Trollheart

Santa Claus (1959)

Ay-yi-yi senor! These hombres could no’ even theenk up a… yeah, sod the terrible Mexican accent. Point is, this movie is rumoured to be absolutely terrible, but even if it wasn’t, they couldn’t even think up a more original title than that? You’d think that would make it harder to Google but no - once you see 1959 after it you know you’ve got your movie. And as for the awful south of the border speech, why? Well, because it was produced in Meh-ico senor! Don’t start that again. OK, OK! I’m going. Sheesh!

Yeah, a production of, well, some long-ass name studio in Mexico, originally, not surprisingly, made in Spanish and then translated (poorly), the movie sees Santa in - wait for it - outer space, battling a demon called Pitch who wants to turn all Earth kids into evil little monsters. Judging by the ones around here, I’d say he’s a little late for that! If that’s not enough for you, we have Merlin, for some reason helping Santa and not Arthur, robotic reindeer (helllloooo Futurama!) and the demon Pitch being defeated by, um, being sprayed with water.

Rotten Tomatoes ratings

Tomatometer: n/a
Audience Score: 27%

IMDB rating

2.7/10

We’ve only got the one critic who would talk about it, and it was short and sweet. Ho ho horrible said Phil Hall of Film Threat.

Audiences more or less agreed, though a sneaking admiration for the brass of the writer and director releasing such a trippy movie can be detected in such quotes as

This was really weird with having the devil in a movie about Santa Claus and also that Santa doesn't live at the North Pole, but a weird cloud floating in space…

This movie is incredibly bad, I really do not recommend watching this one. The story is silly, I mean Santa lives in space and the devil is trying to stop him from bringing toys to kids by making them behave bad? That's crazy.

Santa Claus, The Devil and Merlin. If that doesn't sound like a recipe for a bad film! Okay, it is pretty bad, but such fun when mocking it

And, perhaps taking it a little more seriously than they should

Well, really, the whole thing was put together by people who simply had no clue as to Santa's primary concepts!

Adding Merlin the Magician (direct from King Arthur's Court) and giving him a special place in Santa's heavenly castle might have worked wonders for the screenwriters, but purists of Camelot and its ilk will certainly ask what in thunder Merlin's doing in a movie about Santa Claus. And what is all this business with magical flowers, and even magic cocktails anyway? The idea of getting drunk to be with the ones you love sounds a bit twisted in my book --- but, as they say, to each his own.

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