(1964/Embassy Pictures) DVD / VHS
Rave Reviews
“The sets, props and acting are all bottom-of-the-budget-barrel. One of the worst movies of any kind ever made!”
—Michael Weldon, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film
“The acting in this film has to be seen to be believed: it would embarrass even the players in a sixth-grade Christmas pageant." —Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss, The Fifty Worst Films of All Time
“Supplies humor not quite attuned to this planet."
—Howard Thompson, New York Times
Plot, What Plot? Long before she became our Razzie poster child in the 1980s, Pia Zadora was a child actress with varied stage and screen “credits" to her name, the best remembered of which is her appearance in the ultra-low-budget kiddie Christmas flick Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Cast as a green-faced little Martian girl who convinces her father to kidnap Santa and bring him to the Red Planet, Pia proves her wooden acting style was set in cement by the time she was nine years old.
Produced on such a shoestring budget that Mars and the North Pole appear to be the same sets simply spray-painted different colors, Martians is a delight in ways its makers could never have imagined. Besides the cheap-jack sets, which have that space-age look of early-’60s “modernism," it features “Martians" whose faces are sometimes dark green, sometimes a greasy light green, and often not tinted at all. Its vision of Martian attire includes poorly fitting light green leotards, badly hand-sewn dark green capes and copper plumber’s tubing, upside-down snorkeling masks, and deely-bopper antennae atop their heads.
Further contributing to the film’s wildly funny woes is the fact that not one actor in it gives a credible performance. As Santa Claus, John Call consistently chortles and snorts instead of Ho! Ho! Ho-ing, tells truly atrocious jokes to cheer up the kids kidnapped along with him, and is generally as unpleasant a Kris Kringle as the kid-kicking Santa in A Christmas Story. Martian “leader" Kimar, played by Leonard Hicks, often appears embarrassed by his lines and his costumes. But most awful of all are the child “actors," a group of saccharine little zombies led by Zadora. Whether laughing heartily, cowering in fear, or defying their captors, Victor Stiles, Donna Conforti, Chris Month, and precious little Pia all sound like they’re reading from Dick & Jane primers while overdosed on Prozac.
The storyline focuses on the need for “joy" in the lives of Mars’s children, who watch Earth TV via satellite and are becoming, according to the only sane man on Mars, “nincompoops." Naturally, the lone speaker of truth in this logic-challenged melange of clichés and klutzy comic efforts is the villain. Once convinced by a Martian elder that what Mars needs is Santa Claus, they set out in a “spaceship" whose rocket tail flames look suspiciously like toilet tissue blowing in the wind to kidnap the Jolly Old Elf himself. Along with Saint Nick, they capture Billy and Betty as guides to the North Pole, then bring them to Mars to befriend Girmar and Bomar. All ends happily when Santa and the Earth kids are returned to our planet and lame-o laughing gas abuser Dropo is appointed Mars’s new King of Christmas.
But don’t turn off your video player yet, since after the end credits, you’ll get a chance to read and sing along with the film’s insistently insufferable theme song, “Hooray for Santa Claus!" With lyrics like, “He’s fat and round but, jumpin' jiminy, he can climb down any chim-o-ney," it’s a holiday classic of the fingernails-on-the-blackboard variety.
Produced for a minuscule $200,000 in a New York film studio, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians was admittedly aimed at children who might not realize just how awful it was. But any child over the age of five who doesn’t spot its inherent tackiness should have his or her IQ tested immediately… or be punished with a lump of coal and a DVD of this film in their Christmas stocking.
Dippy Dialogue
Kimar (Leonard Hicks): “Chochem is 800 years old—you can’t dismiss the wisdom of centuries!"
Voldar (Vincent Beck): “I can!!”
Choice Chapter Stop/Availability
As a “public domain" title, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is available on DVD and VHS from various video companies, each with different chapter stops. Since it’s barely 80 minutes long, we suggest you watch the entire thing.