By Out Heroding Herod!!!
No, I don't mean getting kidnapped by Martians. I mean having his character defamed in this way. I'm sure those of you of the right age remember the Anti-Defamation lawsuit that Mr. Kristopher Nicholas Kringle (AKA: "The Defendant") brought forth in superior court against director Nicholas Webster and writers Paul L. Jacobson and Glenville Mareth. It was all over the papers. To see that case thrown out of court on a technicality... what a shame! Look, you fat judge, if he really registered as a US Citizen he wouldn't be able to do all this Super-Christmas stuff... and the Government would be Taxing him like mad. Yes, you guessed it... the 2006 Christmas Turkey is Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, a film so bad it's practically a Christmas Tofurkey. Sigh. Here's my main problem with selecting this flick as the Christmas Turkey. Some films are so bad they're malicious... you shake as you watch them, you call your Primary Care Physician as soon as the credits roll, you find scars you didn't know you had in places you never think of over the coming weeks. Vicious little films like that deserve your antipathy and my derision. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is no such mean spirited little film. No, in fact, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is a truly well intentioned, innocent and positive little family film, sweeter than a candy cane and softer than Saint Nick's beard itself. That's not to say that this Turkey is any easier digested than Christmas Evil or The Birds II: Land's End or Corpses! Okay, slightly... but it's a Turkey Dog nonetheless and it's just awful. It gives me no pleasure to say that. This film is sweeter than Sam the Snowman from Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer! It's like one of those times when your grandmother slaved all day over a hot stove to serve you a nice big dinner and you just can't eat it because she swung and missed on this one and it tastes like wet dog feet on a hot day? Yeah? You hate telling her that because, you know, she meant well and she really, really wanted to give you a nice meal, but you can't eat it because it's so awful Forest Rangers could replace their nicotine bullets with this crap to kill wild bears with. That pained look on her face will haunt you until your death, in spite of the fact that she probably cooked you about Eight Million other meals that you loved. Yeah? No? Well, regardless of how well the filmmakers meant in this case, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is putrid and hard to tolerate. I'm sorry, but it is. Every time I come close to giving it Two Stars I think of that grating song sung by the Vienna Sausage Choir. Ichabod Crane, that's a crappy song! In a sequence that makes me wonder if Carl Sagan based the whole idea behind Contact on this film, two green skinned Martian malcontent children, Bomar (a Boy Martian played by Chris Month) and Girmar (a Girl Martian played by Pia Zadora, REALLY!) are watching some television feeds from the planet Earth and realizing how much better the kids have it down there. Guess no "Feed The Children" commercials came on during the run. During a routine interview with Santa Claus (John Call) at the North Pole, these two goof balls get visions of sugar plums dancing in their antennae. Naturally their big, green Daddy Kimar (Leonard Hicks), who just happens to be King of ALL Martians, does what any big, green Daddy would do... he mounts a mission to kidnap Santa Claus from Earth to bring Christmas to Mars. Excuse me, but don't you need to have Jesus in a Martian Manger for that to really happen? I'm a pragmatist! Any horkin' way, Kimar's MarDoucheBags get hella confused because of all the bum Santas hanging out around Target and Best Buy ringing bells in people's faces and askin' for hand outs. So they do what any big green douche would do... they park at some lake to ask directions. A lake, by the way, where two wacky Earth Kids are sleeping OUTSIDE in the winter time under some pine trees. Quick, quick, somebody look up the 1964 Parents of the Year Award, because I'll bet I know who it went to. Now, thanks to traitorous Billy (Victor Styles) and Betty (Donna Conforti), the Martians know just where to find Big Red, so they kidnap him (and keep the Bill Bett Trio as Hostages) and head back to Mars. Amazingly, the big guy doesn't seem to mind them using Martian Freeze Rays on his family and friends and sets out to replicate ToyMars for all the GirMars and BoMars! Meanwhile we've got the idiot Kooky The Klown character in the form of a Mentally Challenged Martian named Dropo (Bill McCutcheon) making all kinds of messes. What he doesn't mess up, our evil villain (Vincent Beck's Voldar) will. That's right... a bunch of Alien Invaders kidnapping Father Christmas and two (mostly) innocent children isn't evil enough... we need an Outer Space Snidely Whiplash (complete with stupid mustache) to ice that green cake, don't we? While none of this makes any sense at all (they even step all over their own inconsistent Martian Mythos), the ending is the least sensible thing I've seen since the Quayle/ Gore debates. The ending is so arbitrary and weak, I wondered if the producers just ran out of money. Needless to say, it had little to do with Santa Claus actually conquering Martians The special effects are right out of Plan 9 From Outer Space and Cause my Santa Claus Clause to Pause and rewrite itself. This includes a Robot who makes Robby and B-9 look like R2 and 3PO, a man dressed up in a polar bear suit with visible clothes underneath and a Space Ship that looks like a Toilet Paper Dispenser. But, hey, it's for kids, and it's cute, right? Well, yeah, at times, but it's such a brain drain I realized with horror why I needed "Joel and the Bots" to sit through this thing the first time. But the most painful thing about this movie is the bone-rattling theme song written by Roy Alfred & Milton Delugg called "Hooray For Santa Claus" (though it's listed in the credits as "Horray For Santa Claus"... and that's not their only misspelling either!). This shrill song of negative sixpence is worse than anything Rick Astley ever recorded. Just for example, the kids (I think they were kids, they could have been monsters of some kind) who sang this song pronounced the title character's name as "Santy Claus"... Then, to show that someone on the crew could properly formulate words, they spelled the name properly as "S-A-N-T-A C-L-A-U-S", but then pronounced it "Santy Claus" any way. I'm serious. After the grueling credit sequence they actually put that on screen. See the sidebar, under the poster... I have PROOF! Look, I'm all in favor of anything that rhymes with "Panty", but this is just indefensible. I'm sorry, guys, I really, really am. I want to be nice to Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, because this movie really, really wanted to be nice to all the good little boys and girls in the world, but this movie actually redefines what we thought of as a "Christmas Turkey"! This is WorldsGreatestCritic.com, so you know a Turkey is a DOG and tastes and smells like one too. Thanks for tryin', gramma, but I want McDonald's! I'm not sure I can have a Merry Christmas now. It's a Scary Christmas and a Crappy New Year! Oh, drat. I think it's time to go pass out... Oh, no, I'm not tired. But my finger is. I've been typing all day. I think I'll go put my Finger to bed! Good Heavens, what a MOVIE! My brain is too drained to even think up a cute rhyme for this year, so I'm just going to recycle last year's piece of Crap rhyme. My intentions are good, folks, the execution's just lousy!
On Slashers, on Pantsers, on Trancers, out Blitzin'!
Oh, dear, dear me! |
The only way to help him is to
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