Tony J Case
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2002
- Messages
- 2,736
Oh sure, everyone watches A Christmas Story or It's a Wonderful Life this time of year. But I'm more interested in completely inappropriate, totally un-christmas movies! I thought I'd see if anyone else has some thoughts on what non-mainstream stuff to watch this december.
My list of delightly bad Christmas movies:
SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS
Is Santa Claus Conquers the Martians it the worst Christmas movie ever? While I'll freely admit that it's a horrible movie! The writers were selected from the least brain damaged the blunt trauma ward had to offer. The budget would make Doctor Who in the seventies look like it had major studio backing. The acting is wooden like Santa's puppets come to life, the "Alien Sets" are cardboard, the Martian makeup is ridiculous, the high tech devices are Korean war surplus bravely standing in for "State of the Art" - in short, it fails on just about every level.That said I think soulless films deigned by studio marketing departments to target your wallets, completely unnecessary films like Jim Carrey's The Grinch remake from a couple of years ago are far worse. Oh sure SCCtM is completely inept on just about every level, but at least its heart is in the right place. That counts for a lot in my book.
SANTA'S SLAY
Goldberg shows up, spouts off a couple of Christmas-centric one liners, kills every single person in the room and moves on. Meanwhile scrappy young teenager Nicolas Yuleson, his sexy girlfriend Mary 'Mac' Mackenzie, and crazy old grandpa have to stop Santa before he paints the town red.
That's the beauty of Santa's Slay - it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The opening scene pretty much sets the tone of the movie right off the bat. Santa starts off his night of yuletide terror by busting in on a rich snob family (Who's Christmas blessings include "Thank you god, for not making us poor. . . . or Samoan") and tears the place up. The kills are creative and funny (throwing star tree topper), the cast is rife with freaking cameos, and Goldberg instantly establishes himself as a commanding presence in the lead roll. While it's not a very - oh, how shall we say - demanding roll, the man has charisma, I'll give him that.
And no holiday tradition is left un-skewered, including one of my long time favorites: the Arthur Rankin/Jules Bass stop motion special, presenting Santa's story in flashback form, which brought a twisted smile to my face. Director David Steiman really seems to enjoy putting the thumb-screws to the holiday. And before you get offended, the murders are SO outrageous, they are overblown to the point of absurdity. Seriously, when you set Fran Dresher's head on fire with a mouthful of whiskey and a lighter before drowning her in a punchbowl of eggnog, you know you're in utterly ridiculous territory.
Is Santa's Slay a good movie? Good lord no! It's about a evil Santa Claus who is out for revenge against an angel who beat him in at curling a thousand years ago. That said - it is an entertaining movie! The cast is reasonably talented; the dialog is fairly clever in places ("Christmas can sure scare the dickens out of people!" Santa quips as he attacks someone with a copy of A Christmas Carol) and the typically boring ol' Christmas music that permeates the soundtrack is actually pretty good.
And come on, how can you not love a line like "I'm Santa Claus, not fucking Dracula!"
SANTA CLAUS
No, not the Tim Allan Santa Clause - although that belongs on the Crappy Christmas Movie list for it's own list of sins, nor do I mean the equally crappy Dudley Moore Santa Claus. No, in this case, I'm talking about the 1959 film by Rene Cardona, the Mexican director of such cinematic classics like Wrestling Women versus the Aztec Mummy, Night of the Bloody Apes, and Santo versus the Riders of Terror. And believe you me, nothing you've seen can prepare you for the horrors within!
Santa Claus is no doubt one of the most colossal blunders in cinema history. Amazingly enough Rene Cardona actually does some good (if schlocky) work - his Santo films were entertaining, Night of the Bloody Apes is a Mexi-Horror classic (if a bit schlocky), and Wrestling Women versus the Aztec Mummy is dumb (and schlocky), but fun. But Santa Claus - man, this takes the Bad Movie cake. Hell, it takes the whole Bad Movie Bakery, cake and all. It's bizarre, it's filled with non-sequiturs, it's shamelessly illogical and made for about a 30 pesos.
Its no good whatsoever, but my god is it B-Movie gold! Fantastic!
Of course Cardona is not alone in shouldering the blame here. No, the finger of shame must also be pointed towards, K. Gordon Murray. Murray is best known for buying up a whole ton of Mexican flicks on the cheap and dubbing on the cheap them for American drive-in fare audiences. Most of these movies were either low budget horror or the amazingly popular wrestling movies. In fact, without Murray's influence, the midnight movies that haunted the UHF frequencies would be much poorer for the experience.
It didn’t help matters that Murray's localization efforts would make Sandy Frank's Godzilla and Gamera movies seem Oscar winning by comparison. The translations were . . . dubious to say the least (actually, judging from the dub track, the translations were probably straight across 1-to-1 from Spanish instead of adapted to sound more natural in English). Add in that Mexican movies tended to over the top acting and goofy plots in the first place, and you have one messed up localization attempt.
My list of delightly bad Christmas movies:
SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS
Is Santa Claus Conquers the Martians it the worst Christmas movie ever? While I'll freely admit that it's a horrible movie! The writers were selected from the least brain damaged the blunt trauma ward had to offer. The budget would make Doctor Who in the seventies look like it had major studio backing. The acting is wooden like Santa's puppets come to life, the "Alien Sets" are cardboard, the Martian makeup is ridiculous, the high tech devices are Korean war surplus bravely standing in for "State of the Art" - in short, it fails on just about every level.That said I think soulless films deigned by studio marketing departments to target your wallets, completely unnecessary films like Jim Carrey's The Grinch remake from a couple of years ago are far worse. Oh sure SCCtM is completely inept on just about every level, but at least its heart is in the right place. That counts for a lot in my book.
SANTA'S SLAY
Goldberg shows up, spouts off a couple of Christmas-centric one liners, kills every single person in the room and moves on. Meanwhile scrappy young teenager Nicolas Yuleson, his sexy girlfriend Mary 'Mac' Mackenzie, and crazy old grandpa have to stop Santa before he paints the town red.
That's the beauty of Santa's Slay - it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The opening scene pretty much sets the tone of the movie right off the bat. Santa starts off his night of yuletide terror by busting in on a rich snob family (Who's Christmas blessings include "Thank you god, for not making us poor. . . . or Samoan") and tears the place up. The kills are creative and funny (throwing star tree topper), the cast is rife with freaking cameos, and Goldberg instantly establishes himself as a commanding presence in the lead roll. While it's not a very - oh, how shall we say - demanding roll, the man has charisma, I'll give him that.
And no holiday tradition is left un-skewered, including one of my long time favorites: the Arthur Rankin/Jules Bass stop motion special, presenting Santa's story in flashback form, which brought a twisted smile to my face. Director David Steiman really seems to enjoy putting the thumb-screws to the holiday. And before you get offended, the murders are SO outrageous, they are overblown to the point of absurdity. Seriously, when you set Fran Dresher's head on fire with a mouthful of whiskey and a lighter before drowning her in a punchbowl of eggnog, you know you're in utterly ridiculous territory.
Is Santa's Slay a good movie? Good lord no! It's about a evil Santa Claus who is out for revenge against an angel who beat him in at curling a thousand years ago. That said - it is an entertaining movie! The cast is reasonably talented; the dialog is fairly clever in places ("Christmas can sure scare the dickens out of people!" Santa quips as he attacks someone with a copy of A Christmas Carol) and the typically boring ol' Christmas music that permeates the soundtrack is actually pretty good.
And come on, how can you not love a line like "I'm Santa Claus, not fucking Dracula!"
SANTA CLAUS
No, not the Tim Allan Santa Clause - although that belongs on the Crappy Christmas Movie list for it's own list of sins, nor do I mean the equally crappy Dudley Moore Santa Claus. No, in this case, I'm talking about the 1959 film by Rene Cardona, the Mexican director of such cinematic classics like Wrestling Women versus the Aztec Mummy, Night of the Bloody Apes, and Santo versus the Riders of Terror. And believe you me, nothing you've seen can prepare you for the horrors within!
Santa Claus is no doubt one of the most colossal blunders in cinema history. Amazingly enough Rene Cardona actually does some good (if schlocky) work - his Santo films were entertaining, Night of the Bloody Apes is a Mexi-Horror classic (if a bit schlocky), and Wrestling Women versus the Aztec Mummy is dumb (and schlocky), but fun. But Santa Claus - man, this takes the Bad Movie cake. Hell, it takes the whole Bad Movie Bakery, cake and all. It's bizarre, it's filled with non-sequiturs, it's shamelessly illogical and made for about a 30 pesos.
Its no good whatsoever, but my god is it B-Movie gold! Fantastic!
Of course Cardona is not alone in shouldering the blame here. No, the finger of shame must also be pointed towards, K. Gordon Murray. Murray is best known for buying up a whole ton of Mexican flicks on the cheap and dubbing on the cheap them for American drive-in fare audiences. Most of these movies were either low budget horror or the amazingly popular wrestling movies. In fact, without Murray's influence, the midnight movies that haunted the UHF frequencies would be much poorer for the experience.
It didn’t help matters that Murray's localization efforts would make Sandy Frank's Godzilla and Gamera movies seem Oscar winning by comparison. The translations were . . . dubious to say the least (actually, judging from the dub track, the translations were probably straight across 1-to-1 from Spanish instead of adapted to sound more natural in English). Add in that Mexican movies tended to over the top acting and goofy plots in the first place, and you have one messed up localization attempt.