There are lots of holiday movies and that means plenty of terrible ones that aren't on the Hallmark Channel.
I Believe in Santa Claus: This is a French movie from the 80s also called "Here Comes Santa Claus" where a kid's parents are kidnapped by rebels in Africa so he decides to go find Santa Claus in Finland. Because that's what you'd do, right? Fortunately his class takes a field trip to the airport where like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone 2 he and a friend can just sneak onto a plane.
Santa puts them up at his cabin in the woods while he and a fairy (who was also the kid's teacher in a needless coincidence) go to Africa to rescue the kid's parents. Santa vs African rebels would be a good premise for Taken 4: I have a particular set of skills...but they're all associated with making and delivering toys, so not a lot of help. For...reasons the kids go into the woods and are captured by an ogre despite being expressly told not to go into the woods. And why aren't the elves watching them?
So yeah even by French film standards this is a pretty bizarre idea. But it's pretty fun for riffing. And the teacher/fairy is kinda hot. I'm just saying.
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians: This is one of those that was first featured on MST3K but later also had a Rifftrax version. As you'd expect, this is a pretty strange movie. It's from the 50s when we still thought there were little green men on Mars. Or men with green motorcycle helmets with TV antennae on them.
Because Martian children seem so unhappy, the head Martian is counseled by the
With the crappy costumes, sets, spaceships, robot, and the "polar bear" that's obviously a guy in a suit it's like if Ed Wood made a holiday movie. Of the two versions the MST3K one is probably better because it has some funny intermission skits like Crow creating the hit new carol, "A Patrick Swayze Christmas" in honor of that holiday favorite, Roadhouse.
Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny: Like this entry barely meets the A to Z Challenge requirement, this movie barely meets the holiday movie requirement. The extremely thin premise is that Santa's sleigh crashes on a Florida beach and the reindeer all fly back to the North Pole. Instead of just walking into a town for help, Santa sits on his ass and somehow calls children to him. The children try a variety of animals--dog, donkey, sheep, monkey--to try to get it out. Then they go to the Pirates World theme park to fetch the Ice Cream Bunny--a guy in a bunny suit who doesn't have any ice cream. And the Ice Cream Bunny gets the sleigh out, right? Nope. He just gives Santa a ride on his fire truck. The end.
In between the madness there's an old low-budget film telling the story of Thumbelina. It features really crappy-looking sets and creepy puppets and an even creepier story of a witch creating a tiny girl (like six inches tall) for a woman and then the girl being abducted by a frog before she escapes and goes underground to almost marry an elderly mole before she manages to find her own people. Yeah, that. What does that have to do with Santa or the Ice Cream Bunny? Absolutely nothing!
With entertainment like this it's no wonder Pirates World is out of business.
Santa's Summer House: The creative team behind the awful family movie A Talking Cat!? (you'll hear more about it in the penultimate entry of the challenge) came up with this...equally awful Christmas movie. A group of people going to "a resort" are in a van that gets lost in "a fog" (fog not shown) and end up at Santa's summer house, which is the same house as A Talking Cat!? and also a house that was used in at least one porno movie. Bad acting and mumbling ensues as the people learn the true meaning of Christmas thanks to Robert Mitchum's son as a beardless Santa who looks more like a Parrothead and former B-movie martial arts star Cynthia Rothrock, who looks like a retired hooker more than Mrs. Claus. (There's at least one more Rothrock movie in this challenge.)
A Fun Fact is one of the dopes in this movie is played by the "alien" in Future War. So this movie connects to 3 other entries in this challenge. Isn't it a small, terrible world?
Whizzo's Christmas Circus: This rivals Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny for sheer insanity. The opening short is this creepy French thing with these XMas trees that have human faces. Not animated either--real people! They don't talk; they just make creepy faces as they go from a forest to a tree lot to homes to the garbage and finally to the stars! Um...what? Stars are the souls of dead Christmas trees? That's France for you.
The main event is a 1966 Christmas "special" from this crappy clown show in Kansas City. I guess Whizzo was like KC's version of Bozo or whatever. Mostly he's this stammering nut job about as creepy as the murderous clown in IT. There are all these kids in his "circus" including a depressed girl he completely fails to cheer up and a little girl who has an awful cough like she's got pneumonia or consumption. So going to the "North Pole" is a really good idea for her, right?
Trying to explain the horror of this is really too hard. It must be seen to be believed. Watch it on Amazon or the Rifftrax site--if you dare.
The Magic Christmas Tree: One of the earliest Rifftrax specials featured a couple of shorts and then this longer short feature, The Magic Christmas Tree. It's about as fucked up as Whizzo. A boy goes to an old lady's house and she reveals she's a witch and gives him a pine tree that he plants and on Christmas Eve it beams itself into the house because his family is so dumb they apparently don't buy a tree or gifts before Christmas Eve. The tree then comes to life and in a sarcastic, effeminate voice gives the boy 3 wishes. The first he uses to have "power for an hour." And he does lame things like make the night into day. Then with the second wish he wishes for Santa Claus and thus on Christmas Eve holds Santa captive. Because that's what you'd do, right? And then he somehow runs afoul of an ogre or something who wants to make him a slave...and then it winds up all being a dream and he's really at the old lady's house. Hooray? A nonsensical story, bad acting, and lame effects make this another magical holiday special...not.
Santa Claus: There have probably been a lot of movies with this title, but this particular one is a 60s Mexican film that involves Santa, Satan, Merlin, and tempting a little girl to steal a doll. Basically Satan and Santa work against each other for the soul of some little girl named Lupita who really wants a dolly for Christmas but because she's poor she probably won't get one unless she steals it. You'd think an evil deity and a saint would have a lot more to worry about, but no.
Satan enlists a couple of naughty boys to help him in his quest to ruin Christmas while Santa has the help of Merlin. Yes, that Merlin. The Celtic wizard. Obviously he was big into Christmas.
With a nonsensical plot, old-fashioned cultural stereotypes, and sets and effects about as good as Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, it's pretty bad. Hilariously bad.
1 comment:
Oh wow, those are some really peculiar movies to say the least.
Haven't seen any of them!
Post a Comment