THE WORST WE CAN FIND - Christmas Advent Calendar: Christmas Day - SANTA CLAUS

 

What day is it? Why, it’s Christmas Day! The Worst We Can Find Christmas Advent Calendar concludes with a return to the golden days of old of MST3K with Santa Claus!

Santa Claus (1959)

Program: Mystery Science Theater 3000

Air-Date: December 24, 1993

 

The original U.S. poster and the DVD artwork for the MST3K version.

Plot: Santa lives in the clouds and has children slave-labor that he torments with his organ while mechanical reindeer laugh as a “pentagram” hang on the wall. And that’s not the weird part. Satan can’t stand Santa for obvious reasons (that whole “pentagram” thing, for one) and since he can’t take down Jesus, he’s going to send one of his dancing elves, I mean, devils, to take out Santa. Pitch, the devil that loves to prance, does this by entering people’s minds and convincing them to do bad things that cause trouble for Santa. He’s also extremely goofy, which shows how evil he is. Lupita, a little poor girl who wants a doll for Christmas, refuses Scratch’s suggestions and wins a doll from God, I mean, Santa, in the process. There’s also Merlin for some reason, three bratty kids who get what they deserve, a rich kid who gets to see his parents for a night, and various shenanigans and going-ons, but you get the idea.

At some point, this reindeer was intended to make kids laugh instead of hide under their seats and cry.

Thoughts: It’s K. Gordon Murray, and he’s at it again. A producer who worked out of Florida, Murray found a lucrative career taking foreign fantasy and horror films, redubbing them into English, ed-editing them, then releasing them with ballyhoo titles in the U.S. Some say that it was shifty work, but thanks to him U.S. audiences grew up on a number of Mexican films that they may not have seen otherwise. His first few redubs were German movies, but by 1957 he had scored after releasing two Aztec Mummy movies (one of which, The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy, was one of the first – if not THE first – movie shown on MST3K when it moved to The Comedy Channel).

Santa Claus was an early feature found by Murray, and it managed to get national theatrical bookings starting in the 1960s up into the 1980s (a rarity amongst movies), as well as becoming a popular one at Christmas time on various television channels around the country. The film was such a success that Murray released even more kiddie movies from Mexico in the U.S., although none had the sustaining power as Santa Claus.

Devils mocking the damned as they journey to Hell. Merry Christmas, kids!

Director Rene Cardona had a long career in Mexican television and movies, while Jose Elias Moreno as Santa had been working in movies since the late 1930s, but this is the movie they are best known (and fair’s fair, Jose may be manic in the part, but he does at least LOOK the part in comparison with other movies). Murray liked bits of this so much that he used shots of Santa and his castle in the sky in various other shorts he produced over time. Speaking of which, that’s Murray narrating the movie in the English-dubbed version, for those curious.

The plot of the movie is unique, as one usually doesn’t associate Santa having an ongoing battle with Satan, although the general idea of a devil trying to stop children from being good isn’t a bad one to play the Santa concept off. The original cut of the movie is somewhat more sinister, as the opening dance sequence with the devils takes place with a number of damned souls moving their way into Hell (you can briefly seen them as robed figures surrounding the devils at the end of their dance), with the insinuation is that they are dancing not because they got a NEA grant, but rather to mock the condemns souls as they head off to be tortured. Wheee! Such fun! That was probably a bit too much for children and is cut from most prints of the movie since it affects nothing else in the film and makes Pitch a bit more “fun” in a way, because that way he doesn’t have the damned hanging around him.

Seriously, the only part of the movie I remember from seeing it as a kid.

Along with Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, I also saw Santa Claus at the same hometown theater as a kid. The only clear memory I have of that showing was of Pitch heating up the doorknob. I’m not sure why that stuck with me, to be honest, as there’s certainly enough weird stuff going on with crazed happy reindeer, Merlin in Heaven with Santa, and all the prancing around that Pitch does. Maybe I was just too bummed out that another “toy for every kid that comes to the theater” was another broken light-up top? Probably.

Favorite Riff: (Reading a letter to him asking for a baby brother)  Santa:  “Oh, ho, ho!  Can do!  Can do!”

Pitch will later discover that Lupita will grow up to be a lawyer.

The Riffing: Santa Claus would be the tenth episode in the fifth season of MST3K that Mike hosted after Joel left midway through the year. By this point, although Mike worried he “sucked” at the job (see my The Worst We Can Find book for more details), and the online fanbase was having their little ongoing feud about Mike vs. Joel, it is clear that the introduction of Mike was slowly changing the dynamics with the characters on the SOL. Earlier times with Joel would have see the first sketch with the Christmas carol going wrong thanks to one of the bots and Joel scolding them. Mike here is obviously different. He not only is the clumsy cause of the accident that stops the carol, but he is also taken down with all the bots at the same time, making him just one of them in the process.

The Bond!

It would be a sign of things to come over the next four years of the original program, with Mike becoming more of a sibling to the robots rather than their father as Joel had always appeared to be. With that, the robots had more freedom to do insane things that never would have worked as well with Joel there and also helped push the show into a darker twist of humor than seen before. (Joel would plead with the bots to not get dark, like with the Circus short mentioned earlier in the Advent Calendar, but Mike tended to be the first to go there in later years.) It was still clearly MST3K, but there was an obvious shift that probably explains more the reason people had issue with Mike or Joel than simply if one guy “sucked” more than the other.

The episode is crammed full of good sketch material, from the first carol that goes wrong, the O. Henry spin between Frank and Forrester (ya, we know – Frank’s bond can be turned in for that $25 now), the gift-giving that has everyone strangely happy with their weird assortment of gifts, and even two musical number: “Whispering Christmas Warrior” and “Merry Christmas … If That’s Okay” that play up to Mike’s abilities as a musician and singer. We also get a lot of additional cast members on-camera, including Paul Chaplin as Pitch (who will return in later episodes, especially Devil Doll), Mary Jo Pehl as the wrong Mother Nelson, behind-the-scenes members Timothy Scott and Patrick Brantseg as other members of the wrong Nelson family, and, finally, Kevin Murphy as the wrestling Santa.

It's 'All Outta Candy Cane" Time!

Santa Claus is a classic and has been done in excellent re-riffed live versions by both RiffTrax and The Mads, while Lupita remains a classic callback by every riffing team as well over the years in other movies. There’s a lot going for the movie as a riffable one, but it is thanks to this first appearance on MST3K back in 1993 that it is remembered so fondly by fans. Better yet, the episode demonstrates that Joel left behind a well-oiled machine that was going to go on strong thanks to those who worked with him to make MST3K the program that it remains today. It proves they were right with what they did and how they did it, and that success continues today in all the varied forms still out there with RiffTrax, The Mads, and the revised MST3K. Santa and Santa Claus keep going strong because there’s magic there that keeps people going back to what they love. MST3K and all its children are the same, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.