Overdrawn at the Memory Bank (1983)

Caught in a future world, his only escape is back in time!
--the tagline on the VHS cover, which is odd since the film doesn't mention time travel

Why don't you "reconst" your "Flavo-Fibes"?!
-Tom Servo

Is it just me, or have I been getting a lot of movies telling me the world will suck in the future since I started this blog?

Overdrawn at the Memory Bank is a 1983 TV movie filmed in Canada and bankrolled by public television station WNET in New York. It was intended to be part of an ongoing series of PBS-funded productions adapting various sci-fi novels (in this film's case, a 1976 short story written by John Varley) but ended up being the last of only three because of lack of funding. The film was not a critical success and since then was re-aired a few times on the Sci-Fi Channel, including in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 during its eighth season, which also featured fake pledge drive host segments.

To think, your tax dollars helped fund this movie.

You don't have to be computer-simulated to work here, but it helps.

In what is yet another in a ever-lengthening list of dystopian movies I have come to review on this blog, this faux-Matrix world is entirely computer-controlled and ruled over by a number of super-duper-maxi-mega-multi-million-dollar corporations which have assumed all power of governance and lawmaking and general bossing-people-around-type affairs. The late Raul Julia, known for such films as The Addams Family, Addams Family Values and I am certain many others, stars as Aram Fingal, a programmer for one of these big companies (named "Novicorp" for the sake of convenience) who's one of those annoying people at the office. You know the type - never does his job, sits at his desk staring at Facebook posts, spends all his time at the water cooler chatting up secretaries, we've all seen them. Only instead of Facebook, Fingal just sits as his desk downloading old movies like Casablanca (or in this film's futuristic lexicon, "scrolling up cinemas") on company time.

Well, one day, his superiors finally catch him in the act and order him to visit his "psychist", an old lady who has to be prompted to ask him about his mother by the big all-seeing computer with an electronic disembodied voice that exposits absolutely everything that happens in this film. His "psychist" orders him to 48 hours of compulsory "prophylactic rehab", which consists of inserting him in a virtual forest with his mind placed in the body of an animal, or "doppling" him as they call it. It's sort of a forced vacation, though if you ask me, it's more like they give him some juice (or "reconst", whatever that means), knock him out, cut his head open, stick some electrodes in his brain and have him narrate over some stock film ripped from a nature documentary.

Fingal, as it happens, is also very poor, so rather than be doppled into a horse or something nice yet very expensive, he ends up inside the body of a baboon named Daisy.

It was either that or go in as an anteater. Vile, stupid, hateful creatures.

Either he's being doppled or he's part of a focus group for an Adult Swim pilot.

All goes well in his little dopple universe/nature documentary footage. He skitters around the place, gets drunk on nature documentary footage maruba fruit with his little animal friends, and just chills. However, when he's threatened by a nature documentary footage elephant, he requests to be pulled out of there, but there's a bit of a problem with that - you see, at the same time some grade school kids are going on a field trip of the doppling facility, touching people's brains and unbuttoning their tops, when one perverted little urchin in particular for some reason switches Fingal's tag with somebody else's, and now his body has gone missing.

When word of this gets out to the rival companies, Novicorp's stock plunges, and the appropriately fat, appropriately evil Chairman (Donald C. Moore) is considering having Fingal terminated to recoup their losses, but Fingal's dopple supervisor, a tech named Apollonia (TV movie vet Linda Griffiths) convinces him to change his mind and have her keep Fingal's soul in their HX368 computer mainframe until they can find his body, or before his dopple time runs out and his existence is erased, whichever comes first. Of course, Fingal IS quite easily bored, and she would have to keep an eye on him so he doesn't start screwing with the computer's source code.

You can already guess how that will turn out.

"I'm getting something...Novicorp...can...suck...my...HEY!!"

Fingal wakes up in a computer simulation of his own bedroom and tries to phone for help, but is only informed to go to work as normal. Apollonia must enter the simulation and explain to him that he can create his own reality simulation in the HX368, but he must create a reality as normal as possible to make it easier to track him.

And how does she enter the simulation? AS FINGAL'S LONG DEAD MOTHER. Yeah, THAT'S normal.

Well, at least this scene gives us the film's most unintentionally funny line - Raul Julia asks "Mom...am I nuts?" and it comes out "Mom...my nuts?"

By the way, Fingal is played by a Puerto Rican actor, but his mother is Caucasian? How does that work?

"Well, I had a little fling in San Juan, one thing led to another, and then..."

Anyway, for some reason the Chairman decides to undermine Apollonia's efforts by hacking the simulation to chase her Fingal's-mother character to run into the path of a simulated truck.

From there, it isn't long before Fingal's turned the inside of Novicorp's mainframe into a cheap Casablanca set, complete with a virtual reproduction of himself playing Humphrey Bogart and an unnamed neurotic virtual guy as Peter Lorre. Apollonia and the Chairman pop in and out frequently, the former to try and keep him in line and slowly become the love interest, the latter as the "Fat Man" who comes in to make vague threats and generally make life difficult for them.

Of all the scenes in all the movies in all the world, they reference this one.

Eventually, after extensive periods of boredom which included sleeping with one of his lady coworkers and even finding THAT boring, Fingal gets tired of waiting for them to pull his mind out of the machine and decides to find his own way out of the HX368 by punching in numbers at random, despite the fact that tampering with the programming could have devastating effects in the outside world it controls. After numerous attempts, he stumbles onto the access code quite by accident - IY479.

So the name of the computer is HX368 and the password to access it is...IY479. The letters and numbers that follow each letter and number in the name of the computer. That's the kind of thing an idiot would have on his email account. I'm surprised it wasn't 863XH or 12345 or the Chairman's wife's name spelled backwards.

Anyway, some cheesy video effects and random falling snow later, we've found he's hijacked the weather control system and is now wreaking meteorological havoc all over the world. Or so the graphics tell me.

WHOOOOOO, FUTURISTIC! WHOOOO...

Apollonia reappears to Fingal for some reason dressed as Venus in a clam shell from the Renaissance painting (or, if you want, think Uma Thurman from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) and tells him to stop again. Fingal complies...for about five minutes, until another visit from the Fat Man changes his mind again. He also deduces that the Chairman is using Apollonia to track him down and badger him. He tries to regain access, but luckily the CEO has added another security lock to the system to keep Fingal out, but he gets back in anyway by just "reversing the access code."

So now it's...974YI? ...How did this guy get to be CEO of this company again?

Anyway, THIS has the effect of spitting Monopoly cards out at everybody in the building, as Novicorp's finances are redistributed to the proletariat masses.

Meanwhile, Fingal's body is finally recovered. Turned out he was in the sex change operation queue. Go fig.

EPIC STARING CONTEST ACTION!

What happens after that is very, VERY confusing, so I'll just skim through it. The Chairman finally decides that Fingal must die and re-enters the computer via Apollonia for a final confrontation, promptly shutting her out entirely somehow, the ensuing meeting leaves virtual Fingal and the little guy shot, a cheesy spinny virtual effect appears out of nowhere in front of Fingal which he grabs somehow and screams "I'M INTERFACE" at the top of his lungs, and then he stands in front of the Fat Man who starts convulsing for some reason, and they both just stare at each other for a full minute before Fingal shoots some very large pixels out of his eyes and vaporize the Fat Man.

...ah calls 'em as ah sees 'em.

Some MORE cheesy video effects later, Fingal returns to his body, and he and Apollonia make out a little before he erases their identities, assigns the Chairman a month's compulsory rehab (as an anteater, appropriately enough--serves him right, the bastard) and programs every screen in the building to scroll up Casablanca before the two of them leave the room, free from their corporate yokes.

"Look, I've Photoshopped the Chairman's face onto an anteater! ...I think I've improved the anteater!"

Overdrawn at the Memory Bank wants to be a good movie, I can feel it. Deep down inside it wants to be a decent sci-fi movie. Sadly, it comes up short in this because of three reasons:

One: the visuals in this film are not the least bit pleasant, at least when it's not nature documentary footage. The filmmakers' decision to shoot this movie on cheap-looking videotape instead of film is glaring, and the chroma key and blue screen special effects only heighten the level of its ugliness. I was half-expecting Mr. T to come out and teach me something about self-esteem. The climax practically thrives on them to the point where you have no idea what's going on. Not to mention it looks horrifically dated three decades after the fact, and the music and sound effects do nothing to help.

Two: it tries to pass itself off as futuristic by giving everything silly futuristic names. It rips a page out of George Orwell's 1984 by trying to invent new words for things. Money is called "credits." Movies are renamed "cinemas." Even potato chips are renamed "Flavo-Fibes!" It's cute and all, but in a few cases it gets really confusing and unnecessary. I mean, what the hell is "reconst" supposed to be anyway? Water? Beer? Medicine? Whatever was in Fingal's cup at the doppling table could have been wallpaper paste for all I know.

And three: corporation that is so glaringly evil and yet so grossly incompetent that the concept of network security eludes them. This is a guy who could hack into their server and watch illegally download movies on company time, and they put an access code to their most delicate software that is so simple a grade school kid could crack it? And then when he tries to get back in, they put in ANOTHER access code that he literally cracks in seconds?

In short, this movie is one part cheap Orwellian sci-fi, one part plot enigma, one part computer graphics vomit and one part low-budget Casablanca ripoff. I can't think of any other reason not to recommend this movie that the Anteater Anti-Defamation League can't provide.

"JETSONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!"

Alien from L.A. (1988)

Alien from L.A.? That's kinda redundant, isn't it?
--TV's Frank

I would like to know how 1980's culture has suddenly become popular again.

Yes, it sounds weird, me cursing the decade in which I was born, but I did live through most of the 80's, and let's face it, a lot of the stuff that came from that period in time has not aged well. Feathered hair, New Kids on the Block, Jem and the Holograms, Saved by the Bell, such fashion items as leopard skin tights and anything in neon...sure, we all have our memories, but would you really want to watch an episode of the original My Little Pony nowadays? I like to think that times are better now that MP3 players have replaced Walkmans, phones you can carry in your pocket have replaced phones as big as your head, and there are way more than a meager handful of channels on cable TV. Our family sitcoms are better written now, our cartoons are better animated now, and if we don't like them, we have an Internet on which to complain.

I can't even watch Transformers on the Hub without gagging myself with a spoon at some of its character's outfits. Is Carly wearing socks or leg warmers? And why is she wearing them over her pants?

I have sort of a history with a certain movie from this accursed era, Alien from L.A. My family and I were big fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 during its Comedy Central run and this was our favorite episode. It was quite early in Mike Nelson's tenure as host - four episodes after Joel Hodgson left the series, in fact - and the way they put this film through the wringer makes this one a classic. My sisters and I could make fun of its leading lady's high-pitched voice all day long.

Once upon a time (the movie does in fact open with those words - blecch!) on the perpetually sunny beaches of Malibu, there lived a young girl named Wanda Sakmuss...Sakmuseum...Sakmunmsenmun...Wanda, a mousy teenage girl with enormous glasses and a voice that sounds like someone opened a tank of helium on the Bambi set. Her boyfriend's just dumped her because she's a dumpy-looking plain-Jane with no sense of adventure who's too afraid of everything for his active lifestyle of surfing, rock climbing, camping and everything else Californians in 1980's movies do.

She is played by renowned supermodel Kathy Ireland.

Yes, basically they're trying to tell us that Kathy Ireland can't hold down a boyfriend.

We learn as her friend drives her to her roller waitress day job at a typical 1980's pseudo-50's burger joint that her mother was hit by a car and killed when she was young, and that her father is an explorer who left her ten years ago to travel the world or some such excuse and has been missing all this time, so she clearly has abandonment issues and feels she's been rejected all her life.

Yes, basically they're trying to tell us that Kathy Ireland thinks people have an aversion to her.

I mean, seriously, who'd want to date a total washout like Kathy Ireland?

Mercifully, before she starts singing a heartfelt ballad about her low self-esteem and desire to change herself, we cut to somewhere in Africa, where we see her father (Richard Haines) wander around some ancient ruins and fall down a very deep hole.

Somebody (the cameraman, I'm guessing, since there was no one else around when he fell) sends Wanda a letter saying that her father's fallen down a bottomless pit and presumably died as well as a plane ticket to somewhere in Africa to help settle his final affairs. She flies out there, even though she's afraid of airplanes, and while sorting through his belongings, she and by extension we learn that her father was looking for the fabled lost city of Atlantis, populated naturally by Atlanteans, an alien civilization who traveled to Earth thousands of years ago on a massive spaceship that eventually sank deep into the bowels of the planet and still survive today where their spaceship is buried, in a city deep in the center of the Earth.

Funny, I thought the lost city of Atlantis was underwater. And populated by merpeople.

Well, eventually, Wanda finds those very same ruins that her father was rummaging through during the opening credits in his closet or something and, because nobody told her not to or put up a sign or a barricade or even some yellow tape or anything, not that that would have stopped her, this being a movie and all, she wanders down in them and eventually falls down the very same bottomless pit her father fell through.

The pit doesn't prove to be as bottomless as advertised, as there appears to be a bottom for Wanda to land on. It doesn't seem to be that deep either, since she survives the fall without injury. She's perfectly healthy enough to stand up on her own power and walk off to explore this strange new world.

The first person she meets wandering around down here is a heavily Australian-accented miner named Gus (William R. Moses) whom she rescues from a pair of murderous claim-jumpers, and who afterwards reluctantly agrees to take her into Atlantis to find her father, obviously annoyed by her voice, which sounds like a Care Bear on Ritalin. Her "big bones" (which are alluded to several times throughout the rest of the film) cause her to tip his tractor when she first gets on, and in the accident she loses her glasses, but it's perfectly all right since she doesn't really appear to need them for the rest of the movie.

Actual quote from Wanda: "It looks like an underground city!"
Actual quote form me: "Oh, really? I thought it looked like a matte painting."

As they drive along to Atlantis, she tells him her life story in a voice that makes Alvin and the Chipmunks sound like James Earl Jones, and he promises to help her find her father seemingly in the hopes of shutting her up and making her go away. While the two of them stop off at a tavern run by the Empress of Evil from Electra Woman and Dyna Girl and Wanda takes a much-needed steam bath, a ratty-looking girl who has overheard her talking about the surface world and the sun and Malibu Beach reports to Atlantean General Rykov, an eye-patch-wearing female David Bowie impersonator (played by Janie du Plessis, who also plays Rat Girl) that an alien from the surface world has infiltrated Atlantis.

Rat Girl appears again at a restaurant where Wanda and Gus are having a bite and knocks out Wanda with a syringe of something (insert modeling joke here) and takes her away when Gus walks off to make a phone call. She delivers Wanda to so-called "boss of bosses" Mambino (played by Deep Roy, more recently known for playing every Oompa Loompa in existence in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), a midget dressed like a 1930's gangster and weirdly sporting three-inch eyelashes, and then goes behind his back to Rykov to report her whereabouts.

Okay, a quick word about Atlantis. You'd expect a great underground alien city to have highly-advanced technology and everything's all nice and shiny and there's Apple logos all over the place, but to be honest it looks more like a series of grimy back alleys and industrial basements populated by 80's music video dancers and Lady Gaga impersonators. A million possible ideas for an ancient underground alien civilization and they decide to watch a bunch of old Madonna videos on a bender and see what comes from it? Couldn't they have been a little more creative, like with the Silurians from Doctor Who? At least those guys LOOKED the part. And how come these people have never heard of the surface world or anything from it when Mambino is clearly dressed as a stereotypical Mafia don AND I could easily spot a Roy Lichtenstein painting in plain sight in the background of a clothing shop?

This isn't an underground city. It looks more like an underground shopping mall.

After going around town saying that he's "looking for a girl with big bones" (try the personals, buddy) Gus reappears to save Wanda as Mambino and his thugs attempt to hide her from the government (Mambino conveniently gives Wanda something to knock him out with while watching his thugs fight off the Aussie miner), but then loses her again when she falls over a railing. By this time the government has a picture of her and has put a bounty on her head (why the photographer couldn't just make a citizen's arrest right as he took the picture I just don't know), and after a chase scene from a money-hungry mob and some more of Mambino's thugs, she is rescued by a handsome-looking street urchin named...Charmin (Thom Matthews).

Yes. They actually named him Charmin. The film literally opens with the words "once upon a time" and now Wanda has been rescued by a princely fellow named Charmin.

So when does the wicked queen turn up with the poisoned apple?

"Have Maybelline called me back about that endorsement deal?"

Charmin proves to be the only person in this movie who can stand the sound of her voice, which if you will recall feels like a bundle of railroad spikes tied together with barbed wire are being driven into your brain with a sledgehammer, and even starts to fall for her a little. This relationship is only about ten minutes long when Mambino's thug attacks again and Charmin fights him off, allowing Wanda to run and hide somewhere. Then Wanda just...lingers around somewhere for a couple minutes before Rat Girl points her out and she finally gets arrested.

Rykov and another very important guy discuss what to do with the aliens with the Atlantean Overlord, a very deep-voiced short guy sitting in what looks like a motorized swivel chair with no "off" switch. Rykov wants Wanda and her father killed, accusing them of being spies from the surface world sent on a reconnaissance mission for a possible invasion of Atlantis, while the other Very Important Guy says that they both arrived by accident and should be released on the condition that they keep their civilization a secret. Wanda is eventually brought before the Overlord to defend herself (gotta love the voice contrast here--like Beelzebub talking to a Japanese cartoon character), and no sooner is she finally reunited with her father than Gus suddenly barges in and pulls the both of them out of there.

Mr. Whipple, please don't squeeze the Charmin! ...admit it, movie, you set yourself up for that one.

Gus takes Wanda and her father to join his friend Midget Robbie Coltrane, who has been making a vessel which will return the aliens to the surface world via the same hole they fell through. As they say their goodbyes and are about to take off, Rykov suddenly appears, announcing that they are to be executed as spies, when the other Very Important Guy comes in, simply punches out Rykov, and sends Wanda and her father on their way with the promise that they will never reveal the existence of Atlantis to anyone on the surface.

Wanda returns to SoCal with a new-found self-confidence, proven by the fact that she is no longer afraid to be seen at the beach in a bikini top. Her ex-boyfriend sees how attractive she's gotten and suddenly wants to date her again, but she just brushes him off. Then Charmin for some reason shows up on a motorcycle which, being an alien, he shouldn't know how to ride, and despite the fact that she's only known him for ten or fifteen minutes, another fairy tale subtitle tells us that she will "live happily ever after." (Gag.)

Ehh, just cover that up with a tarp. I'm sure no one will notice.

Somewhere in Alien from L.A. is a story about an ugly duckling who becomes a beautiful swan. Somewhere in Alien from L.A. is a story about a girl braving the elements looking for her long lost father. Don't get me wrong, those subplots ARE in there somewhere, but they are buried quite deep in this mishmash of early MTV, Alice in Wonderland and Blade Runner. Much of the film is just Kathy Ireland running around Atlantis squeaking at everybody while the other characters are so underdeveloped that they just come and go as they please. Not that back alleys and industrial basements aren't a good place to chase a movie character around in, but back alleys and industrial basements with Australian glam rockers, flamboyant gangsters and a lady Dick Cheney with an eye-patch kinda force you to tune out the rest of the movie.

Another thing that is distracting from the plot is that Kathy Ireland CANNOT ACT. Yes, she's quite easy on the eyes, but that's about all she contributes to this film. You can tell that she had to be DIRECTED to act in some parts--for example, one scene requires her to be tired and she acts like she's just smoked a truckload of weed. It's little wonder why every one in this film thinks so little of Wanda--she doesn't really do anything to make her a very sympathetic character...or make this movie enjoyable to anyone except masochists and the most enthusiastic bad movie aficionado.

And have I mentioned that her voice is unnaturally high-pitched and really annoying?

I'll bet that a lot of you skipped past this whole review just to get to the "after" picture at the very end.
Understandable...you'll want to watch this movie like that, too.

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.

The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)

Sometimes the only way I know you're alive is when I hear you flush the toilet!
-Ev Kester
You're so dumb you wouldn't know rabbit turds from Rice Krispies!
-Dan Kester

You may recall that in my review of Texas Chain Saw Massacre we discussed the Deep South stereotype. That is, how according to Hollywood movies and TV shows everyone in the rural southeastern United States is a toothless hick, a neo-Confederate soldier, a wealthy cotton farmer, an incestuous slob, or a serial killer.

Well, this trope is not necessarily exclusive to the Deep South. Any rural location can be used as a backdrop for this dirtier part of Americana: an isolated farmland in Illinois, a cabin in the Rocky Mountains, even something cleaner like a backwards Midwestern suburban town can serve as the nesting grounds of these tropes. Pretty much anyplace as far away from modern urban civilization as possible works. As a matter of fact, Ed Gein, the real-life murderer that Leatherface from TCSM among others was based on, lived in Wisconsin.

Speaking of Wisconsin, this is where our movie, Bill Rebane's 1975 feature The Giant Spider Invasion, takes place, though looking at it you'd think it was in the Hazzard County ghetto. The film is at its heart a creature feature about an army of spiders from outer space that kill people and break things, but most of it sheds more interest on the disgusting exploits of its trailer trash cast. Think of it as Kingdom of the Spiders with a lower budget, lower standards, lower everything.

Many of you like me remember this movie from Mystery Science Theater 3000 during its years on the Sci Fi Channel (or PsyPhie or whatever they call themselves now), and this was the episode which made me desperately want to shower every time I watched it.

Well, either this one or Hobgoblins. I can't remember exactly.

The movie has multiple subplots, but none of them are very interesting and you'll be rooting for the spiders anyway, so let's just run down the cast of characters:

• Dutch (Bill Williams), a hick who runs the town's only restaurant where waitress/prostitute Helga (Christiane Schmidtmer) works at.
• Sherrif Jones (Alan Hale from Gilligan's Island), the law 'round these parts. He spends most of the movie answering the phone in his office, sitting in Dutch's eatery and thinking he is funnier than he actually is.
• Dan and Ev Kester (Robert Easton and so-called "special guest star" Leslie Parrish), a disgusting ma-and-pa couple who occupy the screen for a good portion of the movie. Dan is a dirt farmer and an estranged husband who goes out every night to Helga's trailer for some good old fashioned adultery while Ev lounges around the house all hours of the day drowning herself in legalized moonshine.
• Terry (Diane Lee Hart), Ev's young sister whom everyone wants to have wild untamed sex with.
• Dave (Kevin Brodie), the only person in this town with any practice or knowledge of hygiene and moral fiber. He's dating Terry, and Dan doesn't like it--partly because he doesn't seem to trust him, but mostly because he wants to have wild untamed sex with Terry himself.
• A hellfire-and-brimstone preacher who pops in and out of the movie for no real reason.

It's as if Britney Spears married Grizzly Adams' little brother.

Interspersed between scenes with these characters, a meteor hurls toward Earth and lands in the Kesters' backyard with some borderline psychedelic special effects and quite a lot of wind. Nearby, a motorcyclist falls off his bike (which inexplicably blows up) and wanders into the woods until something eats him.

The impact causes all sorts of electric disturbance, including bringing down an army plane, which arouses the suspicion (good lord, did I just use that word? *shiver*) of bepantsuited scientist Dr. Langer (Barbara Hale). NASA sends another scientist, the sexist Dr. Vance (Steve Brodie) to assist her in her study of this strange phenomena. These two are apparently the main couple of the film, which is odd since they both appear to be in their fifties. Through some elaborate scientific babble and lab equipment and adding machines and stuff, the scientists eventually conclude that the meteor fell through a black hole and opened up an interdimensional portal that all these spiders have been coming through. However that works.

The next morning, Dan and Ev finally inspect the impact site (Dan apparently was too tired from his...ahem...evening activities to take a look immediately after the meteor hit) and find a lot of dead cows lying around with their bodies horribly mutilated. As Dan schemes to chop up the meat and sell it to Dutch's cafe like he always does, they finally reach the crater and find several small rocks lying around which turn out to have sparkly diamonds inside them, which has the Kesters seeing dollar signs while unbeknown to them, a spider hatches out of one of them...

"Any news on that Gilligan's Island reunion special?"

Unaware that their whole house is slowly being infested with decidedly non-giant spiders, Dan freaks out when he finds human remains (the motorcyclist we saw earlier) while digging for more rocks, which scares the crap out of him knowing that local authorities will come looking for the body and might find his recent diamond crop. He decides to go to his cousin Billy (Paul Bentzen), who runs a rock shop in town, to have his diamonds appraised...AFTER his nightly conjugal visit. (Whatever happened to priorities?) During the night, Ev, who in Dan's words has been "hittin' the BOOZE again," is chased out of the house by a spider in her sock drawer and into a random cabin, where the titular giant spider eats her.

Uggggghh, Billy. Disgusting, unprincipled simpleton Billy. He looks even less clean than Dan, and I may be scratching the surface here. Fortunately he doesn't last long, because as soon after he tries to put the moves on Terry (ha ha, it's funny because they're related and rednecks like to inbreed and stuff!) he's driving off in his car where the giant spider runs him off the road into a gas station, which explodes before he can completely smash through the window and escape. Dan, after hearing that his so-called diamonds aren't worth the space rock they landed in, goes out digging for more when the giant spider eats him too. Then the spider army goes after Terry, nearly bringing the whole house down on top of her, until Dave arrives to take her to safety.

The last twenty minutes of the movie are a whirlwind of activity. The giant spider attacks a fair in Gleason. Dutch gathers his fellow rednecks and declares an unruly mob on the spider, which the sheriff is unable to quiet down. Dr. Langer and Dr. Vance run around the very dimly lit Wisconsin countryside and roll down a hill at first glance of the spider, Dr. Langer screaming like a banshee the whole while. Some guy loads something into a helicopter as part of the doctors' plan to seal off the portal. The giant spider heads back to town and dispatches Dutch and his mob before retreating to the Kester farmland. Alan Hale's stunt double is eaten trying to fend it off. Whatever was in that helicopter is dropped and explodes, which probably closes the gateway, I don't know, I suppose it does because then the giant spider starts bubbling over in a disgusting display and the superfluous preacher closes us out as the credits roll.

"A Buick with spider legs! Run!!"

Confusing movie, confusing visuals, confusing storyline. So the giant spider dies at the end, but what about all those little spiders still running around everywhere? Do they all melt into small puddles of ice cream and mashed potato soup? For that matter, what's with the title? The Giant Spider Invasion sort of implies that Earth is invaded by giant spiders, and yet there's only ONE giant spider, whereas the spiders that do any invading at all are normal-sized. That's not really a threat, as Terry demonstrates toward the end by taking one of them out with an iron. Maybe if they were brown recluses or black widows or one of those carnivorous arachnids from Kingdom of the Spiders, but still when you take size into consideration they would still be at a gross disadvantage. But the number one worst thing about this movie are the characters. Its redneck cast is the closest thing it has to comedy relief, and they're just not funny. They're just repulsive (or in Alan Hale's case, annoying as crap) to the point where you start counting down the minutes to when they get killed off, and the doctors are uninteresting characters as well. You don't care about anybody or anything in it.

In summation, The Giant Spider Invasion is...disgusting. Just flat-out, uncompromisingly disgusting. I've already used that word several times in this review, but I keep coming back to it, because the movie is, well, disgusting. The plot, the cinematography, and again, the characters...it's all a disgusting mess.

Maybe it was this MST3K episode that made me want to shower after watching it. But then again, the sex-starved kids from Hobgoblins were pretty distasteful to watch themselves...

I'm surprised they didn't all die from the noxious fumes in that house.

(Incidentally, would you believe that this movie has fans? Fans so devoted they've started up a website where you can buy it on DVD?)