I’ve not pulled together my blog of “Santa vs. Satan” but plan to. Here’s one I did last year of “Santa Conquers the Martians” which stars a child Pia Zadora. It’s actually an anti-war film that had me clearly thinking way too hard, being as overwhelmed as I was. A fascinating bauble from the 60s.
Santa Conquers the Martians
Directed by Nicholas Webster
Story by Paul L. Jackson, Glenville Mareth
John Call – Santa Claus
Leonard Hicks – Kimar
Vincent Beck – Voldar
Bill McCutcheon – Dropo
Released 1964
Rates: Too good. Way too good.
Eggnog’s in the fridg. Must be Christmas. Hooray for Santa Claus! That’s the theme song that greets with the intro credits of the too delicious “Santa Conquers the Martians” starring John Call as Santa Claus. My husband was out picking up paper at the office supply store and I called to remind we needed canned chili for H.o.p. and during that phone pause he saw the DVD “Santa Conquers the Martians” which he confused with “Santa Claus” (a.k.a “Santa Vs. Satan”) and brought home. We put it on while supper cooked. I got laryngitis and inspired. It’s been a long time since I’ve completely forgotten my surroundings and troubles and cares and the mind’s basement not echoed with some sub angst, but “Santa Conquers the Martians” put that voice to rest. That’s how full of question marks this freaky Babes in Martianville movie is.
Wham. I start the movie several times over because it’s like ramming into a wall, no preparatory lubing, wonderland with no warning. The title backdrops remind of 60s glitter-strewn television variety show curtains laced with 50s seaweed art inclinations (I want these in fabric on my bedroom window) and as the bright horns for the “Hooray for Santee Claus” theme blast not quite Tijuana Brass style, sleigh bells jingling, one waits for Dean Martin to enter the screen to croon about the moon and pizza pies, but instead it is all titles slid in by a white-outline illustrated St. Nick. “On Christmas Day you’ll wake up and you’ll say, hooray for Santa Claus”. Invisible singing kiddies spell his name out M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-E style, cheery and bright. “Conquers” is a good-times kid flick, happy are we and so shall you be after your visit with Santa Claus.
Cut to futureama. We’re not talking the futureama of the babybird nuclear era, but what the 30s imagined with built-in black and white wall television surrounded by placebo knobs and projecting sculptural antennae, but it’s post Eisenhower rather than pre-New Deal and a KID TV news-spokesman announces the event of the year, a reporter on hand at the North Pole. The camera pans to metal flower sculpture growing out of the wall and end table free-style sculpture reminiscent (I suppose) of Brancusi (or wants to be) which says something about the citizenry when early twentieth century art is the property of aliens. The door is a big round hole in the wall. Where are we? Hollywood? New York? An art gallery without wheelchair accessibility? Two greenish, helmet-head zombie-children sit before the television (eerie guitar strum), and if this was my movie the antennae probing the air off their helmets wouldn’t be static decoration but carrying on wavy conversation with the television’s.
Or the kids are kind of green. The color of the feature has deteriorated so they’re more brown now. Maybe they were always brown but no one said anything because they’d been told to expect green. I realize that green is brown in this film and they will embody a statement on integration. Indeed, the Martian children represent Civil Rights. Good show!
Wait, I just realized that the KID-TV television announcer has the same dimples as the Mickey-Mouse club’s announcer, but I’ve no time to think about that because suddenly I’m at the North Pole with a reporter, and the dark North Pole has never been so artificially not very cardboard cold. Via Tel-Star, Andy Henderson is saying there’s Only one direction you can go, South! Solstice feature indeed (my husband says I give the writers too much credit). A frozen food joke follows, referencing pop-popular television dinners catering the new television culture.
Now we go inside the prototypical Santa’s workshop. Midgets for elves, of course. John Call makes a great Santa welcoming the camera. The shivering reporter asks if i’s true he’s going to use a rocket sled this year. No sir, it’s traditional with Prancer, Dancer, Thunder Blitzen and Nixon…
Nixon? Did Santa say Nixon? Yes and he winks at the camera. He’s full of laughs stepping over to Winky elf who is in charge of the space department and shows us Winky’s toy idea of a Martian. Hopefully the Martians have a Santa to bring joy to the children.
There, the film’s premise, just in case you were going to be wondering later what the film was really about.
We also now know that Santa’s Toyland and his elves not only bring us Christmas joy but life itself, or are the shapers of the machinery through which life presents itself. But let’s not think too hard about that unexpected peep behind the curtain.
We’re back to the alien art museum with no windows that has a smattering of space age furniture on exhibit, and find that the curator is a man in 30s thriller serials green tights and long green cape. He calls for Dropo, the lazy good-for-nothing comic side kick who is sleeping on the floor. Punishment is a tickle wand with which Dropo is awakened. Where’s Mommar? Dropo knows because Dropo is a male clown who is permitted as a clown to have somewhat female properties, as evidenced when he’s later observed vacuuming, a truly sidesplitting activity for a man of this era when not a professional with a license to clean. Momar (mom) is out getting food pills for the kids who are glued to the tube!
Kimar (dad) just doesn’t understand the kids! The door to the kiddo’s room, decorated with stars from a crazy quilt, slides back and dad steps through to see the kids being told by the telly about dolls and tender-loving care. The poor robotic, emotionless kiddos don’t have a clue what tender-loving care is because dad is an authoritarian, robotic, Charlton Heston clone. He is, however, well-meaning, mindful of their health, and wanting a chance to brain percolate he orders the kids to get to bed. Do they have to? Sigh, yes. (The real-time parents should be shifting in their theater seats knowingly, a significant identification point touched that the kids wouldn’t get.) No comfy beds, a tenish Pia Zadora in her film debut climbs onto a round table and is zapped artificially out.
When bubble-helmeted Momar returns with the food pills we realize how far we’ve ventured from 1958 and “Queens of Outer Space”. Blond extravagance has been replaced by beatnik turtleneck, mini-skirt, tights and (almost) go-go boots. Halston took notes. So did Kubrick. Slender Momar is a predecessor of “2001: A Space Odyssey’s” sisterly bubble-capped stewardess, emotionless, efficient, and well-meaning with her chocolate layer-cake pills.
Charlton Heston’s clone complains about having to use the sleep spray on the children again. “Why don’t you go to the forest and see Chochem the ancient one?” Momar suggests, a capable queen who also does her own shopping. This was 1964 for sure. The Martians, advanced beyond humans, self-reliant rather than chowing down on subservient underlings, our supposed social future, never-the-less have problems. They have reached a point of crisis the genesis for which was located somewhere in the twentieth century, after Flash Gordon was sewn into his stylish hernia belt.
So aways Kinar to Thunder Forest with the Council Chiefs for some grandfatherly advice. Wisdom of the ages. Sages. Hollywood style.
The strap-on helmets the Martians wear are making me think too hard with their peculiar oxygen tank tubing winding from some part of the brain apparently to another, or so we have been taught by previous movies, that tubes are not only decorative but channels of conveyance. What does that tube mean? What is its function? And the peculiar glittery plate bonded to the front of the helmet. What does it do? Certainly, it must have purpose. The overlarge push-button belt the Martians wear, it too must have purpose. But what?
I’m given no time to ponder what have escaped being subtleties.
Chochem’s chair in Thunder Forest is sprinkled I now realize with webs. Before I just saw spidery veils. And there’s a difference between spidery veils and webs. Spidery veils are sexy. Webs indicate age. Thunder Forest. Chochem’s chair. Shades of pagan origins, the Martians are friends of Merlin. The Council Chiefs congregate for what appears to be ancient Druidic advice. Voldar (the one whose persistent irritability drives to evil intent) has a mustache and biceps, complaining they are like a kindergarten class having to consult Chochem. Can’t they think for themselves? The wizard appears with his staff, the rings of Saturn clearly seen in the background. Whassup? Poor, old-fashioned, Woden-dialogue dad angsts as to the children that, “They eat not, they sleep not, their only interest is in watching meaningless earth programs on the video.” Wizened Chochem croaks it’s the time of Christmas on earth and that’s the problem with the kids. Joy, peace and childish anticipation of Santa and his gifts. The children on Mars are adults plugged-in from birth. Information fed into their minds in a constant stream. They have to learn to have fun and to love.
Martian daddy isn’t a baddie. He wants the best for his kids, and will do anything to save them, the penultimate in daddy desperation, for which reason it’s off to earth to kidnap Santa.
The Martian spacecraft causes me to mentally hiccup all that has remained undigested about this film. Like the uniforms, the helmets. Everything comes into question. Why is one of the Council Chiefs fat? Why does he have a beard? Who is he? Who are these guys? Who are any of them? Did they ever do any acting before this? After?
Coming in from Outer Space is alchemic objectifiction where we theater-bound earthlings get an overview of our situation. The Martians automatically head for New York and via their spycams are confused by a multiplicity of Santas. But this turns out to be a good thing. If there are so many, earth won’t miss just one! In the meanwhile Voldar huffs over the primitiveness of earth people with their above-ground buildings which apparently beg to be destroyed just because they are. No, no violence, we’re just here to kidnap Santa, says Kimar. And what of the earthlings? Having spotted the spaceship, newscasters promptly announce to the Cold War beleaguered world that Russia insists they have nothing to do with this new blip on the radar.
It was around now that it began to bother me that mustached Voldar’s helmet seemed somehow off-kilter, the only one that too obviously fit oddly. Why? And were the helmets made of paper mache? And why did Kimar’s face look graveled with cosmetic sand?
Cut to American Air Force and Defense, to military and radar and computer wheels slowly turning, stock footage of the adult world and its missiles.
Cut to pre WWII Hollywood movie serial style Martian spaceship interior again with funky oversized flashing lights (either that or this film is a secret time travel tunnel outfitted with Doctor Who’s warehouse of 70s-80s staging that the Teletubbies will later raid) and stowaway Dropo the Clown being dragged out of his hiding spot in the big radar something chest where he could have unplugged the whatever that will cloak the Martian ship from human view. Those Martians sure have it head-and-tails over us Earthlings technology-wise! Oh no, their spaceship disappears behind its anti-radar shield and the U.S. Armed Forces spring to high alert, jets taking skyward. Contrails splice the sky. But with the help of their shield the Martians elude the best the Cold War World has to offer and land next to a lake where a little boy and girl, Billy Foster and Betty, have been musing about what Martians might look like, informed on the crisis by their Japanese transistor radio. Can’t escape technology! A commentary on modern physics (creation theory already covered in Santa’s workshop), as soon as the children contemplate Martians, the green men in tights appear on the studio winter set background to sneak up on them. Have no fear, say we as we smile and point our big gun at you, kiddies–who readily and fearlessly dispense their childish wisdom to clueless daddy on the reality of Santa, that there is only one, the rest roaming New York are homeless begging dimes.
No, scratch that. They’re Santa’s helpers dragging about their cauldrons of regeneration, bells calling for donations to the kettle of mercy. Something like that.
Ultra-big rounded rivets, that’s the key to Martian spaceship architecture. (Just occurred to me and seemed worth noting.)
Eight year old Betty’s bulky cable knit sweater and her miniskirt brought back memories no one under the age of forty-five would appreciate or understand. Something about the old (cable knit) not quite knowing how to live comfortably with the new (miniskirt) yet. But even in 1964 Billy in his dog-eared cap was Norman Rockwell retro “Leave it to Beaver quirkiness” revealed to have a bb gun hidden under the leaves. Something to do with Kennedy and Oswald, I’m sure.
So how are we going to explain away being well-intentioned kidnappers to the theater-goers who the year before were shocked out of Camelot into the tumultuous sixties and Vietnam by one supposed shot from a Dallas book depository? With film candy. That’ll do it. Leave the kids by the lake and they’ll inform the authorities we’re stealing Santa. We have no choice but to drag you off at gun point up to the North Pole!
Again, more cuts to real world jets refueling in mid war followed by Martian spaceship Whoville technology and Dropo telling the kids all about how things work, like the radar shield! And that light that flashes bright red when someone’s coming up to the navigational deck! Better hide! Never mind what then transpires. I never minded while watching and mused on the green tights and how some of the guys had looser fitting drawer-type leotards and others had tighter ones. Seriously, I wondered if costuming planned this or if the leotards were leftovers that happened to fit some and didn’t others. And I wondered some more about the helmets and the tubes and the plaques on the helmets and the belts and the tights and the big rivets and the beard on the fat guy and the mustache on Voldar and if these people were all friends and that’s how they came to make this film together, like some cult of dope-fiend poets maybe, and how much were Billy and Betty paid and was that cable knit sweater of Betty’s actually a fashion statement in 1964 that I’d managed to miss and my second grade mind mistook for grandma’s total failure to grok and adapt when faced with textured fishnet pantyhose, which come to think of it was just a new twist on the old as in did you know that the fine art of knitting owes itself to knotting and knitting fishnets?
Evil makes for adventure. Despite his badness, it’s Voldar who suggests taking the kiddies to Mars. Will this later win him points in court?
I also started thinking (much earlier) about how Voldar gets all the straight-man funny lines. Kimar is Edgar Rice Burroughs space age biblical while Voldar gets the lines about how looking for Santa is like looking for space dust in a comet’s tail. Usually actors play off one another. One calls this inter-acting. But seems in this film the director wanted to make a comment on how each man really is an island unto himself, despite trade routes. A really new stand-out one opened with Santa ferried to Mars.
But not yet. Betty and Billy must warn Santa and escape from the ship into the soap flake style chill of the earth’s North Pole. Yes, we’re still on earth. For once, as Kimar descends the ship’s ladder, his cape isn’t half draped over his right shoulder, it’s flung back over the left. Oh, now it’s draped over his right shoulder again. I’m actually relieved they caught that, stability being reassuring.
I realize Kimar is the only one with a cape. This is suggestive of his superiority but later in the film Errant Ones in Hiding on Mars are in tattered capes, so I don’t know what’s up with that.
The Martians must hunt down the kids. Torg is ominously called from the ship by Kimar. What is Torg, we ask? We are intended to ask, “What is Torg”, though we all know, even those who have not seen the movie posters. This is a meaningless question, as we all know. Still rich with suspense. The kids hide from Voldar in a nice warm snow cave. Voldar is scared off by a man in a polar bear suit that zips up the back. It has got to be one of the best bad polar bear costumes I’ve ever seen. Horror film style extreme close-ups of the bear swiping its paw at the kids in the uh snow cave. “Who’s the man in a bear suit,” my seven year old son says.
‘ The kids are freed of the menace of the polar bear only to freeze, freeze, freeze some more, freeze longer, remain still frozen in their tracks for as long as it takes (longer than one expects then expects again) for Torg, the man in a cardboard suit Robot, to slog up to them and grab them up one in each arm. But Kimar has set Torg’s controls so it can’t hurt the children, which irritates Voldar, who complains, “What has happened to the great warriors of our planet? Mars used to be the Planet of war! Your softness will destroy us!” Yes, games and laughing children are everyone’s undoing. Zoom in on silver-painted cardboard robot’s tummy. Robot now knocks in the door of Santa’s workshop and my seven year old son is all eyes, talking about what he needs to make his new robot. “A big box. A not so big box. Construction paper.” The elves pick up wooden sticks but don’t thrash out with them lest they dent Torg’s cardboard. Santa laughs that Torg’s the biggest toy he’s ever seen and Torg becomes a toy. Santa and his elves create and transform. Santa says and it happens. And I wonder if the robot was created by Santa and his elves in the workshop (as had been the Maritians) and thus happened on Mars, or if the robot was a result of the creation of the Martians who continued to go on and create on their own and so what they made were creations of Santa by extension and did Santa plan the warped threads in the weave or did they just happen? Did Santa and his elves know his creations would come to kidnap him to bring joy to their world again? Voldar freezes the elves and Mrs. Claus with a be still and be quiet ray. The pacifist Santa is relieved to know that the Martians haven’t placed their elfen gods in terminal limbo. So, he must not know all.
Of course he doesn’t know all. Claus didn’t know they were coming to kidnap him, did he? No. So much for his omnipotent seeing while you’re sleeping and while you wake.
Maybe Santa doesn’t want to know all? He could know all, but he likes surprises. So he turned off his know-it-all switch.
In order to keep the world from discovering they’ve kidnapped Santa, the Martians carry the kids with them to the spaceship, but Mrs. Claus spills the beans (Santa has already commented on her verbosity) and the headlines inform the world of the disaster and a German scientist goes on about something to a microphone with Film Noire WW II background lighting cutting the back wall of the office in half with shadow and light. Sigh, Torg’s usefulness is done with so they leave him on earth. Such is the magical influence of the none know-it-all, peace-minded Santa that if he thinks you’re a toy, then, well, y’know, swords become ploughshares. That kind of thing.
Following me here? Get it yet? Why does everyone say this movie is too bad to be good?
Never mind the question of free will that arises when the creator Says and you Are. This blogged review has evolved beyond its scope.
Did I forget to mention Torg’s laundry room arms and legs?
This film is filled with question marks. There isn’t a single detail that isn’t a question mark. Not a single costume. Not a single peculiarly-cut door. Or extra. I have never paid so much attention to Extras.
The race into space is sped up by Santa’s kidnapping. Astronauts forego essential training so they may be blasted toward Mars with the hope of retrieving the the jolly red suited guy who has the Martians laughing over toasted Martian-mellows, the kind Voldar loathes because they’re soft and weak.
Santa tells a joke about how it wasn’t a big chimney at all but the smokestack of the Queen Elizabeth in which he finds himself…
Never mind.
More question marks with the jail cell cum submarine-style bunkers with the metal beds and government issue blankets on which Santa sits with the kids. When Betty and Billy don’t laugh at his jokes, he embraces them compassionately. Droppo, who’s trying to convince the kids to eat Chocolate Ice Cream pills, went on to Sesame Street. Where did John Call go? What did he do after this? He really is quite a good Santa.
And now comes one of the more peculiar moments of the film. Voldar is determined to get rid of the kids. He takes them and Santa on a supposed tour of the ship, straight to the air lock. Which has an uhm airduct in it. Why is the interior of the air duct red? He locks them in. Good bye kids. What will they and Santa do? Sixty seconds tick by for three minutes (Santa must suspend time). Voldar celebrates his littering space with kid debris. He and Kimar fight. Batman and Robin style. Close-ups. Jiggly hand-held shots. In walks Santa and the children.
“But the air duct is just a little…and you’re so big…”
“But you’re talking to Santa Claus son…”
“But how…”
“You wouldn’t want me to tell my secret….poor man, he’s fainted just like someone who’s seen a ghost.”
Secrets, secrets. That would be telling. Whose side are you on? That would be telling. Oh, right. “The Prisoner”.
Ask me what other old ditties I’ve been watching on the DVD lately.
I don’t know why they make a big deal every time the landing legs of the ship are lowered.
It’s almost impossible to get across how everything in this film is a question mark. Every element is a jigsaw puzzle part which suggests it should fit with another one but nothing fits together.
Tinkly music as we return to Momar’s Martian realm (she’s dusting the abstract art objects) which has no chimney. Kimar and Momar reunited, affection is displayed by touching foreheads together. Santa promises Momar with heart-felt sincerity to help the children. Billy offers his hand to the Martian kid to shake and the Martian kid doesn’t understand until Billy says to shake it and then the Martian kid understands. It’s like the Yin and Yang twins only in Green (or brown-green) and white. Billy is ten and Betty is eight, just like the Martian kids! Santa has them all laughing in no time and I notice what big teeth Kimar’s son has.
Did I mention the weird built-in dressers in the Martian children’s room, set into the wall? Even those are question marks, all right angles and odd slants and Dr. Caligari style leanings the mind can’t quite wrap around when all the furniture is circular and rounded forms and the doors are circular.
Voldar, the opposer, has escaped to some rustic Martian cave where the other miscreant outcast Martians dwell.Those guys in tattered capes I mentioned earlier. And their antennae are crumpled. They talk like Brooklyn type television gangsters. Yet even they are vulnerable to seduction by Santa, their spy returning with talk of Mars about to be flooded with toys–and coiled springs that walk down stairs…Slinkies! It’s an ad!
Santa’s Martian workshop jolts. The Earth workshop was Gingerbread. The Martian is automated, buttons, but never mind that. The walls! Or the wall that dominates the set. How to describe? It’s 1997 and people are making big web navigation 3-d shaded buttons again and this wall is built o them. But the lighting is such that the huge navigation buttons look like peculiar painted on designs, squarish gray shower curtain geometrics, tricky mental gags, the “look again what do you see” visual illusion of negative become positive space and positive receding to negative. That is the main wall of Santa’s workshop. Over the other hangs a gigantic multi-colored flute.
Betty’s mini-dress, a pseudo jumper over a blouse (those were popular then) is decorated with rick rack or velvet ribbon that looks like rick-rack on my television.
This Martian place is odd. Except for those stuck out in the caves by the canal, the Martians must dwell in a dome like bees in a hive. Here Dropo is trying on a Santa suit and his place looks like the interior of a kind of submarine. The doors are octagonal whereas the doors in the home of Kimar and Momar are circular. Back to Santa’s workshop, with its door that …. well, I can’t describe its shape. I guess like a giant comb? The Three Stooges, Voldar and his chummies, are there to cause trouble, dropping their bag of wrenches, armed with a flashlight (I was thinking, idiotically, how peculiar that Martians had wrenches and flashlights and Three Stooges style villains–and why do character villains come in threes?) They screw up the works. Despite his helmet, Dropo does such a good job playing Santa that they grab him and take him back to the cave. We’re in character actor land with Voldar, and then we’re back to Momar and Audrey Hepburn and 60s fashion and then comes in 1940s serial spaceman Kimar to greet his wife. I’m telling you. This film, it’s all question marks!
Why in the world was I wondering why the Martian Santa’s workshop had plastic laundry baskets for catching the toys as they came out of the chutes? Why do I keep trying to figure out the insignia on the Martian suits? Watching Voldar is like watching Phil Hartman’s twin brother. His cohort is like watching Klinger from “Mash”–maybe he is the guy from “Mash”. The film is before “Mash” and referencing “Mash” and has nothing to do with “Mash”. Why does Dropo as Santa have a rabbit’s ear dangling from one of his antennae? Why is there a fire extinguisher in the hall of the Martian community dwelling? Why is there a ski in the storeroom? Do Martians ski? Kimar is slugged with the ski! I’ve fallen out of “Santa Conquers The Martians” into “Batman” again. How did it happen? Did they film this scene in a storeroom that had already been built on another set? Did a prop person intentionally put the ski there? Was it scripted? Now Kimar gets slugged with a ski?
Dropo escapes the Martian cave by reversing the light bulbs that control the Nuclear Curtain. Shades of Winter Solstice! Something like that.
And now to the big crisis scene. Voldar is going to relax Santa, permanently! The real one! He threatens with his gun. But Santa and the kids have the drop on Voldar! It’s cut and paste action packed editing. Voldar is hit with bubbles. Toy soldiers are on the march. Robots. Kids joyfully strike Voldar with bats. A toy soldier sounds its horn. Tanks roll. Pia fires a bow and Arrow. An Indian toy drums. Voldar is helpless. All weapons have become toys, just as Torg became a toy and was left on Earth. Voldar collapses in frustrated tears. Santa belows laughter. Who knew that world disarmament could be so simple? Just say no and fire back with jokes.
I was trying to imagine sitting in a theater and watching this on the big screens of the time, an experience I somehow managed to miss, and I simply couldn’t envision it. It was too beyond its time, backwards and forwards.
Where did the majority of these people go? What did they do? Had they a clue when they were filming, or is “Santa Conquers the Martians” a tacky, happy accident and I’m the lowest common denominator?
Note: Released the same year as “Dr. Strangelove”, “Santa Conquers the Martians should serve as a companion feature for home viewing at least once. Seems the same Air Force footage used in Strangelove was also used here and both are anti-war films. Interesting.
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