We're all about timeliness at the Umbrellahead Review; since today is a holiday (happy Memorial Day, everyone!), let's review two Santa-centric features, each with an adorable little tyke and her beloved dolly.
Santa Claus (1959)
Grade: F
What else can one really say about one of IMDB's bottom 100 films of all time? Santa Claus is #87 as of this writing -- two spots below The Aztec Mummy Against the Humanoid Robot (1958), another K. Gordon Murray Mexican import redub special.
It's a bizarre offering, to be sure. Our man Santa lives in a crystal and gold palace in a galaxy far, far away (though simultaneously directly above the North Pole -- quite the astronomical feat!), and spends his free time playing a magical organ to accompany a flotilla of singing and dancing It's a Small World rejects.
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| Too racy for Disney, perhaps. |
There's no Mrs. Claus in sight (hmm), but he does have a sweaty, hairy, shirtless blacksmith (double hmm) and Merlin the Wizard (yup) in residence to help him out with all the traditional accouterments necessary for Christmas Eve.
This includes a giant key that opens every door on the planet, sleeping powder for the kiddies, and a massive collection of spy equipment focused squarely on Earth's children.
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| This is naturally controlled by giant animatronic body parts. |
Santa's particularly fixated on a handful of Mexican niños, among them adorable Lupita, a poor little mite who just wants a dolly for Christmas (plus one more to share with the baby Jesus, because she's just that good and pure).
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Lupita really is a cute kid, we say without sarcasm -- we'd love to know what happened to her
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Meanwhile, back on Earth (or maybe Pluto or something, since if Toyland is in outer space, why not Hell?), Satan interrupts a demonic dance party to summon his minion Pitch, who's tasked with leading the children of Earth astray (coincidentally, those same Mexican kids!) in order to defeat Santa Claus.
OK, we'll buy that -- Mexico has its traditional devil-vs-the-shepherds pastorelas, so this modernized, kid-friendly version isn't completely out of left field. What follows is an often strange, yet ultimately harmless baturrillo of devilish trickery, strange ballets, and parents presented in rather coffin-like oversized gift boxes.
Besides its seemingly interminable length, we count three factors that turn what could have otherwise been a so-bizarre-it's-wonderful surrealistic romp into a ¡dios-mío!-please-let-it-be-over slog.
First is K. Gordon Murray himself, who not only bastardized the original Mexican production (so say some sources -- we're not keen on doing a detailed compare/contrast ourselves), but lent his own voice as the omnipresent narrator, who just goes on and on and ON in that very 1950's false-excited tone, without letting any of the (dubbed) dialogue or action just, you know, speak for itself.
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| LET ME TELL YOU ALL ABOUT WHAT IS HAPPENING! |
The second is a sort of claustrophobic dinginess that infuses all the scenes, both indoors and out. The Eastmancolor film process probably plays a factor, but no doubt a low budget and poor production values didn't help.
Even the Toyland scenes, with their over-the-top set pieces and giant key-shaped door openings, have a closed-in, suffocating feeling (bad lighting? poor camera angles?), and this ends up sucking all the brightness and life out of the action.
Finally, the absolute worst thing about the film (in our humble Umbrellahead opinion) is the eye-rolling, ear-gouging, almost physically painful repetition of Jingle Bells -- never a verse, always just the chorus, over and over and over again, whenever a musical cue was deemed necessary (which was often).
Whatever its other memorable bits -- I mean, a wizard in a Christmas movie? -- Santa Claus will forever be known to us as "that awful Mexican Jingle Bells thing." Sorry, little Lupita.
Christmas Evil (1980)
(aka You Better Watch Out)
Grade: D
Christmas Evil certainly had the potential for something greater than just seasonally mitigated obscurity. The film stars Harry Stadling (Brandon Maggart), a sad sack middle manager at the Jolly Dream toy factory whose fixation with Christmas stems from a traumatizing moment when he saw his mother in flagrante delicto with his Santa suit-clad father.
Reminds us of (the later) Don't Open Till Christmas; however, unlike the murderer in that film, the experience doesn't make Harry want to kill Santa -- it makes him want to be Santa.
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Paging Dr. Freud...
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From the rooftop of his modest apartment (filled with Santa kitsch -- posters, dolls, the works) Harry spies on the neighborhood children, recording their every act in a custom-embossed pair of leatherbound tomes of, yes, Good Boys & Girls (including little Susy Lovett and her doll -- "just a darling") and the corresponding Bad ones.
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His bookshelf shows volumes labeled '78 through '80 -- where did one have books like that produced in 1980? The local Kinkos? Mail order?
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OK, a bit sad and more than a little odd, but so far nothing overtly sinister. What follows is Harry's transition from neighborhood creeper to holiday killer.
Here's why Christmas Evil had potential: its murderer is not, for once, a comprehensively psychotic yet remarkably clever and capable mastermind, able to carefully plan the minutest details of complex crimes and cooly elude capture, all while being completely batshit crazy.
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| Hello? Is this every modern crime show on TV? |
Rather, this is the slow burn of a sad, unbalanced man being gradually pushed over the edge by the thousand small cuts of an uncivil society: his boorish bullying co-worker; a snotty little boy ogling Penthouse (whose mother happens to be played by Mrs. Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor, Patricia Richardson); the greedy corporate bosses who value profit over charity.
Fed up with the injustice (and unwholesomeness) of it all, Harry focuses on transforming into the jolly elf himself -- the perfectly-padded suit, well-glued facial hair, fancifully painted van-turned-sleigh -- to put right all the perceived wrongs.
That he goes on to commit murder is only a byproduct of this strange, misguided, rather bumbling quest to restore Christmas cheer to his small slice of the dirty, cruel world.
Where the film fails is not in the premise, but the writing and direction (both by Lewis Jackson). It sort of wants to be a black comedy -- and it probably would have made a great one! -- but is neither black nor comedic enough to pull it off.
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| There are a few exceptions. |
It really wants to be a slasher flick, but lacks the punch, suspense, and shock factor of even the more mediocre ones (not to mention that the body count is rather low).
Key scenes are poorly shot and end up murky and hard to follow; the film's timeline isn't well defined (though we figured it out on second viewing), which also adds further confusion.
It follows a pattern we've often seen in underwhelming films -- an intriguing premise, a middle third that drags, and a rushed finale that doesn't really fulfill the promise of the beginning. Brandon Maggart was well cast and did his best, but ultimately, Christmas Evil belongs on the Bad list.
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