiting for him. From here, we get some Wile E. Coyote-Roadrunner-style shtick where Pitch sets traps for Santa to thwart his yuletide duties, such as pushing chimneys out of place, super-heating doorknobs with his breath and setting fires in fireplaces he's about to enter through. Naturally Santa sees through Pitch's every move and even comes up with a few tricks of his own, like blowing soot in his face and shooting him in the butt with a toy rocket launcher. Meanwhile, the subplots with the lonely little rich boy and the three young rapscallions are quickly resolved - Santa poses as a waiter at the only restaurant that's open on Christmas Eve night and serves the rich kid's parents a magic cocktail with undisclosed ingredients that makes them want to go home and see him, and as for the three plotting to capture him and make off with his toys, he shoots some kind of sparkly missile at them and scares them back home where they find lumps of coal in their shoes.

Read into this scene whatever you will.

Well, around this time the writers finally decided to add some tension to the story, as Pitch sneaks up to Santa's sleigh while he is making another delivery and conjures up a pair of scissors to snip a hole in Santa's bag of dreaming powder, which also causes his magic flower to fall out of the sleigh. Santa doesn't realize this until he's sneaking through some rich family's front yard and Pitch sics a vicious dog on him, and while he is forced to climb a tree to get away, Pitch gleefully wakes up the whole neighborhood and summons the police and the fire department.

With morning imminent (Mexico standard time) Santa calls up to the castle for help, which Pedro overhears while dusting the observatory and rushes to retrieve Merlin. Merlin racks his brain for a few seconds, and then suggests that Santa use a stuffed toy cat on wheels (and apparently motorized) from his sack to distract the dog and make his escape as the authorities and firemen arrive, one of whom turns on his hose and drenches the residents for no reason. Pitch lingers around the scene long enough for one of the firemen to notice some smoke from where he is standing and unknowingly hose him down, to which the narrator comments "Well, that serves him right, the old troublemaker. He'll probably catch pneumonia, but he asked for it." Sheesh, narrator, whose side are you on?

Meanwhile, Santa's magic flower has conveniently landed right at Lupita's front door, which is where Santa was making one last stop before flying home. Lupita suddenly wakes up and gives a semi-intelligible thick-accented monologue to her mother and father that Santa left a doll for her, which is waiting for her right outside her door, and wow it's just as tall as she is. Lupita thanks Santa as he arrives back at his castle, having once again brought joy and love to all the children of the world. Or rather, four or five children in Mexico City to the exclusion of every other Christmas-celebrating household, let alone all the children who are from Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Jewish families or are otherwise celebrating other winter holidays, but whatever, happy ending.

Blow in his ear and he'll follow you anywhere.

Wow. This movie is just...wow.

I don't think there is any conceivable way to describe just how utterly outrageous this movie is. Picture a Sunday school class taught by a hellfire-and-damnation preacher combined with a wildly inaccurate episode of Mythbusters and a Nativity play on PCP and airplane glue and you haven't even come remotely close to how crazy this movie is. There are some genuinely sentimental moments in it which mostly revolve around Lupita and the poor little rich boy, but those bits just get lost in the sheer insanity of everything else. This is without a doubt the strangest Christmas movie I've ever seen. It just defies all belief.

So would I recommend this movie? ...Well, obviously not to kids, since some of the imagery would scare them into celebrating Festivus for the rest of their lives. If you prefer more competent Christmas movies, then...no. Just no. Everybody else? Well, if you like bad movies, and bad Christmas movies in particular, be advised that there's no lifeguard on duty, so swim at your own risk. And mind you don't catch pneumonia.

He sees you when you're sleeping. And he KNOWS when you're awake.