A Collection of Essential Christmas Viewing
12.22.07 By Collin DavidWe fast approach That Time Of Year again, wherein the whole world gets into The Spirit, you step in goodwill everywhere you walk, and Santa threatens to outdo us all. It’s so easy to become dispirited when everyone’s telling you to BE SPIRITED DAMMIT, but then again, I’ve always had a problem with obeying the masses. If everyone jumped off of a building, I’d be the one trying to jump onto it.
One thing I have continued to enjoy this year has been the weeks of Christmas-related TV viewing leading up to the holiday, even if it fails to move me, since I’m more apt to enjoy being semi-attentive towards TV specials than putting on a DVD that I feel obligated to watch. Still, if you’re having any kind of holiday festivities, and you’ve run out of eclectic holiday tunes and gone through your liberating libations, one always has the mighty Plan B of the television’s unique brand of spirit.
Aside from the offbeat classic, The Nightmare Before Christmas (which should be an annual essential anyhow), I like my Christmas to be mixed with a fair amount of science, and sometimes, Satan. Just how I like my women. The following films are public domain - so you can find reasonably clear copies on DVD for about 3 bucks each. I went through a binge on exceptionally bad, cheap movie from DVDPacific a few years ago that neither myself, nor the world, has recovered from. It’s one of my bigger weaknesses.
The first of these gloriously disastrous films is simply titled ‘Santa Claus’, though I like to call it ‘Santa Claus, His Pal Merlin and Maybe Some Kids Vs. Satan’. Produced in Mexico in 1959 (and seeing a very limited US release, for reasons that become obvious when you watch it), the film has been dubbed into convenient English for our enjoyment. When a film begins with Santa overexcitedly playing on an organ as he ogles a ten-minute sequence of disinterested kids from around the world singing their native songs, you know you’re in for a treat. For the record, our native US song is ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’, and we all wear cowboy hats and play guitars. The best strategy to deploy this movie on the unsuspecting is to just put it on and allow them to be bored to tears for ten minutes, so when minute twelve rolls around, and an explosion of devils swarms across the screen, they question their own existence and / or sobriety.
This interpretation of Santa’s lab (on a satellite, in a crystal castle) has some of the creepiest, anthropomorphic technology that anyone could imagine, including eyes on stalks and giant, soft mouths stuck in the walls. The sight of these alone are worth the three bucks you paid to own this film, for all eternity, whether you like it or not. The definition of ‘family film’ has changed a whole heck of a lot, and the ‘1.9 out of 10’ rating on IMDB speaks for itself. My Westlake Entertainment version of the DVD has almost no restoration done to it, so all of the specks and rips and hairs are still all over the print - but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m not really watching this to see Satan’s hi-def horns relocate themselves on his head between shots.
More well-known in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, which has a giant robot named Torg.
You need more than ‘it has a giant robot named Torg’ to be convinced? Have we learned nothing from my time here?
How about lines like ‘It is the middle of Septober!’ Is that the best made-up Martian month you can come up with, guys? I suppose that it’s not much of a surprise when your boy Martian is named Bomar, your girl Martian is named Girmar, your mother Martian is named Momar and your King Martian? You guessed it - Kimar. Santa’s joyful obliviousness as himself and some kids are going to get launched into the icy vacuum of space is almost Kafkaesque in scope, and Kimar the Martian is a serious, dangerous cross between John Wayne and Phil Hartman. As bad sci-fi flicks go, it’s pretty well written and acted with such overenthusiastic abandon that you have no choice but to enjoy it.
And, you can watch it IN FULL right here. You’re welcome.
They’re only a small part of the holiday shelf, which includes a good amount of Christmas-themed TV show episodes, from Futurama to Millennium and X-Files, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and beyond. You haven’t lived until you’ve watched an undead Santa with soccer-ball skin deliver toys.
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Article Tags: , Christmas, Martians, Santa Claus, TV shows, Westlake================
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