Weirdhouse Cinema: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

a film that just really stands out. Even if you strip away the holiday aspects of the movie, it's still one of the weirder and when entertainingly weird films you could dig up from the twentieth century. I think that they should have kept the ending a little bit more of a cliffhanger, like they tell you the end in

the title. Yeah, Well, you know kids are watching. You don't want him to be in distress over what's going to occur, but well, oh yeah, Otherwise the kids would be worried that Voldar actually does murder Santa Clause in the airlock of the spaceship. Yeah. Also, I think Conquers is a little misleading. It brings to mind a certain image of Santa bringing the people of Mars, you know, under his heel, and proclaiming Mars to be the domain of Santa. It doesn't really work like that. I guess

it's more of a like a spiritual conquering. He conquers a certain Martian mindset. He uh, he conquers the mindset of the Martian who wants all of life to be serious and violent and adult. Yes, this is a really

fun film. I'm looking forward to discussing it here and and really, I guess the other exciting thing about it is like it's a film that's so weird and so amusing that I believe it's come up numerous times on Weird House and Stuff to blow your mind before, like anytime we've been talking about Santa clause, but also sometimes just when we're talking about science fiction films. There's a particular set in this movie that I believe I referenced

when we were talking about Mario Baba's Planet to the Vampires. Oh, that makes sense, the craggy planet surface set, which I think may also be exactly the same as the North Pole set, except with the north pole they covered it in snow. Yeah, they just got a flocking gun or whatever. Yeah, but either way, it's a it's a a strange landscape of kind of twisted topography or a little like spires and things poke up out of the ground right right.

And we end up too with the with the classic spaceship landing legs set, where you you're not going to show the whole spaceship, but you can show the landing legs and have people climbing down from it. Uh. They did Planet the Vampires to great effect, and they do it here in an amusing way. I see the shared DNA. Yes, so yeah, this is a tremendously fun film. The premise is wild, and yet, as as Michael Weldon points out in his review for the Psychotronic Encyclopedia film quote, the

spirit of Christmas shines through. Because while choices of every sort can be called into question regarding this film, and certainly we'll we'll we'll discuss many of them, it's commitment to a childlike wonderment for the holidays is just above reproach. Yes, from my own part, I've been watching this film for years, at least as far back as whenever I first sawisode of Misrease Science Theater three thousand. They of course famously riffed this movie. I think it was later riffed on

Cinematic Titanic and then also on riffed tracks. So I've revisited this film via these episodes with friends and family, I guess for decades at this point. But this isn't the only way to enjoy the film. Before Joe and the Box came around, plenty of people were enjoying the heck out of Santa Claus Conquerors the Martians. In fact, I once went into a furniture store in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, and what were they playing on like multiple

televisions during the holidays. It was Santa Claus Conquerors the Martians. I asked the owner. It's like, oh, did you learn about this in MS teams like, oh, no, this is just the movie we watch every year. What's MS take? So I always always enjoyed that. Wow, that's interesting. It seems like whenever I go into a place of business that has a TV on, it's just news or it's like it's like local news that's always just a segment showing like a body outline drawn on the ground or

like or it's Fox News or something like that. Well in this case, it was Santa Claus Conquerors the Martians. And I don't go into a lot of furniture shops, so this is this is the memory I choose to keep of what it's like inside one. So this year I watched it with my my wife and my son. We had a great time. My son insisted that we do the unriffed version of it, which I was happy to to apply John, and it was a lot of fun. My son enjoyed the goofness of it all, but also

enjoyed questioning the logic of its many lot choices. But he's also a real Christmas kid at this point, Uh just really gung home for Christmas, and so he really dug all the holiday vibes as well. I could not help but compare this movie to the other main Christmas movie that was covered on Mystery Science Theater, which is the nineteen fifty nine Renee cardon Junior Mexican film Santa Claus, also known I think as Santa Claus versus the Devil. Yes,

and several differences stand out. They're both fantastically entertaining in their own ways. But one of the things that really stood out as a difference is that the Mexican film emphasizes that the spirit of Christmas is love and appreciation for family and selflessness and charity, like the strong moral themes in the fifty nine Mexican Santa Claus. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is very much more that the spirit of Christmas is fun and it is about laughter and toys,

and that the real threat. So that the villain in the fifty nine Santa Claus is the devil, because of course the devil opposes charity and goodwill and love and all those moral values, whereas in this movie the villain is someone who opposes nuisances, who opposes noise and laughter and silliness. Yeah. Yeah, the devil wouldn't really have a place in this movie because the devil would just be like, hey, I'm fine, nobody ever accuses me of not being fun. Yeah,

So yeah, it is interesting to compare those two. Of course, both Santa Vie Martians and Santa Vie Devil are important legal presidents for our celebration of the holidays. Uh uh. And and one is Yeah, one is more uh theological than the other, but both raise a lot of questions. You know, what does it mean when you have your Santa mythos and now the devil is involved? What does it mean when now interplanetary conflict is involved. They both

also have a surprising number of science fiction gadgets. Santa Claus conquers the Martians has everything from the freeze gun to the tickle wand and all the other manner of things in between we'll talk about when we get into the plot. Whereas the fifty nine Santa Claus has the flower to disappear and it has those like lips on a tentacle or whatever that poke out of Santa Claus is hideout in space. Yeah. I love when a Christmas movie is not afraid to get invented and come up

with new twists and turns. Even if it's terrible, it's a lot of fun. Like I'm thinking of that Dudley more John Lithcow movie Santa Claus. Did you ever see this one? It's I haven't seen it since I was a kid, But even as a kid, I could tell this movie was bad but also a lot of fun. It had to do with something about candy canes that if you ate them, it would make you fly. And that's about the only thing I remember. And John Lithgow is an evil corporate enemy of Santa Claus. I don't

remember how Dudley. I think Dudley more than Elf. I'm not sure. Before you said evil corporate, I was trying to imagine what it could be, and I thought of John Lithgow in his Buckaroo Bond's Eye role versus Santa Claus. Now that would be good. Santa Claus versus the I don't know, you know, the John Smallberries whatever you call him in that movie. By the way, speaking of Santa Claus the Devil, if you are Atlanta based, I believe what is next week? Video Drone and the Plaza Theater

are going to have that on the big screen. Thumbs up. All right, So what's the elevator pitch for this movie? Well, I think it basically comes down to Santa Claus becoming a central figure in an interplanetary conflict. Maybe we should hear some trailer audio Santa Claus conquerors the Martians. Santa

set up a fantastic automatic toy factory on Mars. The Martian leaguer battles the Wicked bold Are in a desperate effort to save set up the Wise Man of Mars nine hundred years old, the Battle of the Toys, when Martian kids and Earth kids joined set up to battle the bad guys of Mars for real space age one. You will be out of this world when Santa Claus conquers the Martians. All right, sounds pretty fun, right, It sounds like all your kids should just pile into the

theater for this one. Get out of the cold. It's time for some cheer. I did not listen to the trailer. Does it sing the song? No, it does not. It has some other jaunty, kind of dancy track going on in the background. But I don't believe this is the theme song. I mean, I guess we could play a little bit of the theme song, or we could just sing it. Um. I was actually you can, you can

stream it like on Spotify and stuff. So I was playing it this morning in the car, you know, and it's like, hooray for santi Clause s A N T A C l A U s A ray for santi Clause. Yeah, you'll hear that a number of times. What did they say he's he's round and fat, but jumping Jiminy. He can fit down any chimney, which becomes a plot point in the film. It's how Santa escaped certain death in space. Yeah, if there's a ventilation system, he's a master of it.

He finds some fun ways to use the existing mythology of Santa here. I would say this song sounds like a mix between It's like half something that would be on Sergeant Peppers and then half. If you've ever heard that Most Unwanted Song created by the that like Russian art duo, that's, you know, combining children's choirs singing about holidays in Walmart with opera rapping and cowboy music, Yeah, I mean I have heard that, and the comparison is not altogether unfair. But but I don't know. I like

this track. I've had it stuck in my head the last couple of days since I rewatched the movie. It has that trumpet part that like really watched the chassis trumpet part. Now, maybe that's why I was thinking of that song too, because the trumpet part, I guess, kind of reminded me of like the tuba riff in The Most Unwanted Song, it'll push the boundaries of your tolerance for crazy easy trumpet solos. Yeah. All right. So if you haven't seen Santa Claus conquer As the Martians, um, obviously,

I highly encourage you to do so. It's pretty widely available. When I went to I went to stream it on Prime. There were multiple options, one of which was included in Prime. So I think I don't know what the rights issue is with this film, but there seemed to be so many ways to view it. There's even a at least one DVD release of it. It's labeled as as remastered, so that might be worth looking into. I'm not sure. Oh, I don't know if I could handle this in high death.

A lot of the designs in this movie are kind of on the cheap side, but also pretty enjoyable to look at. But one thing that was not enjoyable to look at was any close up on the Martians faces with their green makeup, which just looked like filth or sometimes. I was watching it with Rachel and she compared it to uh. She said, they look like Charlie Sheen and Platoon when he's got like the green camo makeup on his face. Yeah, and you can you can tell that as as is often the case that any filmed it

inquired little cars makeup like this. It kind of varies depending on the shot how well it's applied. And my son was picking up on this, He's like, why is why is his neck not green in this one? Or or later on, just kind of commenting on the quality of it, like, Okay, looks pretty good in this scene, looks pretty good here, but always looks kind of greasy. Like I was just thinking about these actors. I was like, man, after they're done filming for the day, I bet they're

they're really looking forward to a shower. Yes, speaking of the actors, Yeah, as we get into the people of note here, basically the case with this film, and you know we're not a hardcore film history podcast here, but the basic scenario seems to be you had some TV filmmakers and producers that decided to make the greatest Santa movie of all time and they turned I believe this was made in New Jersey and they turned a Broadway

for their talent. So a great many, if not all, of the main actors in this film are sourced from the Broadway scene of the day. So in looking everybody up actually had to go to the Internet Broadway Database a little bit to do a little research on on who these individuals were. Alright, let's start at the top.

The director was Nicholas Webster, who lived nineteen twelve through two thousand and six, mostly a TV director, and after this he went on to work on episodes of such shows as Bonanza, Gets Smart, The Immortal Mannix, and In Search Of, particularly the episodes on Bigfoot, The Power of London Murders, and Eva Braun huh okay. He also wrote

four episodes of In Search Of. For those of you not familiar, this was This was Leondard Demoy hosted basically a conspiracy theory show of the day that I think was perhaps well intended, but also helped to further promote some ideas such as um ancient aliens and so forth. And when I was a kid, they would show reruns of this on A and E and that's how I'm

familiar with it. But he wrote some of the episodes, and he also wrote and directed the Bigfoot documentary Man Beast, exclamation Point, Myth or monster question mark from was it a documentary or like a a fictional documentary? Well? Um, that the title would lead me to believe there's at least a hefty dash of fiction in there. Oh well, no, no, no no, I meant like a mockumentary. I guess. I

don't know. Given his connection to In Search of I suspect it's leaning more into them the longing for Bigfoot, Well, who can blame him? And I hope Nicholas Webster here cast the same actor to wear a Bigfoot suit that he cast to wear a robot suit in this movie,

I hope. So. Now, for as far as the writing on this movie goes, there's a screenplay credit for Glenville Marath and it's based on a story by the producer Paul L. Jacobson, who died in These are the only credits I could come across for either of these individuals as far as writing goes, So, um, yeah, they're They're the scribes we have to thank for this wild idea.

I'd say, just in terms of acting talent, I think probably the people with the most star power in this cast, I would say, are the guy playing Santa Claus and the guy playing Volder, the villain. Yes, so Santa Claus is played by John call. John Call lived through nineteen seventy three, and he was active in films from one through one that's when his last film was released, The Anderson Anderson Tapes. This was directed by Sydney lu May

and it starred Sean Connery and Christopher Walkin. Uh but this is just a bit part for Big John call this was he played O'Leary, the doorman. Like any of the cast members here, he had a Broadway career and, among other roles, played at Dr grim Wig in a nine through sixty four production of Oliver the Musical and uh Yeah and this he is one of the highlights of the film. He's this He's kind of hard to describe because he's definitely Santa, but he's like slightly over jolly.

He tells bad jokes all the time. He almost comes off a little intoxicated. He's slightly mischievous. This is Santa with a with a twinkle in his eye of a different kind than you might imagine, Like he makes some jokes at other people's expenses, even though he's the nice guy of the movie. And he also there's a thing he does in several scenes where he just laughs at someone like a maniac until they are forced to start laughing with him. Yeah, he invented laughter yoga basically. But yeah,

he is overflowing with holiday cheer here. It's just it's just infectious and perhaps a little dangerous. All right, let's get in to u some the other ca. We're gonna talk about a couple of Martians here, and Joe, you made some discoveries about the naming of the Martians. Oh well, so the several of the like the main Martian family, their names all end in the word Mar, and the first half of their names correspond to what role they

have in the family. So you have the leader of the Martians Keemar, which I saw suggested on the internet. That is short for King of Mars, which makes sense k I m a r. And then his wife, who is the mother of their children, is called Momar, so I guess she's like mother Mars. And then the children are Beaumar and Germer like boy Mars and girl Mars. It doesn't exactly sound great. It's I think they could have come up with better, but that's what we're left with. Okay,

I like that. This is I've got some new insight now, all right. So yeah, starting with the father, this is the Father Knows Best of of the Martian clan here Keemar played by Leonard Hicks, who en through and h I think I've looked into his biography before, because, like I said, I've been watching this movie for so long now. Um, this is the most prominent of only three screen credits that he has, and he only has three credits on the Internet Broadway database, which of course doesn't mean he

wasn't active elsewhere on the stage. Um. According to his oh bit in The New York Times, he appeared in productions at the Sharon Playhouse, the Living Theater, and the New York Shakespeare Festival. Uh. He had a real presence in this film. I feel like he has this kind of stern yet loving Martian Dad Knows Best. Seems like this is a guy that would have been a natural cowboy actor of the time. Yeah, he is very stern, very serious, but not cruel like the next guy we're

going to talk about. He's kind of a green eagle of a man. Yeah. Volder. Do you do you think that v the is like villain? Is that where we're getting this? Oh? Yeah, yeah villain? Yeah yeah, Volder is the bad guy of the v Volder. This uh, very tough looking Martian with this amazing mustache, played by Vincent Beck, who lived ninety four four. Another Broadway actor who worked in a lot of film and television as a character actor,

often playing heavies. Unsurprisingly, he had notable roles in seventy Nines and Justice for All as a comp and ninety seven is the Spy in the Green Hat. And he did a lot of TV work, popping up in bit parts on shows like Gilligan's Island, The Man from Uncle Bonan's Mr Ed, the Time Tunnel, and The Monkeys. His final film was two William Lustig movie titled Vigilante, which seems to be in the death wish vein of cinema

of that time period. But he plays a judge in that was this movie also just called alternate title Street Gangs. It may have been. Uh, It's like I I saw the basic pitch for it, and I'm like, this is not a movie I really want to know anymore about. But yeah, out of those had double names, so like, you know, let's let's release it again. It's more scandalous name. Please, let's touch into other areas of fear. Yeah, but Vincent Beck is fantastic in this role. He's one of my

favorite actors in the movie. He's just relentlessly grim. He's got this deep voice, muscular physique, this thick black mustache, and all he ever wants is seriousness and anger and war. Yeah. Yeah, he's a terrific enemy of Christmas. Like such a terrific enemy of Christmas. He belongs in the like the proper overarching pantheon of the Holidays. And oh, man, can you imagine Voldar and uh in Pitch the Devil Ever teamed up to take on Santa Claus. I think they might

pull it off. I don't know if they would work well together, because I believe Pitch would be too silly for Voldar. Like Pitch is engaging in exactly the the mischief and antics and dancing about that. Voldar is expressly the most against the thing he doesn't want happening is children of Mars having fun and getting underfoot with their play. Now, when it comes to play on Mars, there is no greater violator of voldar sensibilities regarding marsh and silliness than Drop.

Oh he is a silly man, drop O. And we'll we'll talk a lot about Dropo. Here in a bet Um he has the silly marsh and he's the laziest man on Mars, played by the late great Bill McCutcheon who lived four through two thousand and two. This for me is one of the highlights of the film as well. Like, this performance is just so silly it is. Um, you know, you could compare it to I think you could easily compare it to the antics of Sam Martin short in

more recent cinematic history. Like there's that level of goofy energy to it, where there's no wasted motion, all everything, all the the individual's energy is put into the performance. Oh yeah, Dropo is burning ten thousand calories an hour. He like he never stops. Yeah, this is a oddly comedic role. And uh yeah, he's just positively possessed with childlike wonder and childlike glee for Christmas. And this is uh, this is Bill McCutchen, who was a highly accomplished character

actor and also a Tony Award winner. He won a Tony Award for his role as moon Faced Martin in The Revival. If anything goes I don't know anything about that. Um, I don't know a lot about it either. I think it's I get the impression he's playing a gangster or something in it. I saw some some some photographs from the the production, but that's about it. We'll have to hear from our our theater listeners out there if you have any anything you'd like to add on these various musicals.

I don't know a lot about musicals unless they have a monster or a murderer in them, in which case there's a good chance I've seen them. He was also nominated for an Any Award for playing Uncle Wally on Sesame Street. Do you remember Uncle Wally? Uh, not explicitly, but when you showed me pictures, this kind of looks familiar, so I'm sure I saw him. Yeah, I think. He was also nominated for an Emmy for playing Young Joe on the TV movie That Forgotten Kennedy in nineteen seventy eight,

and he also had some fairly big film roles. He played Shirley McClain's husband and Steel Magnolia's in nine nine, and he was also in nineteen nineties Mr Destiny in nine Family Business. He also had a role in the Tales from the Dark Side episode A Case of the Stubborns, which also featured Christian Slater and Brent Spiner. M h oh and this is crazy. According to his New York Times oh bit, he served in the U. S. Army

during World War Two and received the Purple Heart. Oh that's dropos seems more like a lover than a fighter. But I guess this was in his later years. Yeah, alright, um, Now moving on to Lady Momar, who you mentioned as the mom of the household. The Stylish Lady of Mars played by Lilia Martin born ninety two. She is a Broadway actor who is I believe still active. Back in the nineteen fifties, she had roles in shows like Guys

and Dolls and West Side Story. In the sixties, she was in Gypsy at some point in the Phantom of the Operas thirty five years on Broadway. If for anyone out there isn't aware like it's it's been running on Broadway in New York for for ages and is just now like closing up shop. And I think they've had to extend their dates because of that, because everyone's like, whoa, you can't take Phantom away from us on Broadway, and so everybody's going back in to see you one last time.

I have to say I'm again not a big musical guy, but I've always liked Phantom of the Opera. I'm a little foggy on the details here, but she played the role of Madam Geary in that though I don't know for how long, but apparently she was active enough that she was present for a two thousand eighteen red carpet event for the thirtieth anniversary of the show. She has a few TV credits as well, and her film credits include Who Killed Mary? What's her Name? With Red Buttons?

And Sam Waterson and her final film credit was seventy six is God Told Me to The Fallslessly Weird? Larry Cohen film that starred Tony Lobianca, Sandy Dennis, and Richard Lynch. He played Nurse Jackson in that. Wow, and That's kind of a Christmas movie. And I don't recall it. I recall a St. Patrick's Day. It does have a kind of glowing uh, Like Richard Lynch is a glowing space Jesus who tells people to do crimes exactly. Yeah, but

he does glow. He's very angelic. Oh, we have Santa Claus in this, but we also have Mrs Claus played by Doris Rich who of nineteen oh one through nine eighty. I've seen this credited as the first cinematic portrayal of Mrs Claus. I think again, primarily Broadway actor or i b dB credit stretch from through ninete alright, another actor of note again, another Broadway actor, Carl Don plays two

different roles in this film. He plays Chochum, the the wise hermit of Mars, and he all so plays Professor von Green, which is a comedic Verner von Braun parody shows up at one point in the film. I think they call him Verner von Green. I heard Verner von Breen m hmm. It could have been yeah, it Breen Green. Either way, it's very obvious bit of parody here. Uh. This is a guy who was active on Broadway from

the nineteen forties through the nineteen nineties. His film credits include Stardust, Memories, and Ransom, mostly small parts and some TV work. There are a couple of Stooges that Voldar has working for him, and they're both terrific, but the more recognizable of the two is Schim, played by Joseph Elick, who lived one through two thousand and nineteen. Very recognizable character actor, has a very recognizable face. His biggest role on screen is probably that of playing um Boncini in

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Once is over the Cuckoo's Nest, of course frequently pops up. We're talking about connections in these movies because that is like a magnet for um you know, weird character actors of the day. This guy also did some TV where can. He had roles in other films such as The Producers, The World's Greatest Lover, and Black Rain, the Ridley Scott movie that featured his final performance on screen, in which he played a bar tender. I'm just trying to remember which of

Voldar's henchman he is here. Is he the smaller one or the bigger one? Is he the one that gets a clown nose put on his face? He's the bigger one that has a monologue about slinkys and how wonderful they are. Yes, I was wondering if that was paid product placement, but he does look directly into the camera and talk about how I don't know, maybe Christmas isn't so bad because the Slinky is the most wonderful toy ever made. Uh. Yeah, he's He's the bigger the two

with the slinky, the other stooge. I'm not sure who he was exactly, and maybe he didn't have as big of a footprint and film or or Broadway. But he is also terrific because I have never seen someone twitch and choose scenery so much. In the background, There'll be a scene where two other characters are talking and he's just always just twitching up a storm. Every muscle in his face is moving. It is a spectacle to behold. He looks like he bit his tongue off while filming

this role anyway. But but Joseph Alick did a lot of other work. He was even in two episodes of the original Twilight Zone, The Obsolete Man and One More Paul Bear. Oh but there are kids in this movie. It is a kid's movie. Most of these kids, uh didn't really appear in much else or anything else. Um Victor Styles plays Billy Foster, a human child. Donna Confort he plays Betty Foster, a human child. Chris Month plays Beaumar,

a Martian child. Um. I think Month was in a couple of other very brief things like had Sullivan Show and so forth. But for the most part, these kids pop up in this this show and you we find him elsewhere. But famously, the Martian child Gurmer is played

by Pia Zadora Bord nineteen fifty four. As an adult, Zadora is known for her performances in such films as nineteen eight three is The Lonely Lady Fours Voyage of the Rock Aliens, which looks pretty fascinating, uh Ones, Butterfly and John Waters hair Spray from She also apparently had a musical career as well. Voyage of the Rock Aliens

has a gnarly poster yeah. And finally, on the musical note, Milton Deluge did the Music and Live nineteen eighteen through fifteen, composer and musical consultant who mostly worked in TV and TV specials. It looks like he had a long running musical consultant role for the Macy's Thanksgiving to a Parade.

Oh okay, somehow I can see the main song here, the Santa Claus Conquers the Martians theme song with the spelling of the name and everything being a parade song, it does have a yeah, kind of a marching feel to it. Yeah, yeah, and maybe that's our Q to jump into the plot breakdown, because of course the movie does begin and end with that song the horns uh, the children's choirs singing, uh, the s A N T A C L A U S hooray for Santi Clause.

We get all the lyrics about jumping Jiminy he can climb down any chimney and so forth, and that segues into a news report that kind of strange way to begin the film, but we see a news anchor uh talking about how kid TV, So I guess this is a kid focused news channel has installed a TV crew at Santa's workshop and they're gonna interview Santa Claus. They got the scoop on on Santi Clause. And then we

pull back to see who's watching the TV. And of course you're expecting, I don't know, some Earth children, but no, it is green Martian children. And not only are they green, they're wearing green turtlenecks, they have green helmets, and they have green antennae. Yeah, this is the same basic costume design we'll see with all of the adult Martians as well, and it's always intrigued me because it's it's definitely a singular vision. But are the people of Mars just wearing

high tech suits? Are are these like space suits or are they cybernetic? Are we to interpret things like their their their antenna array as being part of their body or part of their technology. This is a good question, and it's not really clarified by the movie much because, for example, there's the scene where the children first meet the Martians and they see the antennae and they say,

are you a television set? Uh? And uh. Of course the Martians are not impressed by this question, but it implies that the antennae are part of the Martian even though they are clearly like made of metal and jutting out of the martians helmets. So it's almost that suggests that the helmet is like part of the Martian anatomy. But then again, it's clearly a helmet, like it doesn't

look like it's fused to their flesh in any way. Anyway, coming back to the kid TV broadcast, we go to the to the anchor on the ground there who's standing outside covered in frost. He's He's like, we're here at the North Pole. It's very cold here, I'm gonna go inside Santa's workshop and talk to Santa. So he goes in. We see elves working on toys. Uh. He approaches Santa Claus and they greet each other. The Santa Claus looks directly into the camera and talks about how he's excited

for Christmas. And it's hard to describe how strange the vibes are in in this scene. Yeah, I mean it would be weird enough. I guess if you just had you're just the just the basic idea of a TV journalist coming in and chatting with Santa on the job. Um. One question I had, like, is this an exclusive that they've grabbed here? It's just like a constant flow of different international press representatives coming in. I wanted to get there five minutes with Santa Claus, get some footage of

of the toys being assembled. Well, the newscaster has all kinds of ridiculous questions for Santa, such as is Santa going to be traveling by rockheads of this year? And Santa says, no balderdash, He's gonna do it the old fashioned way with the sleigh and the reindeer, and he starts manically reciting their names and getting them some some of them wrong, Like he's on on Dunner and Blixon and Vixen and Nixon. But then he sort of catches himself,

but he points right at the camera. He goes, But the kids know their names, and it has exactly the energy of a wrestling promo. It's like Scott Steiner talking to the camera. Oh yeah, it absolutely does. I'm not sure that this style of pro wrestling promo existed yet in the early to mid sixties, but it really feels like Santa is adding a nineties wrestling promo here, complete with gesturing to the camera, acknowledging the power of the intended audience or the fans, the kids in this case,

and so forth. It's it's amazing. We almost get a Rick Flair wou in there. Yeah, and then Mrs Claus wanders on. She sort of flirts with the reporter and then belatedly realizes she's on TV and she's a very Mrs Claus has played as very annoyingly overtalkative and is Santa even jokes about this later when she gets uh frozen with a Martian freeze gun and he's like, I've never heard her this quiet before Yeah, he's being abducted

by Martians. Later on, and his wife has frozen, but he takes just a quick moment to mock her for not being able to talk. Yeah, yeah, Oh, the miss is always chattering away. But so Santa and the reporter go to check in with the elves who are working on toys, and they're making toy trains and everything. One is making a toy rocket that runs on real rocket fuel. That's what they say. I think he says real rocket fuell.

But then also they pick up another toy from the table, which is a green little doll, and they're like, why what is this? Yeah, and we're told that that Winky has invented it, that it's his idea of a Martian. So do we introduce an idea here that is touched on a couple of times in the movie. And I really went wild thinking about this time. Winky clearly has the gift of prophecy. He can divine the future through his toy creations. I assume that, like maybe his dreams

are just the pure act of creation. He is able to realize the form of the beings from another world that are about to arrive on Earth and throw everything into chaos. Yes, Winky has the gift. Anyway, enough of Earth, we should cut now to Mars to meet our Martian characters and get some flavor of Martian life. So we we jump into the house of what appears to be the Royal Emily of Mars. Again. This is Keemar, you know, the King Martian. Uh, he's the very serious and stern daddy.

There is Momar the mom Martian, Germar the girl Martian, and Beaumar the boy Martian. Do Germar and Boumar have any individual characteristics, not really that I could detect, But you know who does have a personality? Drop O, who also lives in this house because I think he is

Keemar's like personal man servant or butler or something. He lives in the house and he's just the silly bozo who whose main activities are falling asleep when he's not supposed to and dancing around and acting goofy while surrounded by deadly serious green Martians. Yeah, Dropo is just a real treat. And one of these early scenes where he encountering what's he doing, He's sleeping on the job, right,

He's like sleeping under the coffee table. There's all this mod furniture everywhere, very much the same spirit as the Jetsons. For some reason, this movie says, yes, mod furniture that is what indicates Aliens and the future. It looks pretty good. I mean I certainly the version I watched this was not remastered or anything, but a lot of effort went into these sets anyway. So Chemar finds drop O sleeping, and how does he wake him up? Well, he wakes

him up with the tickle ray. It is a baton that tickles instantly at a distance, and Dropo begs him to stop, but also clearly seems like he's kind of into it, like he likes the tickle ray. The mere fact that this invention exists on Mars seems to back up vold oars we used to be a planet of war criticism. Yeah, yeah, Like, shouldn't this be a like a stun gun or something if the Martians are really as evil and warlike as they claim. Yeah, now now

they're just tickle guns. We used to have stunned guns. Uh. So, Keimar says drop O, you're the laziest man on Mars. Why are you always sleeping during working hours? And Droppo makes a bunch of excuses. He says he forgot how to sleep, so he was just practicing. Kimar wants to know where lady Momar is, and Droppo says, she went to the food pills center to get some food pills. Here we set up what will be a repeated object of comedy in the movie. The Martians don't eat food,

They eat food pills. So Santa when observing this, like, somebody offers him some chocolate ice cream pills and he says, well, if you've got a headache, do you eat regular chocolate ice cream? Uh? And this is tremendously funny, I guess. But there are a bunch of Martian inventions that occur throughout the movie. Yeah, there's the sleep spray, which you use on the children to make them sleep. I guess

this is kind of a parent's dream. Yeah. Yeah. Oh. And also one of the things that I think we touched this already, like the children of Mars, you know, they don't have fun that they just basically sit around and they become adults really quickly. They learned some sort of tele learning device um that like it's described as putting the knowledge directly into their brains. Kind of like, you know, downloading the information into their brains. But when we see this in action, it looks a heck of

a lot like they're just listening to podcasts. It looks like, uh like if like a scene I might find if I walk in and my son who's laying on his bad listening to a podcast. Yeah, it's just audio talking at them, and sometimes they talk back to it, I guess. But these are the information machines that they used to educate their children. But here we learn of what you've just alluded to the inciting situation of the film, which is that the children of Kimar are not eating or

sleeping lately. They have no appetite, they don't want to go to bed. You have to sleep spray them in order to get them to lie down. Uh. And it's because they sit in front of that television set watching those ridiculous programs broadcast from Earth all day. Now, this made me wonder, what do they watch when they're not watching Santa being interviewed on sixty minutes? Just anything? I'd yes, But I think this is exactly what children of my

generation were like. And I assume this is what children watching television were like. In the nineteen sixties as well. If it was on, you watched it until there was just the test pattern after the TV station went off the air. You know, very very much a matter of a teacher mother's secret lover. Oh it's Saturday afternoon. Is this River of Death starring Michael doodakof on T N T. I guess that's what I'm watching. Yeah, it's on, you're

watching it. But the children actors, they do a good job of wearing absolutely blank, almost catatonic expressions while watching this horrible Earth TV. Yeah, and I've seen children with these exact expressions watching television. So this is dead on right here. Uh So they're watching Santa Claus talking about the toys he's making, and the kids are talking to each other while Chemar is watching from behind. Uh. Germar says, Bomar, what is the doll? And Beaumar says, I don't know, Germer.

So Momar comes home and she and Chema discussed the problem. Across the entire planet. Children are behaving strangely. They don't want to eat, they don't want to sleep. All they want is to watch Santa on TV and talk about Earth, toys, dolls, bats, everything. Like that something is wrong with them, and Momar has a suggestion. Keimar has to figure out what's wrong, and to do that he must go to the forest and

consult the wisdom of Chochen, the ancient one Great. So Chimar pokes his belt buckle and uses that as kind of a belt buckle cell phone to call all of the chiefs of the Mars Council, which I believe are Hargo, Rigna, Lomas, and finally Volder. Voldar takes a minute to answer the belt phone, and I think that's foreshadowing for his character. And so Chimar says, meet me in the forest. We're gonna consult Chochum choke Um rocks. We're gonna get to him in a second, but first we have to learn

a bit about the politics of the Mars Council. The other chiefs they're just kind of sheep. They go along with whatever Chemar says. But before chemar arrives, Voldar is there, and he's obviously the bully boy of the group. He's got this deep voice, the thick black mustache, the muscular physique under the green tights, and he instantly starts undermining Chemar to all the other chiefs. He's you know, why

do we have to listen to him? And why do we have to consult this doddering old man they're referring to Chochim. Now they go to the forest. And of course, when you think about fantastically realized alien forest ecosystems in cinema, and clearly you think of Avatar, but then you also think of Santa Claus conquers the March. Just such a vivid living system they've they've created here. It's kind of some some fake tree trunks with with like Halloween fake

cobwebs thrown over them. Yeah, a little bit of a little bit of fog back there for sure. Now, when Voldar is undermining Chochim, one of the other chiefs says, choke him is eight hundred years old. We can't reject the wisdom of centuries, and Voldar says, I can. So Keimar arrives. They summoned choke Him from the ether. They like call out, choke Um, where are you? And he sort of pops into corpore reality out of a column

of smoke. Uh. And I want this frame where we first see choke Him sitting there on his throne in the Mars Forest. I want that as the cover of my upcoming doom metal album. It's so good. Oh yeah, it's a real cosmic wizard vibe here with his staff and his beer there Saturn visible in the background. Um yeah, Chochum is amazing. And I have to highly recommend any folks out there who have only seen the Mystery Signed

Theater three thousand cut of this film. Um, as fun as that is, you need to watch another cut of it, either one of the other riffs, or of course the full pristine Santa Claus Conquers the Martians if you want the extended full choch A monologue that we're about to describe here. So Chochum, here's them describe the problem. You know, the kids aren't doing what they're supposed to and so he he realizes, wait a minute, So they're watching Earth's TV.

He says. It's early December on the planet Earth, the time of Christmas. He says, it is an occasion of joy and peace on the planet Earth, the whole planet. Okay, that's what he says. Uh. And for children it is also a time of anticipation as they await the arrival of Santa Claus. They await the arrival of Santa Claus. That's kind of the voice he has the whole time. It's so yes, it is uh oh. And one point he asks what month is it, I think, and they say, well,

it is Septober. He says, no, not Mars. Months on Earth? Is that before? Smart? I can't remember. So the problem choke him explains, is that the children of Mars, they never get to have a childhood. They don't play, they never have fun. They're just hooked up to these information machines from the time they're born, and by the time they can walk, they're already boring adults who are dead inside. And now they are rebelling against us. And the only way to fix it we need a Santa Claus on Mars.

Sensible solution. Um. I couldn't help, But wonder does this somehow reflect actual concerns about children of the early to mid nineteen sixties. Were they being hooked up to information machine? But I wonder if there was some concern about like maybe it was kind of reflective on you know, maybe for the like the post war generation, or for the

generation that grew up through the Second World War. Maybe this was like a worry they had, like like maybe they were they were reflecting and thinking, well, there were aspects of our childhood we didn't get to have. I hope that our children get to have more of a childhood than we had, or something to that effect. Yeah, maybe, uh, yeah, I wonder. Anyway, Chichen explodes, Uh, he sort of disappears in a puff of smoke, and then Kimar agrees. He's like, yep,

we're gonna bring Santa Claus to Mars. Now Volder disagrees he does not want the children of Mars to have fun because if they start laughing and playing and running underfoot, they will become a nuisance. But he is overruled and the Martians will kidnap Santa Claus. So they get in their spaceship travel to Earth. Uh, and they start scoping out the planet. Pretty quickly, they find Santa Claus in front of a department store. But wait a minute, here's

another one on the street corner. There are too many Santas. This could have been a movie in itself. Yeah, this is my favorite what if moment of the whole film, because I can imagine a scenario where they're like, well, look at all these Santas. I guess they're all Santas and we need to have the right number of Santa's

for cheer. Let's round all of them up. Or perhaps they think, well, we we've got to round them all up to be sure, so let's go harvest all of earth Santas and then we'll sort out which one is the true Santa. Or what if they were just kind of lazy about it and they're like, oh, the first one will do, let's just get him, and they end up just getting a random mall Santa who's then brought to Mars and is expected to deliver on all of

this Christmas cheer. I like the getting all of them, I yea, because then you can imagine like a Martian prison full of tens of thousands of Santa's and they have to like storm the prison walls they do a Martian prison break as an army of Santa's. That would be amazing. I mean, all these ideas are great. Like I know, they've been talks in the past of a serious revival of this film or remake of this film. I think I want to say at one point Tim

Burton even expressed an interest in it. And I mean for the most part, Yeah, you can't recapture this magic. But I don't know, if you had the right creative spirit behind it, kind of like a classic Tim Burton spirit to it, you might be able to do something. And maybe you could draw it out a little bit by exploring some of these other possible scenarios. So instead, the Martians say, we gotta figure out which is the

real Santa? What do we need to do? Probably kidnaps some earth children and force them to reveal Santa's true location. But why would they assume they would know? I don't know. Anyway, Here we meet Billy and Betty, who are our Earth's children, and for the movie, I don't know where they're supposed to be. At the beginning, it looks like a kind of barren landscape. They're like leaning against a dead tree

talking about whether or not they believe in Martians. Uh. And then the Martians just come up on them and they say like, hey, what's up. Uh. And one of the kids asked, Hey, what are those funny things on your heads? And Keimar says, those are our antenna and they ask, are you a television set? This is what we alluded to earlier Voldar is not impressed with this. He says, Chimar, is this what you want to do to our children on Mars? Turned them into dopes like

these Earth children. I want to point out that in this scene and in subsequent scenes, um, you have a Martian in this case, is Voldar with this freeze gun that freezes people? This is actually just a I believe there's a Whamo brand air blaster from the day you can you can do searches for these and fine, and the mass produced these, so they're I think they're readily available as like kind of collector's items at the time. But yeah, these were just common little toys that like

blasted a little puffing air. Oh that's nice. So these are no toy I wonder if that was on purpose so the kids would be like, hey, I saw that in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. I want to buy one. Or it just looked cool and we'll use it. I mean, I'm reminded of was it Robot Jocks that we watched where there's some sort of a gun and in some scenes in the close up it's clearly a really cool looking side by prop gun, but in some there are

other shots where it's clear they're using a glue gun. Yeah. Um oh, and so they they the children get kidnapped. Uh you know, they say, tell us where Santa is, and the children immediately betray Santa and reveal the location of his secret base. They say it's the North Pole, and so on the way to the North Pole, we were treated to more stock footage. In the meantime, we

see an airplane refueling in mid air. I think this particular bit of stock footage it or something almost exactly like it was used in another mystery science theater movie I recall about Air Force or something, and they were just long scenes of refueling in mid air that Cuba or one of those. Maybe, Yeah, if they found this fascinating at the time, I guess. I mean, it is fascinating.

Air to air refueling is amazing, and we could easily do a stuff to blow your mind episode on it, like it's it's a crazy concept we take for granted. But uh yeah, there there are whole stretches of this film that just feel like the Strategic Air Command stock footage dump. Yeah. We we also see lots of missile silos opening up and and rockets being like taken around on rails and things. Uh oh. Also along the way drop O, who was caught stowing away on the ship,

he fell asleep inside the radar console. He is tasked with watching the children, but naturally Dropos. You know he's a good guy. He just lets them out of their cell, shows them around, allows them to sabotage the ship's radar jammer. Uh and uh we were we were joking that the kids are trying to commit suicide by space force and uh soo, yeah, he just lets them out. Major design fail for making the radar console so comfy for naps. It's just the right size for a full grown adult

climb in there and curl up. And I guess it's probably warm and cozy in there too. I'm sure it is. So they arrive at the North Pole, the children escape to try to warn Santa that the Martians are coming for them, and we get a great North Pole set. Again, this is the question of is this the same as

the Martian surface set, but just with snow on it? Possibly? Yeah, the spaceship has landed and so we have that the wonderful lander legs and a ladder coming down from what it's supposed to be the Bible of the spaceship, so it's it's not planted of the vampires, but what is? It still has a lot of charm. The Martians say they are going to use tour Get to capture Santa. We have not seen tour yet, so we don't know what it is. But uh, that's a it's it makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck

to hear what what is torg I have to know? Well, one thing I observed is that Torg is gort spelled backwards. That might not be an accident. This reminds me of a line from from John Saxon's character and What was It a Battle Beyond the Stars where he says I had to look it up because it was like Gort. Maybe he said gort or or the reverse. But you know, he says Dacco is expert at inflicting pain. It made me think Torgue is expert at inflicting pain. Uh, well,

I think Torque is. Though Torque is not. It's not invulnerable, and some types of magic may in fact stop his his murderous nature. But so the children escaped, the Martians go hunting after them. Of course, Voldar just wants to kill the children. The children see him and they say he doesn't like us, but he is literally trying to murder them. Uh. They hide in a cave from a polar bear, which has a actually horrifying costume design. This polar bear looks like a mask somebody would wear in

the purge. It is evil. It reminds me a lot of Toombach from the Terror from the TV miniseries adaptation, so we were not meant to know of it. And then out of the frying pan into the fire, the air goes away. They come out of the cave, but here comes Torg. They initially mistake Tord for Santa's workshop, but no. Torque is a giant robot with glowing eyes that grabs the children. And then of course Voldar gets to Torgu before Keybar does, and Voldar is like, nice work, Torg,

Now destroy them. I get this children's movie. Like He's literally commanding the robot to kill the children. But Torg does not obey because Keimar specifically programmed him to obey only my commands. Very smart. But so they make it over to Santa's workshop and they look inside and they see the toys and the games. Voldar, of course hates all this. Again he's saying, children games laughing. This is

this humiliating. Mars was once a planet of war, which makes me think it would almost would be great to set part of this podcast to the Gustav Holst Planet Sweet the Mars theme, which if you never heard it, it it really does sound like war is coming. It's it's very much Voldars theme you saw. You know, if Voldar was really like he's already shown his his true colors. He mainly doesn't want the kids playing because they would

be annoying and would be underfoot. If he was really concerned about the warrior ethos of the planet Mars, he would at least meet him halfway on like war toys, like let's just only tanks and and toy guns. Uh. No, I think he's just saying, like the children should only learn war from the beginning, so not even playing war. They should just go to war. You know, he's like one of these guys who's obsessed with the movie three hundred. Okay, they get to Santa's workshop, they send Tor again there,

get him torg. Uh. I'm not sure exactly what happens in this scene. I think Torg was supposed to incapacitate and remove Santa for of the premises, but instead Torque is like rendered harmless by the magic of Santa Claus. He comes in and Santa's like, oh, you're a big toy, and then Torque just doesn't do anything else. Yeah, I mean, Santa is an arcane artifice there here. He's he's a master of toys, and what are toys but technology? This is like trying to pull a robot attack on datalists,

you know. I mean, he's just not gonna work. But of course the Martians themselves, they still got their freeze guns and everything, so they come inside and they're gonna kidnap Santa. That this is Plan B. They use their freeze guns on the elves, they use their freeze gun on Mrs Claus, and Santa is forced to cooperate. But as we mentioned earlier, not before making a joke about how, my dear, I've never seen you so quiet. Yeah, it's

so weird. It's such a weird choice. Then okay, so Santa Claus and the children they get back on the spaceship. They're taken away, stolen away, to Mars. Meanwhile, we see a bunch of newspaper headlines. Somehow the newspapers know what has happened, so they're running headlines like Martians kidnaps Santa Claus. Yeah, this is like front page. Um, I forget all the journalism lingo for um for what do you call a

headline of this caliber? But like, this is the this is the big stuff, because clearly this is this is not only an international issue, this is now an interplanetary issue, and it's an extra Yeah, it's like the banner headline. And then below that, I was just because I paused the frame here to see what was going on. We see the other headlines are panic in New York, Menagerie breaks loose, and the other is planarians give new clues

to early migrations. I mean, either one of those would have been the lead story had it not been for this, So I guess it would have been kind of a slow newsday at the West. So anyway, we're in the spaceship. We're going back to Mars. But on the way, the magic of Santa Claus kind of spreads even to the adult Martians on board. The other Mars Council chiefs start giggling uncontrollably. There's this one Martian with a beard who comes up to Keimar and he's like, that little guy

is so funny. I couldn't stop laughing. And he retells a joke that Santa told him. He says, what's soft and round and you put it on a stick and you toasted in a fire and it's green a Martian mellow, and Voldar, of course, is he's still mad. He's like, that's what he's going to turn us into. Martian mellows, soft round, toasted in a fires. Oh and Dropo especially seems to love Santa. They're two peas in a pod. Dropo was made to be Santa's buddy. But Santa is

just always doing a comedy routine. We see him in his cell, like on the bunk talking to the children and he's telling a story about going into a chimney that was surrounded by fog and he says, it's the biggest chimney I'd ever been in, And then there's a punchline. I realized it wasn't a chimney, it was the smokestack of the Queen Elizabeth. The children do not laugh, and he says, well, don't you think that was funny? And then they both simultaneously somberly say yes, Santa. But they

are somber because they feel bad. They feel bad that they betrayed Santa and told the Martians were to find him. Of course, Santa doesn't want them to worry, you know, balder dash. Uh. Now, on the ship, one of the main things that happens is Voldar tries to murder Santa, Claus and the children in the airlock, which I literally while we were watching, I made a joke about that happening, and then it actually happened in the movie. I did not see that coming. Yeah, the build up to this

scene is great. The scene itself is wonderful, and then of course the payoff, because of course, first you get uber villainous, just oozingly villainous Voldar convincing them to come with him into the airlock, and then once they're locked inside, Oh yeah, it's it's great because I think nowadays, I don't know when this became the case, but for I think most modern sci fi viewers, you know when an airlock is You don't need to be described to You just need to know that it is one, but this

film does not take airlocks for granted. In this film, they feel the need to have Billy give an extended monologue about the functionality and purpose of an airlock and why does he know? He's just a science art I guess, I guess. So he locks them in the airlock, and Santa is always giving Voldar the benefit of the doubt. He's like, Oh, I don't think he locked us in. He just stepped away for a moment. And then they set off the timer. It's like it takes sixty seconds

before they can avoid the airlock into space. The timer's ticking down. They're like, oh, what's gonna happen? You know, we're we're gonna we're gonna be killed until they see a like pipe leading up out of the corner of the room. And so we come away to the control room of the ship and we see Volder just really enjoying the thought of Santa and the children dying in

the vacuum of space. Kimar discovers that Voldar has killed them, and then there's a fist fight, but it's in a rus did when Santa and the children come in unharmed, and what happened. Well, they explained, they went up the vent. Of course, Voldar is astounded. Santa, you are too fat to fit in that vent. But Voldar doesn't know the magic of Santa Claus. Santa Claus goes down chimneys all

the time. Yeah, he thought he'd spaced them, or maybe that they exploded like Anthony Zerba and James Bond film. But now yeah, yeah, now they just took him on up the chimney. You cannot outsmart, Santa Claus if you have anything like a ventilation system involved in your technology. And of course this ends with everyone laughing at Voldar and Volder is arrested. But Voldar, I think escapes as soon as they land on the planet. Yeah, I don't

think they really have great prison facilities on this spaceship. Now, everyone who is imprisoned escapes immediately, so they get to the planet and then Momar meets everybody, so it's like, hey, meet Billy and Betty and Santa Claus. Can Santa healed the children of Mars. Well he's gonna try, right, Uh. So, Bomar and Gurma are listening to their science podcasts, looking very blank and miserable, and then Santa comes in to

try to heal them with with jollity. And what happens is Santa just starts laughing at them like a maniac, without telling a joke, and the Mars children almost by sort of like almost like in Terror, just eventually start laughing too. And it's infectious because I think you'll find watching this movie, you two will start laughing. Yeah, so everyone in the room laughing at nothing, like like a mad scientist and his henchman, you know, cackling over a plan to blow up the movie. Oh and this makes

Dropo dance. His dance is so good, and that's like it's it's like it's it's this feeling when the holiday spirit just overcomes you so much that you can't help but just shuffle manically. It's it's it's wonderful again. It's if I've never seen this performance. The the only living performer I can imagine pulling something like this off would be Martin Short. So Santa tells Chemar, He's like, I need to get the workshop up and running here so I can do Christmas on Mars and still have time

to return to Earth for Christmas. There and this leads to one of my favorite um bits from John calls performances Santa Claus, because they tell him, Santa, you're never going to return to Earth quote now you belong to Mars. Santa goes, I can't. I can't even I can't. Can't do it as well as either. But he's like ho ho ho or something to that effect, like he finds a way to use ho ho ho to to deliver the character's thought process here realizing, oh snap, I have

to go to Mars forever. Now I belong to Mars. So he sort of goes along with it. Anyway, we find out that Chemar has set Santa up with a sort of automated toy production factory so he can be the Santa Claus of Mars, and it's working all right, Like there are these shoots in the wall that sort of poop out like dolls and baseball bats onto a conveyor belt, and then the earth children have to carry them away in laundry baskets, and Santa kind of laments

this state of affairs. He's like, look at me, the world's greatest toymaker reduced to pressing buttons. That's automation for you. Yeah. Yeah. This is kind of a frequent strain and cinematic retellings of Santa Claus, the mass production versus the the hand crafted toys that we see in illustrations of Santa's workshop. And I think this is also always a point of of confusion for children under the spell of Santa. It's like, clearly, the things that I want for Christmas are not things

made by rustic elves in some sort of shop somewhere. Now, these are made by factories, um, often overseas, but not at the North Pole. Did Santa Claus make this game? Boy? Yeah? Now, my my wife and son when we were watching this, they question why the toy selection is so limited here. But I think it makes sense because you have to remember this is Mars first Christmas. All of this is new. The children of Mars are just excited about the concept of doll and bat. Oh yeah, I think the other

things on there are train tools, maybe Teddy Bear, I think. Oh. And also it's putting out little like model military at like little cannons and stuff. Oh yeah, and you think that Voldar would be pleased with that, But no, Volder has taken to the caves with the rebellion, right, So he's got some Hinchman hiding out with him. Uh. They say the cave is surrounded by a nuclear curtain which

prevents people from coming and going unless they deactivate. And he's hatching plans with his Tody's And this is the part where one of the hinchman returns. He's been spying on Santa's workshop and he looks into the camera and does a commercial for the slinky. He's like, isn't this the most wonderful thing ever? It's a coil of metal that can walk down the stairs by itself. It makes you wonder it was Santa licensed by the Slinky Corporation to make Slinky's. And I's so, what about being on

another planet? I guess that comes. I know that some legal documents talk about rights extending through the universe, and it maybe for this very reason. That's a good point. So he gives this beautiful monologue about the slinky. But then Voldar is like, you fool, You are falling for the allure of toys. We believe in war, not fun.

And this this, this is another scene where you have this absolute gargoyle of an actor in the background, just oh my God, such chewing of scene, right, it's just amazing, really good. And then also this part made me laugh out loud when Voldar he's coming up with a plan of what to do, and he says, we can't eliminate Santa Claus, but we can discredit him. Yeah, He's like, if we kill him now, he will become a martyr. It's just basically um um uh doing Messiah all over again.

They're like, this is the only way to bring him down. This is the only way to prevent Santa's jihat. Yes, we we cannot kill Santa. We have to kill the Santa myth. Yes we must. We must destroy his brand.

So I think their initial plan is just to sabotage the toy machine in Santa's workshop to make it spit out like dolls with Teddy bear heads and Teddy Bears with doll heads, which we do see later, but instead when they're in there, it crosses over with the subplot where Dropo has wanted to become Santa Claus because Momar makes Santa a backup Santa suit and Dropo wants to wear it, but he's not fat enough, so he stuffs

a pillow in there. And he's dancing around in the Santa suit with a hat on, and he's trying to fatten up I think by eating a lot of like ice cream pills. And so that's that's becoming Santa. My my wife and son asked, where did you get this pillow? Because where, where where do we see any Martians with pillows? No, they don't sleep with pillows. They sleep on some sort of a weird inverted Pierre amid Um kind of a platform, right while they listen to their podcasts. Yeah, exactly with

the sleep spray. Yeah. Oh, and we missed In between there's a part where we see Santa come home from a day's work in the toy factory and he's talking to Keimar and everybody and he's like, wow, you know that was a long day at work. They say, are you tired? He says, no, I'm not tired, but my finger is. He holds his finger up. He's like, now I have to go put my finger to bed. Needless to say, um, all of the various riffings of this

movie have had tremendous fund with this line. I believe Lookout Knows was the riff from the original Industry Science theater three thousand treatment of the movie. That's good. But okay, so Dropos all dressed up as Santa. And so when Voldar and his hinchmen they break into the Santa workshop, they just happened to run across Dropo dressed as Santa. Uh.

They can't tell that he is not Santa. They do not notice that he is green and has intent, so they just take him interesting insight into the mind and perception of the Martian. They couldn't tell one Santa from any other Santa when looking down at Earth either. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah, yeah, so maybe they just don't have much visual acuity. That could be the case. They the the they have the antenna right, which may be their primary means of sensing the world around them. Yeah, okay,

So Santa figures out what has happened. He says, oh, wait a minute. He finds out that his second Santa suit is missing and Dropo is missing. He's like, okay, well, wherever you find one, you're gonna find the other, because Dropo clearly wants to be me. He also discovers that his workshop has been sabotaged. This is when they're holding up like dolls with Teddy Bear heads on them. They look pretty horrifying. And now that they think they have

Santa hostage, they actually have DROPO. Voldar and his henchman go to Keymar to list their demands. They say, Okay, we're going to release Santa Claus, but only if you won destroy the toy machine to send Santa and the children back to Earth. And three quote no more joy through toys. Nonsense on Mars, and I think that's the name of the program. I guess it's Joy through Toys,

which actually sounds kind of soulless. Yeah, I can easily imagine scenes where the Martian legislature is having arguments over this, so like some are saying, yeah, Joyce through Toys is the way, and others are like, more Martian money to be spent on Joy through toys. Come on. But while they're there, Chemar reveals, Hey, actually Santa's right here in the workshop next to us, so you don't have him hostage, and Voldar is astounded. How did he escape the cave?

How did he get here so fast? Chemar replies, Santa Claus has powers you don't even know about, hands up and a gun on though, I love it. So Chemar now is just he's fully in the tank for Santa Claus. Yeah, absolutely, he's committed. Uh. And and now we have just full blown, uh kind of like a civil war on Mars here between these factions between the pro Santa and the anti Santa factions. Yeah. So Keimar tries to keep Voldar and his henchman in a storage shed that does not look

Martian at all. It's just an earth storage shed that's got shelves, it's got like skis in there, and he's got the gun pointed at him. But they end up fighting and Voldar kind of escapes. Meanwhile, Dropo also escapes the cave where they're keeping him by like he turns off the quote nuclear curtain, I think by switching light bulbs on a machine. And it's not clear exactly what's

happening there, but he he makes his way out. Everybody gathers back at Santa's workshop, Voldar runs in again, points a gun at Santa Claus and says, we meet again. And you know, you think, oh, is it all over for Santa Claus. But no, Voldar is defeated by the children. In fact, he is defeated by children running underfoot and being a nuisance and pelting him with toys until he is dead. Oh, he doesn't die, you know, but they but they do. They do mercilessly pelt him with boys

and confetti and Christmas cheer. Yeah, there are a lot of the toys are attacking them to their kind of maximum overdrive elements to this attack. So the anti Santa rebellion has been squashed. But what happens next? We have a curious situation. Are we gonna continue with Santa Claus from Earth ruling over Christmas on Mars while they I guess they're just not gonna have Christmas on Earth. What is the possible solution to this? Well, we already know

what it's gonna be. We We've got a second Santa in the movie. That's right, it's drop O. Drop O becomes drop O clause the Santa of Mars, interplanetary war is avoided and the future fun of children on Mars is ensured. Beautiful, and drop O comes in dressed to Santa saying, Merry Christmas everyone, you know, Merry Christmas. Building and loan uh and the Martian children are excited. Betty and Billy are excited, but Betty and Billy and see it to now we're going to get to go back

to Earth. Uh. And there was one thing I noticed. Germar and Beamar give Betty and Billy gifts as they're leaving, but they don't say what the gifts are. And Billy's gift looks like a blood pressure cuff. I didn't notice this, So maybe they're setting up for the sequel, Like basically it's a planet of war, so they gave Billy like the laser blast gauntlet. He's gonna go home and it's

going to be very disruptive. Uh. And at the end, Santa and the children blast off to travel back to Earth in a spaceship, and we hear the song again because you have not heard the song enough. Where did this spaceship come from? I'm trying to remember it. Is this a spaceship that Earth sent? Because there was this whole talk with vervon Green about how they were going to send a spaceship. What happened with all that? I never even mentioned this sublock because it never goes anywhere.

But Billy sabotages the Martian spaceship's radar jamming thing, so that the Earth Space Force, which exists in this movie can detect the Martian ship, and then we Yeah, we have this interview with Werner von Breen and he's like, oh, you know, we were going to take a while to train our astronauts to go to Mars, but now instead we're gonna send them immediately. But we never see them arrive. There's a lot to make of that, but it also feels like maybe some stuff was just cut. I don't know, Yeah,

that could be it. Like I expected human Earth soldiers to show up on Mars and rescue the children, but they It would be like the finale of Moonraker, Yes, exactly, Yeah, with the lasers. Oh man, that's great. We may have to do Moonraker in the future. Speaking of it, Oh, we should absolutely do Moonraker. That is the weirdest, one of the worst, but one of the most entertaining James Bond movies. And it's got Michael Lonsdale as Hugo Dracks,

one of the most hilarious James Bond villains ever. Yes, a great, great actor, but yes, strange part but yes, of course in the end, uh, the bad forces of Mars get draxed and the Earthlings go back to Earth and it's it's happily ever after. But hit the song

again because everybody loves um. Hooray for Santa Clause. So they played the song again, I think maybe after the credits, and they do the there's no bouncing ball, but they throw the lyrics up there on the screen so all the children in the audience and all the people watching at home can sing along with this infectious song. I'm sure the parents loved this because it encourages the children to sing along and shows them what the words are.

So it's like, keep singing this for weeks at your parents. Now. Yeah, well it's stuck in my head and I'm the one singing it. That's the thing. Maybe you're a child at heart, I hope. So this is the season for it, right, So that's Santa Claus again conquers the Martians. Consider Martian civilization conquered by Santa Claus. At this point, Santa has established a Martian of his, choosing to rule over Christmas

on Mars in his place. What would that title be if we were like looking back on ancient civilizations, What is the name of the ruler installed by the overarching emperor I don't know if there's a special name for that in the ancient world, but yeah, there were often kings who were you know, they had to pay tribute to the Empire. They're sort of the uh in some way of vassal of the imperial structure above them. Okay, so yeah, maybe Mars is now a vassal state to

the North Pole. I can see that. Yeah, Santa Claus conquers the Martians. This one was a lot of fun as always to watch, a lot of fun to discuss. Um. I don't know about you, Joe, but I always find that even if it's a movie i've seen many times before, watching something for weird House Cinema, it requires me to to think about it a little differently and maybe approach it with a little more attention than I normally do.

So this was This is a lot of fun to discuss, totally true, and obviously we'd love to hear from everyone out there. If you have thoughts about Santa Claus versus sorry, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. If you have thoughts about about this film, you have theories about this film, we'd love to hear from you. If you have memories of watching it riffed or unriffed in any form, definitely right in and we'll you know, potentially read those messages on

a future installment of a listener mail. A reminder that we are primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with a short form artifact or monster fact on Wednesdays and a listener mail on Monday. But on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns here on Weird House Cinema to just talk about a weird film. Huge thanks to our audio producer today, j J. Pauseway.

If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind. It's production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my Heart Radio, but the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.