Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)

I’m a little behind but I am still working my way through some of the requests I received during December.

Okay, I am all about making peace with Martians and not fighting them or telling them how to run their planet. However, they apparently don’t follow the same guidelines regarding their interactions with Earth, because they came down to Earth and kidnapped Santa Claus in the film Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Let’s be honest, here, kidnapping Santa is just asking for trouble. I mean, nobody messes with Santa! That’s the fastest route to holly-jolly ass kicking. We all have a right to be visited by Santa Claus! Hell, it’s a Constitutional right! Right under ‘the right to bear arms’ we have ‘the right to presents from Santa’. Oh, and the Martians kidnapped two kids, too but they aren’t that important. Santa is the important one and now the Martians must be conquered!

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is a very, very bad film. It has made a ton of lists as one of the worst films ever made. After viewing it, I have to say I absolutely agree. It may not be the worst ever, but it is BAD! Hideous! I suggest not watching this film, but if you really want to see what is so bad about it then I would suggest watching it in a group so that you can make others just as miserable and watch the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version to liven things up.

Martians come down to Earth and kidnap Santa Claus so that he can be the Santa Claus for the kids on Mars. One Martian does not agree and tries to repeatedly KILL Santa. What ever will happen? Nothing action related let me tell you. Even kids get bored watching this film. This movie is so mundane that the names of the main Martians are Kimar, king of the martians, and Momar, mom of the martian kids. Mom martian? Momar? Really?

There are some also plenty of just plain inexplicable sections of the film. For instance, there is a point where one of the Martians appears to be fingering the wall. WTF? Also, Dropo, the dopey ‘lovable’ Martian, has some ice cream and appears to make sweet, sweet love to it. And most of the film is either red or green. I understand that they were emphasizing that to give it a Christmas-y feel, but holy crap was I sick of those two colors by the time it was all over. There’s also a useless robot who walks around and does stupid robot stuff for no reason, but I have to admit that he was one of the best actors in the film. I mean, I really believed that he was a dude in a cheesy robot outfit.

UGH!

It has the worst song at the end and just in case you were able to ignore it, it does a little sing-along thing where it shows you the words to the awful song so it gets it stuck in your head for days. Damn you, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians! You’re so awful, but you are stuck in my head like an adamantium bullet! Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, I wish I could quit you!

Time Until Action: ~ 49 minutes until a fist fight, and by fist fight I mean one punch to the face.

Baddies: MARTIANS! Well, not all of the Martians are bad, Voldar is the scheming one out to really kill Santa. So really, just Voldar, the dick Martian.

Best Line: “All this trouble over the fat little man in a red suit.” Heck yeah, Mr. Scrooge! There is also an honorable mention of “I think I’ll go and put my finger to bed.” What the hell?

Best Kill: Voldar pokes Santa’s fat belly one too many times! Santa breaks his finger and then swiftly decapitates him with a candy cane in order to set a good example for the children not to take any crap off of the baddies. Okay, so this didn’t really happen, but it would have been 1000 times better if it had.

Best Explosion: There aren’t any. BOOOOOO!!!! You’re on Mars, something could have exploded!

Action Rating: 0 Santas giving a silent beatdown, deadly beatdown to some Martians, out of 5.

Illustration by Alex Langley. Rocket Llama World Headquarters.

This is the Action Flick Chick, and you’ve just been kicked in the ass!

Santa Conquers the Martians – requested by Shadowbat.