Post by StevePulaski on Apr 25, 2011 18:28:08 GMT -5
Papers explain simplistically the madness in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
Rating: ★★
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is a public domain fantasy film that was released in 1964 and is often regarded as one of the worst films ever made. As of April 2011, it is ranked number seventy-nine on the IMDB Bottom 100 with a 2.3 overall rating. It's such an odd little, creature of it's time, it's getting the "wonderful" honor of a remake. Completely unnecessary. There is pretty much no way this film could be made to be good.
The title alone mystifies me. At no point in the film does Santa Claus "conquer" anything. Martians are grim after watching Christmas specials on Earth depicting the jolly man St. Nick as a guy to bring happiness. They have no one like that on their planet. So the Martians summon an old man that tells them Mars is awful because there is no Santa Claus. So the Martians capture two earthlings that lead them to the "real" Santa Claus at the North Pole.
How the film is shot is another thing that is difficult to explain. It's 1960, color is quite popular in movies. Being only shot with $200,000 and having a name with "Santa Claus" in it probably means they wanted to use essence of color in the film. The color is dimmer than a 3D film. I can't tell what process was used. Obviously, Technicolor wasn't. With this, some scenes are in color, but it's so dim if the color isn't red or blue it's hard to see.
Sometimes, on frequent occasions, if something large in the movie is a bright color, like red, the color will spill onto other things around it. I know it's 1964, but color was around. This is lower budget, but if this was black and white it would look a lot less wonky and protruding.
The acting is unbelievably atrocious, but oh how I love it. There is a scene where the idiot martian Dropo (McCutcheon) is getting yelled at by the other martians for being lazy. He runs away and "accidently" falls into various levers and is supposed to look like he fell into them. When he actually runs up to the levers, pulls four abruptly, and quickly grabs the other two he "missed." The ship then rumbles uncontrollably. Absolutely, unintentionally funny scene that was an unexpected delight.
Watching this with a friend was fun because we would talk back to the screen, ask the TV questions, and so on. Nothing is more fun than asking a movie why, what, and how questions that you geniunely want to know. It's like The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is known for it's public domain status in the United States. Public domain is where a film is open to the public and has no copyright on it in any form. Ever see those fifty movie packs in theaters that have fifty films from a specific genre? Like horror, drama, "box office gold," etc. Those are all public domain films. Even though I gave the film a low rating, it's most likely the best public domain film in its own right. Usually all of the films have bad acting, a lame storyline, and poor picture quality clearly diminishing from its frequent copying from one Dvd to the next. Santa Claus has all of those qualities; and it's pretty much the strangest Christmas film to exist.
Starring: John Call, Leonard Hicks, Vincent Beck, Bill McCutcheon, Victor Stiles, Donna Conforti, Chris Month, Pia Zadora, Leila Martin, and Charles Renn. Directed by: Nicholas Webster.