Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Santa Claus (1959)

In this classic holiday episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1959 Mexican Christmas movie “Santa Claus,” also known as “Santa Claus vs. the Devil.” (originally published 12/15/2023)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, this is Rob Lamb.
We're off this week for the holiday, so we have
a holiday Weird House Cinema episode for you. This one
originally published twelve fifteen, twenty twenty three. It is the
nineteen fifty nine Mexican Christmas movie Santa Claus, also known
as Santa Claus Versus the Devil. It is a load

(00:26):
of fun mystery science theater. Three thousand fans know and
love this film, and if you are not familiar with it,
we'll dive into this episode. Joe and I talk about
it quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
And this is Joe McCormick. Again. On today's episode of
Weird House Cinema, we're going to be talking about the
nineteen fifty nine in film Santa Claus.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
That's right. We've brought this one up a number of
times before, not only on Weird House Cinema, but I
think it leaks into the core episodes as well. It's
just that weird of a film. It is a nineteen
fifty nine Mexican family fantasy film in which a kind
of Doctor Doom Santa in the same way that Marvels.

(01:23):
Doctor Doom is a master of both magic and high technology.
Well so is Santa, or at least the outsources to
people who know what they're doing.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
That's right. I mean, the Santa in this movie relies
a lot on his sort of cube branch, which is Merlin. Merlin,
who in this movie is like a cross between Albert
Hoffman and John Dee. He is a sorcerer who wears
a pointy hat that's got like moons and stars on it,
and he's clearly doing magic, but he's also doing a
lot of chemistry and coming up with psychoactive substances to

(01:54):
affect the minds of Earth's children.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah, definitely dabbling in at least some alchemy, if not
some outright devil worship based on some of the decorations
in the house. But he also seemingly has the aid
of a Greek god. And if you haven't seen the
full cut of this film before, you might be surprised
to find a figure who seems to be Hephaestus aiding
Santa Claus in his efforts to bring Christmas to the

(02:19):
good children of the world, regardless of socioeconomic situations.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Yeah, that was one of the big surprises on this viewing.
So I had previously only seen this movie in the
Mystery Science Theater three thousand cut, which excises some of
the weirdest stuff in the film. It excises some merlin
stuff and excises the scene where Santa goes to meet
with the figure you're talking about, who's clearly he faced
us or Vulcan called the Master Blacksmith or the key

(02:49):
Master or key Maker or later in the film, key Man.
I don't know if you caught that part where Santa
is just screaming into the air for help and he
calls out key Man.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah, yeah, because he is the one who makes Santa
his magical key that like fries open any lock, allows
instant access to the interior of your home.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
And when Santa's first testing this key out, he laughs
in an almost unsettling way as he's like realizing the
power to unlock any portal.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Now, this movie is sometimes referred to as Santa Claus
versus the Devil in order to set it apart from
the various other Santa movies, because again the title is
just Santa Claus came out in fifty nine, initially released
to Mexican audiences in fifty nine, and it's credited with
popularizing secular Santa Claus traditions in Mexico at a time
when most of the emphasis was on the religious aspects

(03:43):
of the holiday, you know, carrying over from Spanish Catholic traditions.
This is still a big part of Mexican holiday traditions,
of course, but this movie really helped to throw Santa
Claus into the mix.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
So Rob, I don't know if you watched the same
version I did, but there is the original Spanish language version,
and then there is an English dub, and the version
that I've seen in all cases, the both the one
featured on MST and the full cut that I watched
today is the English dub, which adds a layer of
comedy to the film that I think is probably not

(04:16):
quite there in the in the original language edit because
of the vocal performance of the guy who does who
plays the role of Santa Claus, who has essentially one
vocal gear, and that gear is bellowing.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
But it's perfect because the actor playing Santa Claus, who
will get into in a bit, has that same level
of energy with his physical performance, so it's it's weird
like the My primary experience, too, is with the English dub,
and I primarily watched the English dub for this episode,
but I did check in on the original Spanish language

(04:51):
version a little bit just to get a feel for
the performances. And you know, it's still over the top.
It's still campy intentionally, so it's still comedic, but there's
something about these uncredited English language dubs that just really
help to just strengthen everything and make everything it's already

(05:12):
over the top, feel just a little bit more over
the top.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
Yeah, that's right. So in the original, I'm sure it
was a very enthusiastic performance from the actor who plays
Santa Claus, and you can see it there in his
physical performance on the screen. But with this English vocal performance,
it adds in inflections like oh the devil.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah. At times the dubbing is really borderline riffing, Like
I didn't get a chance to find out if Merlin
makes like little tut tut noises as he moves around
in the Spanish original like that felty, we're almost going
too far there again, unless it's present in the Spanish
original I didn't have a chance to share, but anyway,
the English language dub that this comes to us thanks

(05:54):
to the work of distributor Kay Gordon Murray, who lived
nineteen twenty two through nineteen seventy nine, also the English
language narrator, and I think he does one or two
other voices in there. There are times where a voice
is just way too close to the narration.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah, there are several roles in the film that sound
like they're being performed by the same actor.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
So this film did receive a limited US theatrical release
thanks to Kay Gordon Murray, and apparently it has. It
continued to play over the years after that, like it
was always a success. It was the kind of thing
that theaters would would maybe put on as part of
a holiday matinee, much like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
I was looking this film up in Michael Weldon's The

(06:35):
Psychotronic Encyclopedia film from eighty three, and he closes it
out by saying, Hey, if your local theater is playing
this for their holiday matinee, go see it. It's a
lot of fun. So it's interesting to think about the
you know, the continued life of this film as something
that at least children would go and see and also
maybe a few you know, psychotronically aligned adults.

Speaker 3 (06:57):
Well yeah, speaking to the psychotronic appear. One thing that's
kind of surprising about this is I think you could
make an argument that Santa Claus nineteen fifty nine is
actually a more science fiction oriented film than Santa Claus
Conquers the Martians, because it has more like sci fi
gadgets and technology in it. In fact, Santa Claus in

(07:19):
this movie operates a really powerful surveillance communications infrastructure that
uses these strange sort of biomechanical or cybernetic machines to
spy on and locate children and people all around the globe.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah, I understand Christopher Nollen was directly inspired by this
movie when creating The Dark Knight Returns. Is that the
second one, The Dark Knight Returns, And that's just the
Dark Knight, It's the Dark Knight. Okay, Yeah, but he
does return in that film.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yes he does. But so the Santa in this movie
raises questions about technological ethics and surveillance surveillance culture.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of it. I think
we can actually understand this a little better now that
we've talked about other films by the same director from
the same more or less time period, you know, give
or take a decade, where we see some of like,
you know, the various elements that you see in the
Santo films, where there is super science, there is the supernatural,
and of course there are also these other like kind

(08:22):
of holy and religious elements in there as well, all
kind of mixed together in this kind of you know,
comic book world that seemed to be like a common
touchdone for these genre pictures.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
It's an intoxicating blend. I enjoy it now.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
This film also appears in various forms, not only theatrically presumably,
but also on home video releases. Many of these were
edited in Some highly edited parts of the opening Small
World esque sequence that actually pre dates Disney Small World,
I believe, are often edited out for cultural sensitivity reasons,

(08:57):
and there's apparently one cut of the film that takes
the pitch out completely. I don't know how that would work.
I guess it would be considerably shorter, and the MST
three K version, of course, is edited and leaves a
great deal of weirdness on the cutting room floor. As
we already mentioned.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
I'm still scratching my head over how you could edit
out pitch the name of the demon who is the
antagonist of this film. You would be left with, I
don't know. It seems like at least a third of
the movie would be gone, and some situations would be
inexplicable without him present to cause them.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
It would seem like the sort of thing you would
do if your attitude was, Look, it's just going to
be a room full of kids. They're going to be
raising a ruckus. They just want to see Santa Claus.
They don't know how plot works. Let's just show him
everything but the devil, because we don't want to upset them. Okay,
So anyway, as we'll discuss, it is a delightfully fun
and weird movie. Do not pay any attention to the

(09:53):
various star reviews you see on like IMDb and so forth.
This movie and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians are quintessential
psychotronic Christmas movies, and they both set a high bar
for all holiday weirdness that was to come. Do you
have an elevator pitch for this one?

Speaker 3 (10:08):
Joe, Oh?

Speaker 4 (10:09):
Do?

Speaker 3 (10:09):
I let's see Santa Claus wants to bring the good
spirit of holiday cheer to well behaved children all around
the world. But standing a thwart to this ambition is
the Demon Pitch, a malevolent being straight from Hell whose
goal is to thwart Santa Claus and make the children
of Earth behave wickedly. Will the Demon Pitch be able

(10:33):
to stop Santa Claus and in fact kill Santa Claus
by confining him to Earth where he cannot survive until
the next Christmas, Or will Santa prevail with the help
of a sort of bat belt of gadgets from Merlin
and assorted other Q branch types.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Sounds good to me. Let's listen to the classic English
language trailer for this.

Speaker 4 (10:58):
It's like living a story adventure beyond your wildest imagination.
From the north pole of fantasy Land comes a feature
length table with the most enchanting characters in the whole
wide world, headed by the white whisked Fellow, who's the
granddaddy of them all. Now, a magic motion picture transports

(11:23):
you to an over the rainbow land, past the doors
of Satu's towering castle and the strange, mysterious all seeing Eye,
into a fantastic crystal laboratory filled with weird and wonderful
secrets no one has ever seen before. You'll see them all,
and you'll discover how satur can watch every child on

(11:45):
earth and every good or bad thing they do. Now
meet Merlin, the Wizard of Wizards, the miracle Man of
the ages. Till within the show. Huray we go, hurry,
mister Merlin. This is no time the horses come face
to face with the Devil himself, a mischievous demon determined

(12:05):
to mess things up as much as he can. It's yours,
nobody show you take it to Peter. They have born.
They won't miss it. What does one little doll maner?

Speaker 3 (12:18):
Don't you see?

Speaker 4 (12:20):
Leave it to that devil? He strikes to the sidetrack,
satah up a tree. What's the jolly hijinks of Santa
Claus as he decides to fight fire with fire? Oh?

Speaker 3 (12:31):
Ho a canon.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
God?

Speaker 4 (12:37):
Oh, you will want to miss the entertainment, wonder of
the agents, the treat of a lifetime, or anyone who
has ever believed there really is a Santa Claus Candy
and then that track hasn't come.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
Sleep now, darling, sleep now, and you will see Pete.
When you will do't you find about it?

Speaker 4 (13:02):
You'll see more wonders than you can wave a wanda
as a dazzling panorama unfolds before your startled eyes.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
All right now, if you want to watch this film,
if you haven't seen Santa Claus from nineteen fifty nine,
Santa Clauss is the Devil if you will, well like
to say, there are a lot of different versions that
have come out over the years, various formats. You can
catch this on the big screen every now and then.
I think I think it aired on the big screen
locally in the last year or two here in Atlanta.
But I watched the excellent VCI Entertainment special edition. Blu

(13:58):
Ray rented this from Video Drum, great picture quality, and
it also has really insightful commentary by film historian Daniel Griffith.
So some of the information I'll share with you about
the film is from that commentary by Daniel Griffith. But
if I get something wrong, it's not Daniel Griffith's fault.
It's my fault for not listening to him enough. I
just want to put that out there. I don't want

(14:19):
people to be like, how could he not know this?
Did he not hear Daniel Griffith explain it, well, it's
because I miss something, all right. Let's get into the
people involved in the production of this film, starting at
the top. The director and one of the writers is

(14:40):
Renee Cardona, who we've talked about on the show before.
Lived nineteen oh five through nineteen eighty eight, director, actor, producer, writer,
and editor, best remembered as a director in the golden
age of Mexican cinema. We've talked about him before because
we've covered two other films that he directed. Nineteen sixty
three's Doctor of Doom, that's a luchador film with a

(15:01):
very fun mad scientist, and then nineteen sixty nine Santo
in the Treasure of Dracula, a time traveling luchador Dracula
movie that is also tremendous fun.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
I feel like those are two of my favorites that
we've covered on Weird House. I love these wrestling movies
in the way the freedom with which they incorporate seemingly
unlikely other genres such as horror and fantasy and science
fiction into the wrestling plot format.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, and again, you can't see a similar energy in
this picture, even though there are no luchadors that I
know I've involved in it, and there' certainly no lucha characters,
but if there were one, they would not be out
of place. So anyway, we'll likely cover more Cardona films
in the future, so I'm gonna cover less about him
now for this episode, other than to stress that, yeah,
he was highly prolific work with a number of the

(15:50):
biggest stars in Mexican cinema of the time period, and
his output ranges from serious dramas and a couple of
kids movies to Santo Pictures and the Grimy Night of
the blo Eights from nineteen sixty nine.

Speaker 3 (16:02):
I've never seen that one, but the tasteful title has
always appealed to me.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
It's apparently not a tasteful film. As we mentioned in
our episode on Doctor of Doom. It is essentially a
remake of some of the elements of Doctor of Doom,
but it takes it in a much grimier direction. So
I doubt we'll cover that film on Weird House Cinema,
but it's out there and it's well known in horror circles,

(16:28):
all right. The other writer on this is Adolfo Torres Portillo,
who lived nineteen twenty through nineteen ninety six. His other
credits include nineteen sixties The Crying Woman, nineteen sixty three's
Little Red Riding Hood, and Tom Thumb versus the Monsters
from sixty two. I'm very interested in that Los Vampire's
from nineteen sixty nine, nineteen eighty three's Mexico two thousand

(16:51):
that we've mentioned on the show before, as well as
various other fantasies, Luca and comedies. All right, now, getting
into the cast, I'm not going to talk about everybody cast,
but of course we got to talk about Santa Santa
Claus is played by Jose Elias Moreno, who lived nineteen
ten through nineteen sixty nine, terrific Mexican character actor who

(17:14):
was largely known, apparently for playing heavies and villains rather
than anything like Santa Claus. So Griffith, in his commentary
says that he he was sort of going against type here.
It's kind of like if you'd cast late nineties, early
two thousands Brian Cox as Santa Claus very much a
similar energy, and I can imagine Brian Cox at nailing
it in a similar fashion.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
Okay, well, I can see that comparison, but I'm gonna say,
Moreno just he seems to effortlessly inhabit this role. Again,
it's not his voice that I'm used to hearing, because
I'm listening to the English stub, But at least the
physical performance, it's like he was born to play Santa.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
Yeah. The physical performance alone is just an absolute delight.
He leaves no corner of the scene unshewed, and his face,
though martially obscured by that fake Santa Wig, and that
fake Santa Beard, is just continually shifting into a host
of just extreme emotional expressions, you know, like it's it's
just he's just constantly doing something up there. And this

(18:14):
is exactly the sort of movie and the sort of
role where that kind of energy is rewarding.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
It has the feeling of a stage performance put on screen.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Yes, you want to make sure that people in the
very back row know exactly what Santa is feeling just
by looking at him. Moreno's other credits include nineteen fifty
two Is the Magnificent Beast, sixty nine's Night of the
Bloody Apes, and he also played an ogre in Cardona's
nineteen fifty eight movie Polcarcito.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
Oh, I feel like I saw that word appear in
the credits. Is that like a nickname of his that
he might have been credited along with that?

Speaker 1 (18:52):
Is then that that is the name of or the
nickname of the child actor who plays Pedro. Ohta's helping. Yeah,
I'm not really going to get into him because his
is kind of a tragic story. But yeah, that is
the small Mexican boy that is aiding Santa in his workshop.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
But hey, okay, Santa is our hero. Let's hear about
our villain who plays the demon Pitch.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
Yes, Pitch is played by jose Lewis Aguire, whose nickname
is Trotsky. There are a lot of nicks in this.
I assume that his nickname is a reference to Russian
revolutionary Leon Trotzky, who of course lived in exile in
Mexico City and died in Mexico. But I don't know
if it goes any deeper than that.

Speaker 3 (19:36):
We were just talking about Brian Cox, who played Trotzky
in the in the film Nicholas and Alexandra.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
Ah, I didn't realize that. Well, there you go. So anyway,
Trotsky here the actor was born in nineteen twenty three,
and according to IMDb, he's not been in a film
since nineteen seventy seven, but there's no death date, which
means conceivably he's still alive out there at the age
of one hundred. Hard to say. The MO database separate
database list credits up through nineteen ninety one, so who knows.

(20:04):
But also I couldn't find anything like a death date.
Trotsky was also a dance choreographer, and going by his
TMD credits, his other parts include a part in Pedro
Almodovar's nineteen eighty punk movie Pepe Luca Bahm, which I've
not seen, but I've seen other films by this filmmaker,
and of course he's pretty famous and very well regarded.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
So this is also a very broad zany, highly physically
expressive performance from Agira or Trotsky. Here is pitch and
he does a really great job. Like watching this as
an adult, you can detect a lot of camp energy,
and that's the appeal there. But if you think about
this movie through the eyes of a child, I think
this is a performance that would read as really funny

(20:45):
to kids.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah. Seeah, it is just a deliciously great physical performance.
There's prancing energy here, It's just frantic prancing. Again, he
had a dance background, so there's a lot of dance,
a lot of flourishes to every movement that Pitch makes,
and it is easy to focus on that and to
focus on the inherent comedy here, and there's a lot

(21:07):
of comedy with Pitch, But I don't think the film
and Trotsky in particular get enough credit for just how
effectively malevolent Pitches at times. As well, there are not
many moments where there are a few moments where they
really get down to Pitch is evil, especially when he's
whispering in the years of sleeping children and adults and

(21:28):
telling them to do things like murder Santa Claus and
Cold Blood, where he's very menacing, and also some moments
where he leans unnaturally over the edge of rooftops and
around corners, like he is actually a cast shadow rather
than a corporeal being.

Speaker 3 (21:44):
Yeah, I can see what you're saying there, and you're right.
There are parts where the character is surprisingly truly wicked
and not just comically wicked, like when he's gloating over
the fact that Santa Claus is going to die. But
there is an interesting contrast as well in the I
feel like he's he's the main thing he is is funny,
and he's supposed to be funny, and that really the

(22:07):
scariest things in this movie are things that I don't
know if they're probably not supposed to be cute, but
they're not like demons. They're things like reindeer or dolls
that are like the true nightmare entities in this film.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
Oh yeah, the automatons. All right, let's go through the
rest of the cast real, real quickly. You're not going
to mention everybody like Lupita is a great character played
by a child actor by the name of Lupita Quizadas.
I believe this is Pedro or Polgarcito's brother. I'm his
sister rather, But again, this is like one of only

(22:43):
two films she was in, so there's not much to
say there. However, Lupita's mother is played by Nora Verjan,
who lived nineteen twenty nine through nineteen ninety eight. This
is probably the most believably dramatic performance in the film.
She was also in another Cardona Kids film, Adventures of
Jo Solito and Tom Thumb from nineteen sixty and She

(23:05):
worked mostly in musicals, dramas and musical comedies, as well
as at least one telenovella in the mid nineties.

Speaker 3 (23:11):
There are some moments with Lupita's mom where the movie
becomes surprisingly tender and really tugs at the heartstrings.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah yeah, so like her performance does stand out, though
it is in a stark contrast to some of the
other stuff we see.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
Yeah oh, but wait, let's get to our psychedelic wizard
Merlin and Not.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
I don't have a lot to say about him, but
played by Armando Ariola who lived nineteen oh three through
nineteen seventy eight. His other films include nineteen fifty nine's
El Zarco, which also features Moreno the key Maker or
the blacksmith or vulcan or whatever she can refer to
him as. He's a little more interesting because he's played

(23:51):
by Angel Di Stefani, who lived nineteen oh six through
nineteen seventy three, tall Mexican actor and stump man. I
don't think he was aor. I looked around to see
if I could find his name in any of the
lucha data bases, but I don't think he was.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
But he appeared a secret identity luchador.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Well that is true, masked luchador's identities or even today
not a matter of public record, so it's entirely possible.
And there's you know, who knows what else is lost
in the record of some of these films, so it's possible.
But anyway, he appeared in multiple Cardona films, including a
nineteen sixty nine Santo film, nineteen sixty seven's The Panther Woman.

(24:27):
I think that's a Luchadora film. And he also plays
the titular as tech Mummy in all three as Tech
Mummy films. Those are not Cardona films, but they are
certainly well known Mexican horror films. And then the music
is by Antonio Diez Conde, who died in nineteen seventy six.
He's come up on the show before because he also

(24:48):
scored Doctor of Doom. Just a prolific Mexican composer who
worked on a ton of B pictures during this time period.

Speaker 3 (24:54):
Okay, are we ready to talk about the plot. Let's
get into it now. As we go through this, we
are to do one of the more detailed breakdowns of
this film, but I want a caveat that there are,
as we've said earlier, multiple different edits of this film.
So I am watching one of the English releases, which
in addition to English dubbing, might also be a slightly

(25:15):
different edit. So it's possible the version I'm talking about
here might have or lack some scenes that appear elsewhere
or don't appear elsewhere.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
It's also possible this movie is just magical, and every
time you see it it's a little bit different in
ways that other films are not.

Speaker 3 (25:30):
I guess that's true. So the credits role at the beginning,
on what looks like kind of a Christmas card stock
and jingle bells is just blasting on the soundtrack, very
traditional Christmas film opening. But after the credits things start
getting a little weirder. We see a dark, icy blue
stratosphere with several white castles floating on top of clouds,

(25:51):
and I believe this is not Castle Braun, Transylvania. Other
than that, we have no idea where it is at first,
until the narrator comes in to inform. The narrator says,
away up in the heavens, far out in space, in
a beautiful golden crystal palace, right above the north pole,
lives a kind and jolly old gentleman, Santa Claus, also

(26:12):
known as Saint Nicholas, the best Friend of boys and
girls everywhere. But let's move in closer for a look.
Come along, And then through a veil of fog, the
camera zooms in on Saint Nicholas himself, and when we
first see him, he's busy fixing up his Christmas decorations,
including and here's the first of many things in the

(26:33):
movie that I don't know if they were meant to
look scary, but they really do. He's like working on
a statuette of an angel that to me evokes true
cosmic horror. It's like a somber winged woman with gray
flesh who is about to speak the names of the
nine Hidden Gods, and Santa's, you know, adjusting her clothing.
He's also working on a little Manger scene, like he's

(26:54):
putting Hay in a little manger cradle, and various other decorations.
There's strings of ten Soul and figurines of Mary and
Joseph and all that. And the whole time he is
tending to his minis, he emits non stop bellowing laughter,
just super villain laughter at nothing in particular, and I
love it.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yeah, I mean, he's just absolutely overflowing with the Christmas spirit.
You can't blame him and these I also have to
mention this is something that the MST three k Riff
points out, But it looks like Santa is stuffing like
bits of his fake beard into the Manger scene, like
into the Manger itself where the christ child will go,
which feels like it feels kind of animalistic, you know,

(27:38):
like he's a he's a beast building a nest. Yeah, yeah,
I see that. Yeah, but it is interesting too. How again,
you know, you can imagine this picture going into a
very otherwise religious Christmas culture, and it's firmly establishing the
religious faith of Santa Claus, just to I guess make
sure they're you know, they're no misunderstandings.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
Right, the Santa Claus in this movie, he doesn't talk
about it a lot, but it is mentioned at a
few times. This Santa is a Christian, like he mentions
the Baby Jesus a couple times, and here he's clearly
attending to these angels, assuming these are supposed to be
Christian angels and not like the joyless angels of the yeah,
the Nine Hidden Gods or whatever. But so yeah, he's
messing with the angels and he says, it's almost Christmas,

(28:23):
and I must finish the toys for all the good
children on earth. I hope you'll pardon me, but I
mustn't be late. And then he scampers over to the
other end of the room, singing the tune of Silent
Night in like these deep la la laws as he goes.
And this Santa, by the way, you gotta imagine a
deep voice. He is a bass Santa Claus. Yes, so
he goes and sits down at his organ keyboard, and

(28:45):
he starts like honking the knobs and stuff, and the
narrator tells us that quote, this is Santa's toy Land,
a sort of international toy factory. Here are gathered boys
and girls of different races and creeds. They have come
from many lands to help Santa bring joy and happiness
to all of the Earth's children. And here begins the

(29:06):
parade of cultural depictions. Rob what you were referring to
as the sort of it's a small world montage is
showing children allegedly from many different countries and continents and regions,
one group at a time, usually in some stereotypical clothing,
singing a particular song that may or may not normally
be associated with their nationality or region of origin. Obviously,

(29:30):
this segment, I think it was well meaning, like intending
to show Santa inviting children from all around the world
to help with his benevolent toy shop mission. But as
you might guess from this nineteen fifty nine movie, some
of the ways the different cultures are depicted does not
feel right. So I can understand why some later edits
of the film cut this section down.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah, and it does go on a long while. That's
a lengthy segment, but you get those great states that
you'll show one group of kids, then you'll switch back
to Santa playing the organ. And it's great because obviously,
like a lot of actors in films, Sant is not
the actor of Mareno is obviously not playing a piano
or an organ here, but he is acting like he is,

(30:10):
and boy is he acting hard. It is just a
sight to behold.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
Oh, he's feeling it. He's like he looks like he's
playing the organ part in like in a God Davida.
You know, he's just grooven, really feeling the music. And
also I think it's clear that like he could not
see what we're seeing when the children are being shown
in these scenes that they're just telling him like act
it up, like you know, you're looking at the children,

(30:35):
but he's just gazing off to the side somewhere while
while feeling the organ music.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah, it's amazing.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
But also there's a weird thing during this segment that
compounds on the on the questionable cultural depictions, which is
that some of these segments are also hilarious because of
how bored and confused many of the children look and
for the song selections. For example, they never actually show
the group of children from England. We just hear the

(31:02):
narrator mentioned there are children from England, and then we
hear kids singing London Bridge is falling down British classic.
But then we do see the delegation of kids from
Russia who are singing this really like energetic, aggressive Russian
folk song with like shouts in it. But for some reason,
one of the children is shown driving a car.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
A few other funny things from around here. I noted
that the a number of the groups of children are
heavily armed with rifles and other weapons, and this this
is not the only time in the movie where like
it's kind of surprising for a Christmas film about Santa.
How many guns there are in it. Also, the kids
from the USA are dressed as cowboys and singing. Mary

(31:45):
had a little lamb, and I would say that the
kids who do the best job of selling the song
they're given to perform are, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Mexican delegation.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yeah, yeah, they really shine.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
But eventually Santa gets you know, he's had enough that
this does go on for like seven minutes. I timed it.
And then so he goes off to say, okay, done
to the organ. I'm going to meet up with some
of my top Hinch children. And one of the workshop
kids brings Santa a demon shaped firecracker on a stick
and says, Santa, do you like this devil? And Santa's

(32:18):
a little perplexed by it. He doesn't recall any of
the good children of Earth asking for this toy in
their letters to Santa Claus, So he says, oh, this
is one of his very memorable quotable lines. He says,
how does it work? What is the sense of it?
But the kid shows him you got to light the fuse,
and then the devil spins around on the end of
the stick and from this firecracker, we smash cut to

(32:42):
a real live devil twirling around in a similar manner
in Hell by the Way, which is represented as a
cavern full of shadows and belching flames. And this is Pitch,
our antagonist for the film. He's got horns, he's got
pointy ears, a goatee, he's cherry red from head to
toe except for his dark goatee and a few sort

(33:04):
of accents on his costume. Read all over, and we
watch Pitch and the other devils do a large coordinated
dance number in the middle of the fiery subterranean recess,
surrounded by the way by hooded figures in robes, And
I was like, wait a minute, I don't know if
I ever noticed these hooded figures before. Are these like
satanic cult members in Hell?

Speaker 1 (33:25):
I think they are supposed to be the souls of
the dance?

Speaker 3 (33:27):
Okay, I can see that which.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
You won in your Christmas movie of course.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
Yeah, exactly. So you know, the devils are dancing until
the boss shows up and in a terrifying voice which
I think is the same voice as that of the
narrator by the way, he says he says, stop, I Lucifer,
King of Hades, command you, and command you to stop
and disappear, begone all of you except Pitch, and then

(33:55):
Pitch pitches like, what do you want? Master? And Lucifer,
King of Hades, He's gonna give his subordinate demon Pitch
a talking to. So we learn Pitch is the chief
of Satan's minions and the time will soon come once
again that he must leave the Brimstone Pits and go
up to Earth to do battle with his arch enemy,
Santa Claus, whom Satan refers to as that bearded old goat,

(34:20):
which is kind of flipping the script because wouldn't the
demon be the one who's associated with a goat.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
I don't know, I mean, especially given the sort of
beard that they've given Pitch here.

Speaker 3 (34:29):
Yeah, Billy go beard exactly. But yeah, anyway, Satan, he's
got an assignment for Pitch. He wants him to go
out and convince all of the children of Earth to
do evil, and if he fails, he will be punished.
Instead of his favorite food, red hot coals, Pitch will
be forced to eat chocolate ice cream, and clearly, to Pitch,

(34:49):
this is a fate worse than death. He begs for mercy,
he says, not chocolate ice cream. It's very bad for
his digestion. But you know, Satan, Satan is not a
good boss. He offers. He's he's all stick, no carrot.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
And this is great and this is comedy for the children.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
So Pitch accepts the mission. He says, I promise, so priceless,
Prince of Hades, that by my many whiles, I will
finish off Santa forever and see that the children commit
terrible deeds and make Santa Claus angry. So you know,
Pitch has his mission. He goes up to Earth to
carry it out. And by the way, somewhere in here
we randomly just see a newspaper lying on the ground

(35:27):
with the front page headline. It's in Spanish but translated
to English. The headline is the Christmas Spirit brings peace
on Earth.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Well, you want to feel good story for the holidays, right, yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
Pitch burns the newspaper because I guess he doesn't like
the Christmas Spirit. And speaking of demons, we next cut
to a department store window with children crowding around to
look at the toys, and one of the toys is
one of one of these things in the movie that
I think is much scarier than it was intended to be.
It's this creepy, mechanical Santa Claus that is much like

(36:03):
the real Santa from earlier, laughing maniacally without pause.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
It's an excellent automaton, but it is it is creepy.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
To be helped, Yeah, I think it would be. It
would be less scary if it were less good, actually,
like if it was less realistic looking. It's it's sort
of getting into uncanny valley territory.

Speaker 1 (36:23):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:24):
And in this scene, looking at the department store window,
we meet two children who were going to follow for
the rest of the movie. We meet a little boy
with curly hair who we initially don't learn his name.
The narrator just identifies him as a boy who has
been very good all year. But we also learned that
his father is very rich, so this is the good
little rich boy. And then by contrast, we meet Lupita

(36:46):
and her mother. Lupita is also a very good child,
but her family is very poor, and Lupita's lifelong dream,
we learn, is to own a doll any doll.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
And in this the film introduces some rather deep thoughts.
I guess that it at least plays with kicks around
a little bit throughout the course of the picture. Like
it's almost kind of surprising because on one level we
do have this just fantasy element Santa Claus and then
this devil. But then the movie then like really sobers

(37:18):
up at times and it's like, hey, why is there
an equality in the world? Why do bad things happen
to good people? Why? And so forth? And it doesn't
really have answers to those questions, but it, like I say,
it kicks them around a little bit.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
Yeah, I mean, this movie in which Santa Claus is real,
also somehow grapples with the question why do poor children
who are good get fewer toys from Santa than rich
children who are good? And it doesn't really answer that question,
but it does raise it.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
Yeah, it at least acknowledges that question. So it's always
something that's fascinated me about this picture, Like, yeah, it
doesn't shy away from it, but it doesn't provide any
convincing answers, because I mean, these are difficult, difficult problems
to bring up in your fantasy Santa film.

Speaker 3 (38:03):
Yeah, hey, there are just too many good children we've
been looking at now are there some real creeps among
the children here? And yes there are. There are three
mean little boys who rudely push in front of the
others to look in the window at all the toys

(38:26):
and the Santa robot and the narrator scolds them, but
they do not seem to notice. Also, I wanted to
note that the two of the little bad boys here
are wearing leather jackets like they're in a biker gang,
but they're like ten years old.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
Oh wow, they got their cuts on. Nice.

Speaker 3 (38:41):
Yeah. So the devil Pitch appears and he goads the
three wicked boys into doing some evil. He makes rocks
appear in front of them, and then convinces them to
throw the rocks and break the department store window, pelting
the mechanical Santa Claus. And then somehow magically, one of
the rocks that was thrown at the robot Santa hits

(39:04):
the real Santa up in his palace in space in
the face.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
So more complex theology presented here metaphysics if you will,
like I guess, all representations of Santa are also Santa,
and therefore anything done to them you do unto him.

Speaker 3 (39:20):
Oh wow, it's yes, I can see that it's like transubstantiation.
It's like any representation of Santa becomes literally the body
of Santa.

Speaker 1 (39:30):
I believe. So.

Speaker 3 (39:31):
So Santa is very annoyed at this devil who he
clearly they already have a relationship. He knows Pitch quite well.
They've been battling for years. And he explains that if
he were allowed, he'd go down to Earth right now
and put that devil in his place. But he can't
go to Earth yet. He's only allowed to go on
Christmas Eve and not before. But that maybe wonder first

(39:52):
of all, who imposes these restrictions? And second, what would
happen to Santa if he went before Christmas Eve? Would
he into flames? Would he bleed from his eyes? How
does it work?

Speaker 1 (40:04):
I mean, these are clearly rules that God has put
in place, but beyond that we have no details.

Speaker 3 (40:10):
So Santa's main hinch child is the child named Pedro,
and he seems to be the one who like makes
everything work in Santa's palace, like even you know, Santa's
like Merlin is absent minded. Santa himself even kind of
gets sidetracked on things. It seems like Pedro is like
it's like the chief of staff in the White House,
Pedro keeps everything on the rails, and he's got some

(40:33):
intel for Santa. He knows about Lupita, the good child,
whose family is very poor, and Santa wants to make
sure that she is appropriately rewarded at Christmas, so they
decide to go use the telescope to find her. And
here begins a sequence of displaying all of Santa's array
of eerie psychic technology. He has the Euroscope, the tele

(40:58):
talker that knows every thing, the cosmic telescope, and the
Master Eye. And the narrator says, nothing that happens on
Earth is unknown to Santa Claus. And we see this
room and it involves not only like a sort of
traditional looking telescope, it's like a big tube appearing out
of a window. But there are also strange I don't

(41:21):
even know what to call it. You know, one looks
like a one thing looks like a game of Simon says.
Another thing is just like a computer in the wall
that has a face, including like lips that move and
eyes and a big nose that lights up.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yeah, like big rolling stones or rocky horror lips that
move and talk and seem to be like moist, even ugh.

Speaker 3 (41:42):
But Pedro says, by magic powers, look for the child
we're seeking, whether she is in a cave or behind
a million mountains. And then the lips on the wall
computer start talking. They say already, And then this tentacle
eyeball ends out into space from Santa's communications tower, and

(42:04):
the helpers announced that they have found the little girl
in Mexico. But then when Santa's like, oh, you found her,
I'll go take a look, and he looks through that
telescope eyepiece to see her, and it's like a view
of the entire earth. I remember there being a funny
riff about this in the Mystery Science Theater with her like,
oh yeah, really zoomed in on her. But eventually we
do tune back in with Lupita, so he finds Lupita directly,

(42:28):
and when he does, she's watching this grotesque puppet show.
It's one of these slapstick shows where the puppets are
hitting each other. Lupita is not laughing at the show,
though she looks very sad. She's sad because she is
still thinking about the doll that she wants for Christmas,
and as her mother takes her by the hand and
leads her away. They pass a vendor in the street

(42:48):
selling dolls from a table, and here we get to
the will Lupita steal scene. Oh boy, so Lupita, you
know she wants a dolly, but the narrator warns, no, Lopita,
do not steal. Put it back, and so at first
she makes like she's gonna do it. She tucks a
doll into her behind like her jacket, and she walks away,

(43:11):
and then Pitch appears, trying to convince her to take it.
Pitch says, it's yours. Nobody saw you take it. What
does one little doll matter? And Pitch is grinning ferociously
and rubbing his hands together as he tries to talk
her into it, but the narrator argues back. He says again, no, Lupita,
it's wrong and you'll be sorry. So Pitch is obviously
the devil on her shoulder, but the narrator, I guess,

(43:34):
is the angel on her other shoulder. They go back
and forth, and then the end Lupita puts the doll
back because she is good.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
I love Pitch's energy though, as he's trying to convince her,
because he's like, you want the doll. You should be evil.
You should be evil, And she's like, I don't want
to be evil. He's like, like, you want the doll,
he should be evil. Like he's just like getting cut
and right to the chase there, and it's like, just
be evil. We're not even it's not even sugarcoating it
by being like, well, he does a little bit. He's like,
you know, they won't miss it, but he just goes

(44:02):
goes for the bigger cell and it's just like, commit
your heart to darkness, now, my child. Well, Lupita's doo
good for that.

Speaker 3 (44:09):
Yeah, So she resists, Yes, that's right, she is morally
pure and she will not take the doll. She puts
it back. Pitch is very angry. He's like flexing his
jaw in frustration, like a thwarted cat looking out the
window at a bird. And he says curses, and he
tells her that little girls must steal or do without
the things they like. So the narrator argues again, but

(44:29):
this time the delivery is funny because of the strange
inflection on the line, which makes it sound almost like
the narrator is mocking her. So the narrator says, that's
not true, Lupita. If you're good, somehow, you'll be rewarded.
It almost sounds like the narrator is holding back laughter
as he says this.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
Oh wow, I know what I'm talking about. I didn't
quite get that feeling from it, but the line always
stuck out at me because of like somehow, like she'll
be rewarded again, dancing around this pro problem that they
are addressing elsewhere in the film. You know, why do
bad things happen to good people? Why do good children
not get gifts from Santa if they are poor? The

(45:10):
question again, that is directly asked by this picture, but
the picture does not provide any answers to this difficult problem.

Speaker 3 (45:16):
Well, it kind of side steps it with magic at
the end because just Santa does give her the gift
she wants at the end through magic, So it kind
of gets around the real world problem, right. But anyway,
so in the film back at the Crystal Palace in
outer Space, Santa is very proud of Lupita. He exclaims
to his helpers that all of his friends can't ignore
the devil, and then they kick off the surveillance process

(45:39):
once again to find the other children from outside the store.
This time they tune in on the good boy, whose
family is rich, and he's asleep when they find him.
So Santa's like connect to the antenna for the dream scope,
and they invade the little boy's dreams and they witness
in his dreaming mind that he wants to come down

(45:59):
the airs on Christmas morning to these two giant boxes.
And the narrators like, what large gift boxes? Would these
be toys? But no, what they contain? What a child
loves best his parents? And Santa Claus gets very, very
sober here, and he says, a dream is a wish
the heart makes, and Santa explains that even though the

(46:21):
little rich boy can have any possession he wants just
by asking, all he really wants is the love and
attention of his parents, and whether they truly love him
is yet to be seen. And Santa says this with
a heavy sigh. But what about Lupita's dreams? Well, here
we're going to resume the stealing debate. So they tune
in on the dream scope to Lupita. She's asleep in
her bed and we see a little by the way,

(46:44):
we see her parents talking and Lupita's mother explains to
Lapita's father that when she was young, she would dream
of growing up and having great riches, but at the
time she would also dream of the devil. I guess
she would be afraid. And then Pitch appears in the
house and like blows back dreams into Lupita's brain, and
we see Lupita standing in this big room that looks

(47:05):
like a giant like walk in freezer warehouse, and it's
full of fog, and there are these big boxes, kind
of like in the last scene where the kid's parents
were in boxes, but instead this is a lot of
adult sized boxes and what comes out of them just
a nightmare of giant robotic doll ghouls.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
For some reason, this whole sequence, which again is very
clearly intended to be disturbing, perhaps too disturbing, even though
it doesn't have actual devils in it, Like it almost
feels like like this one is by guest director Mario Bavas.
You know, it's like it reminds me of the planet's
surface and Planet of the Vampires.

Speaker 3 (47:42):
Yeah, yeah, and these these dolls are a horror creation.
I mean, I think it's it's supposed to be a
bad dream. Even though she is she does want doll.
These are evil dolls that encourage wickedness, and we see
them dance around a lot. They do like a dull
ghoul ballet in the fog. And then the arguments with
this dull puppet faced figure who screeches in this evil witch.

Speaker 1 (48:04):
Voice, total Babba Yaga voice.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Yeah, yeah, Bobby ya exactly Bobby Yaga. She's like, you
must steal us all, Lupita, and Lupita says no because
I do not want to steal, but you must learn
to steal. No, because stealing is bad and I want
to be good. We dolls only like girls who steal.
No to steal would be evil, and I do not
want to be evil. You must be evil if you

(48:27):
want the doll. And it just goes on and on,
back and forth. I don't know. This is one of
my favorite parts of the movie. I can't quite explain
how funny and good the energy of this back and
forth is. But it's peak Santa Claus, just.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
A real hard sell for evil again. It's like it's
like a timeshare situation going on here.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
The more you steal, the more you save.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
But eventually Lupita wakes up distressed and she's comforted by
her mother. Now we check in on some of the
other kids we saw earlier, the three little boys who
broke the window at the store. They are once again.
They come under the surveillance of Santa's sophisticated magical equipment,
and they're talking about how they plan to do more crimes,

(49:14):
and they also say they plan to write letters to
Santa Claus, claiming that they have been as good as
angels all year, and Santa will never know the difference
because he is far away and old. And Santa starts
getting really offended. He's like, I'm not old. The devil
is older than me. But obviously, you know Santa, he
knows everything, so he's not going to be fooled by

(49:35):
these rascals. He understands what they're up to and their
letters will not trick him. And then there's a scene
of children all around the world writing letters to Santa
asking for what they want most, and these letters are
sorted at the post office, the letters to Santa like
they put them all in a pile and then dump
them into the furnace in the post office. But then

(49:57):
by magic, instead of falling into the fire, they get
sucked up through the chimney and out into outer space,
where they funnel into Santa's crystal palace and then rain
down on Santa out of a hole in the wall.
And Santa seems to get real pleasure from being buried
under all these letters.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
Oh yeah, it's terrific scene. It's just like it's just raining,
raining letters from the children on him, and he's just ah,
it's amazing.

Speaker 3 (50:25):
He's literally rolling in the mail, like wallowing in it.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
Yeah, it's kind of like any it's like a danger
diabolic except with the money on the bed. It's it's
children's letters to Santa on the floor.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
So he like looks at some of these letters. There's
a funny moment where he starts reading one of these
letters and it's from a kid who asks for too
many things, including like a nuclear laboratory. I think uh.
And then there are also children who tell falsehoods in
their notes and they have their letters deposited into the
liar's box. And then there's another thing where children who

(50:59):
ask for a younger sibling they have their notes handed
off to the stork. But anyway, Christmas Eve is almost here,
so Santa makes a big speech to his helpers telling them, Okay,
we got to put the effort in. It's almost time.
It's you know, we got a big show coming, you know,
we really got to push it to the finish line.
And then we get the introduction of Merlin. Yes, yes, Merlin,

(51:22):
it's time for Merlin. As I said earlier, he's part alchemist,
part Archimedes inventor, part sorcerer and magician. They you know,
he's sort of John Dee a little bit. And there
there is some real occult imagery in his office.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
Yeah, there's like a pentagram of sorts above the above
the hearth. There's also some sort of a goat's head
above the hearth, and then just again, so many beakers
of smoking liquids and infuming liquids and tubes. Also you know,
astronomical looking artifacts as well. It's it's quite a set.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
The narrator tells us that Merlin is Santa's most devoted ally,
though he is a bit absent minded, and when we
first meet him, he tells us he's busy grinding up
rainbows in his mortar and pestle, and then he's going
to reveal to Santa the secret of the magic stardust
and one of the ingredients he lists is plutonium, another
is pollen from moon flowers, and dust from butterfly wings,

(52:25):
and we see him like fiddling around with this giant,
you know, almost man eating sized flower. Also, I noticed
a little we get one long distant shot where you
can see Merlin's feet and he's got shoes with those
curled up pointy toes.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
Oh, of course he does.

Speaker 3 (52:43):
Anyway, Merlin mixes up the magic stardust in an urn
over a Bunsen burner, and then he pours it off
into Santa's Magic Wizard bag. So Merlin, as we said earlier,
he's basically the source of all of Santa's batman gadgets.
Other equipment in addition to the stardust includes one of
my favorite. It's the flower to Disappear. This is a

(53:03):
flower that's Santa Claus can sniff to become invisible or
also to teleport.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
I think it's a little unclear if he is becoming
invisible and then walking away and going where he needs
to go, or if yeah, he vanishes and teleports to
wherever he needs to go. Either way tremendous effect.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
Onto the next weird ally of Santa's the Master blacksmith
or key maker of the palace. This is the guy
who you identified as he faced Us or Vulcan. He's,
you know, hammering on his divine anvil. He's got a
bunch of strange metal implements all throughout the room and
a big fire and hammers and tongs and all that stuff.
And here he oh he also, I don't know, like

(53:46):
he's got a chest hair on his chest. That is
the fakest movie chest hair I've ever seen. It's like
an arrow of hair. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
Yeah, And again, if you've only seen the MST three
K version of this, you've missed this segment entirely.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
So here Santa Claus gets the quote the golden key
that opens all doors. He gives it a test run.
It opens doors by like creating an electrical arc with them,
and he's like laughing as he tests it out. He's like,
I will get through any door now.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
And then in fact, they do a test run on
multiple doors.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
Yes they do. Yes. And then the next thing is,
this is so strange Santa is using I think this
is supposed to be a joke about some like nineteen
fifties gimmick weight loss devices. Santa is using some machine
that looks like it's like mechanically running a sander belt
over his belly, and it looks like a thing that

(54:41):
would really like be sold by Catalog in the fifties,
claiming to melt off the pounds.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
I feel like I've seen this device so many times
in the past, in like Looney Tunes cartoons perhaps, you know,
or or maybe old timey television, to where I don't
even think about it when I see it because it's
so it's so established. And again probably old cartoons or
old TV shows. But again, you know, Santa likes his tech.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
He does, yeah, yeah, and he claims that it works.
He claims that before he before he used it, he
couldn't fit down chimneys anymore. But then he tests out
a chimney in his gym, I guess in the palace,
and he's like, yep, I fit down now. So the
next thing is we check out Santa's reindeer, and I'm
sorry I have to keep emphasizing the creepiness of various elements,

(55:28):
like the robot Santa Claus in the department store, but
this is another one of these mechanical creatures that are
just like a soulless virus from hell. These things are horrifying.
When they start moving their jaws, I think they have
yellow eyes, and oh boy, they're creepy.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
They I think they laugh. I'm not sure there's like
a laughing sequence. And then we were told additional facts
about them that do not make them seem less creepy.
I can't stress enough that the mechanical reindeer here eat
food made from clouds, and sunlight will turn them to dust.
Like if Santa's not back in one night like he's

(56:05):
supposed to be, the light of the sun will just
turn these things into powder.

Speaker 3 (56:10):
Yeah. This is part of a longer conversation about the
consequences of Santa not returning on time. So Santa says
that if he can't make it back by mourning. First
of all, he would not survive on Earth because he
is used to a diet of crystal palace food, which
is made up of pastries and ice cream made of clouds.

(56:32):
And he says, on Earth they eat plants, animals, everything
in sight, even smoke and alcohol and pedro gasps when
he says this, But the implication is that Santa cannot
eat such things and would starve to death on planet
Earth and his reindeer. If the sun comes up on them,
they will turn to dust and he won't be able
to come back. So he's got to be back by

(56:54):
sunriser he will die.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
Yeah. Again, I don't think it's a great sign when
you're strange comatans are destroyed by sunlight. I don't know.
It seems like a red flag for any kind of
supernatural entity, but against Santa's a special case.

Speaker 3 (57:08):
I guess. Well, one of his hinch children does suggest
replacing them. While he's like getting the sleigh out, the
Russian child comes up and I think says something in Russian,
but we are to understand that he has suggested that
Santa replace his sleigh with sputnik topical.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
What if you just replaced the reindeer with Sputniks and
you had, like, you know, a dozen Sputniks pulling the
slide through the sky. That could be kind of cute.

Speaker 3 (57:36):
Yeah, So Santa he's like, yeah, nice suggestion, but he
can't replace his white reindeer. They are too precious to him, clearly,
So Santa's helpers come. They load up the sleigh with
gifts for all the children of the world. And as

(57:57):
Santa is leaving his palace after he winding up his
mechanical reindeer with a key, he asks that Jesus, the
Son of God, join him on Earth so that all
may have joy and goodwill. And then we see him
flying through space to Earth, and there's a moment where
the narrator lets us know, like, whew, that was close.
He almost ran into the moon.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
That that feels like this is Murray just getting in
some extra fun with the narration, you know.

Speaker 3 (58:23):
Yeah, I don't know if that's in the original. But
down on Earth, we check in with, first of all,
the little rich boy, whose parents tuck him into bed
and then go out on a date. It's Christmas Eve,
but they're like going out to a restaurant. I mean,
I guess that's the thing some people do. I don't know,
but he goes out. Obviously, the little boy wishes that

(58:44):
his parents would stay home with him, but his mother
tells him that if he gets bored, he can go
practice his piano lessons.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
Yeah, yeah, kids love that.

Speaker 3 (58:54):
And then we also check in with the three bad
boys from earlier. They are discussing a plan to capture
an enslave Santa Claus so that all of his toys
and powers would become there. So these are power hungry children, These.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
Are bad kids.

Speaker 3 (59:08):
Yeah. Then there's also oh I mentioned earlier that there
are like these surprisingly tender scenes with Lupita and her mother.
One of them comes up here, and this is, you know,
the one that addresses the central question. Lupita asks questions
about Santa Claus, and she wonders if Santa doesn't like
her because he has never brought her a doll, and

(59:28):
Lupita's mother is trapped because she can't explain the real
reason Lupita has never gotten a doll, which is that
they can't afford it without spoiling, you know, belief in
Santa Claus. But she doesn't want Lupita to think that
Santa doesn't like her or believes her to be a
wicked child. And you can just see the desperation on
her mother's face. She's in a bind, so she just

(59:52):
she says they can pray for it, and she tells
the story of how Christmas is about commemorating the birth
of Jesus, who was even poorer than they are, and
then Lupita decides that she will ask Santa for two dollies,
and if she gets them, she will give one to
Little Jesus and amidst all of the weird stuff going on,
this this sort of complex situation really does grab the

(01:00:15):
heartstrings and like asks weird, hard questions about the world.

Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
Yeah, it almost feels like it belongs in another movie
in which Santa is not clearly real. Yeah, yeah, it
always it throws everything out of line when Santa is real.
It's kind of like watching ted Lasso. Eventually, it is
revealed that in the tad Lasso universe, Santa Claus is real,
which raises all sorts of questions about everything else that
happens in that tvcery, Like, what else is real? Santa

(01:00:43):
is real, We've opened the gate ted Lasso. What's what
else is out there?

Speaker 3 (01:00:46):
Good question? All right? So meanwhile, we've got Santa arriving
on Earth. Pitch has been hanging out on Earth waiting
for Santa to get here so he can you know,
play tricks on him. And Pitch is cold. He doesn't
like Earth because you know, he wants his brimstone pits
where it's hot. And this begins the sort of trick
or treat section of the movie. For a while we
just watch Santa going around to various houses. He's doing

(01:01:09):
his business delivering toys, and along the way, Pitch is
playing pranks on him and trying to harm Santa. So,
for example, at one house, Pitch moves the chimney out
of the way so Santa won't be able to get inside.
I have questions about the mechanics of this, but Santa
gets around this by jumping down to ground level using
his magic parasol and then just going through the door.

(01:01:32):
And in this house, some children wake up and they
sneak out to get a glimpse of Santa. But Santa
throws Merlin's magic sedative dust at them and it makes
them go back to sleep. In fact, not just go
back to sleep, it makes them collapse face down on
their blankets. So it's strong stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
Yeah, I mean, essentially, you have two entities here that
each have like Infinity Stone level powers, but the nature
of their attacks are are fairly whimsical.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
Yes. At the next house comes up with a plan.
He says he's going to immolate Santa Claus with a
blast of fire from the fireplace as he's coming down
the chimney. Fortunately, Santa only gets a bit scorched on
the haunches. He's still alive, but since Santa can't come
down the chimney, he goes down and again comes in
through the front door. And here Pitch pulls a home

(01:02:20):
alone and uses his demon breath to heat up the
door knob until it glows red. But Santa outwits the
devil again. Instead of going through the front door, he
sneaks in through a window, sneaks in behind Pitch, and
then shoots Pitch in the buttocks with a toy cannon
that launches darts. Is this a real toy, Santa? I

(01:02:40):
question what you were giving to the children.

Speaker 1 (01:02:43):
I mean, this was nineteen fifty nine, so it's sam
Maybe so, but it does seem extraordinarily dangerous. But the
real lesson is you can't home alone, Santa Claus. He
will always out home alone, you like he practically invented
home aloney.

Speaker 3 (01:02:57):
Yes, he does usually get the better of Pitch, though
there is one scene coming up where Pitch will at
least temporarily get the better of him. We'll get to
that in just a minute. So next we check in
on the good little rich boy. You know, he's home alone.
His parents are out clubbing. They're out going to the
night club and the restaurants, and he wanders around the
halls of his big house lonely, and the narrator tells

(01:03:20):
us that even though he has all the toys he
could ever dream of, he's poor at heart because he
doesn't have his parents home with him and Santa he
like falls asleep in a chair, and then Santa causes
the little boy to quote awaken while he is dreaming. Oh,
and he explains that the boy's parents love him, even

(01:03:40):
though he and his parents don't understand each other. Then
we cut to the little rich boy's parents out at
a fancy restaurant. Again. This is like, I guess, supposed
to be midnight on Christmas Eve, and we see a
disembodied hand bring a tray over to their table with
two cocktails on the tray, and the cocktails are emitting

(01:04:01):
some kind of gas or fog, and the mother says,
that's a strange cocktail, and then the waiter says, in
Santa voice, it is the cocktail of remembrance, which only
I can prepare. Whoever drinks it will think of that
which is most dear, and which, at times, for some
unknown reason, we seem to forget, and then the waiter
gives a speech about how the greatest reward for giving

(01:04:22):
love is love itself and then concludes with, so drink
my cocktail and you will become aware of that love
which is closest to your hearts. And the mother says,
and those without love, he says, they couldn't drink this
cocktail as it would burn their throats. So he's doing
a great job of upselling it. And then they just
like grab the glasses and have a little chug.

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
Well, I mean it's only a little different than any
other cocktail.

Speaker 3 (01:04:48):
Yeah, And so they're like, oh, wow, wait a minute,
I want to be home with our child, and they
have the sudden urge to go home and see their son,
who is finally revealed is named Billy. I think this
is the first time we hear his name, So they
go home to him. Up next, more tricks. Pitch first

(01:05:09):
of all, convinces the three naughty little boys who wanted
to capture Santa Claus to injure him with a trip wire,
but they fail at this. Santa I can't tell exactly
what he sort of like hits them with a stun
grenade like some kind of bright flash goes off around
them and they are I don't know, they fail at
trying to trip him. But then right after this, they're like, oh,

(01:05:32):
that was Santa, so he's been here. Let's go see
what toys he brought us. And they each get an
old show and you know, because they're not gonna get
anything because they've been bad, and Pitch then tricks them
into fighting each other and at least here's one win
for Pitch. He says, Lucifer will be very pleased at
the way they are fighting.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
I like this scene too. This is another one of
those scenes where I feel like, I think the music
gets a little creepier and yeah, it's like it shows that,
you know, like the devil doesn't really have any favorites
and when he's done with you, he's just going to
use you against each other. All he wants is your misery.
And so some nice villain work here from Pitch.

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):
So after this, Pitch tries to steal Santa's sleigh, but
that doesn't work. I think Santa has like some biometric
security protocols in place, so Pitch can't make the reindeer go.
But even though he can't steal the sleigh, he still
causes more mischief. He manages to puncture Santa's wizard bag
so all of the magic powder leaks out, so now

(01:06:30):
Santa can't put anyone to sleep, and he also causes
Santa to drop the flower to disappear. So at the
next house, Santa is going in through you know, he's
going it's like a big, you know, mansion and a compound.
And Santa goes in through the gate and he is
attacked by a guard dog. And at first he's like, oh,
this will be fine. I will use my Merlin tools,

(01:06:50):
but he doesn't have any, you know, His powder's all gone.
His flower to disappear is gone, so he has no
choice but to climb a tree and hide from the dog.
And the dog is at the base the tree barking
at him. So he's just stuck there and the devil
taunts him. Pitch explains that he will cause mischief by
speaking to people through their imagination while Santa is stuck

(01:07:11):
there in the tree. And then I laugh out loud
moment for me, Santa in the tree yelling to the
sky Merlin key man.

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
This sequence is great because on one hand, it's just
so ridiculous we've built up to the point in this
movie where Santa is treed by a dog. Yeah, and
all Christmas is threatened because of it. And yet at
the same time it's kind of interesting, and you know,
we have this kind of close proximity between Santa and
God and this film the Christian God, and yes, and

(01:07:43):
here he is stuck up in a tree, almost kind
of an odentic figure in the same way you know
that Odin dies in the Great World Tree and you know,
reminds us a little bit of certain things in Christian
iconography as well, though not necessarily in an intentional way.
But if you really want to read a lot into it,
perhaps you could play with that idea.

Speaker 3 (01:08:03):
That Santa is being crucified upon the tree.

Speaker 1 (01:08:06):
But yeah, whilst the devil mocks.

Speaker 3 (01:08:08):
Him, yes, exactly. So Pitch gets up to all kinds
of trouble while Santa is stuck. He goes inside and
convinces the family that there is an assassin outside in
the tree, and so all the family they get woken
up and start gathering weapons that the father in the
family is hilariously cowardly. He also Pitch contrives to have

(01:08:31):
all of the police and fire department summoned like, he
calls up the fire department and causes flames to come
out of the speaker of the phone at the fire
department end, so they're like, Wow, that place must really
be on fire, so they're going to send a fire engine. Meanwhile,
at Lupita's home, Pitch goes there and whispers despair into

(01:08:53):
the ear of sleeping Lupita. He says, you'll never get
a doll, You'll never get anything you want. Santa has
abandoned you. And then the last line of his speech
is you are poor. Then back at the house where
Santa is stuck, the police and the fire department around
the way, we hear the sirens coming, and the whole
family has woken up and armed themselves, and they're going

(01:09:15):
outside to investigate, and the devil taunts Santa, telling him
that he will be caught by the police, trapped on Earth,
unable to fly back to space, and that in this
state he will starve to death, and his reindeer will
turn to dust, and Satan will rule the planet Earth.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
And now how does that last part? That's a line
in the film where I feel like, WHOA. There's a
lot more on the line. Here than I thought.

Speaker 3 (01:09:39):
But in the end Santa's prayers are answered. Pedro and
Merlin come to the rescue. Pedro figures out what is happening.
As usual, he's the one on the ball, he's the
you know, he's the chief of staff. He gets everything fixed.
So he gets Merlin to come to the observatory and
then they communicate with Merlin by like Rline communicates with

(01:10:00):
Santa Claus by talking into a microphone, and Santa communicates
with Merlin just by shouting into the sky. So he says,
they've got me in a tree. Merlin, I dropped to
the flower to disappear, and also the powder for dreaming,
and now this beast won't let me down. All of
this prepared by mister Pitch. So it looks like Santa's
goose is cooked. You know, the police are coming. How's

(01:10:22):
he going to get out of this jam? Well, Merlin
thinks up a clever idea. Merlin's thinking, how do you
stop a mad dog? And he has an ingenious solution.
He says, a cat. So he convinces Santa to distract
the dog with a wind up toy cat from his
bag of gifts, and Santa does this the police arrive,
the heavily armed family there outside. They get sprayed but

(01:10:45):
with water by the fire department, which is fire department
seems fairly bumbling. The firefighters are going around trying to
find the fire, and eventually they do come upon a
cloud of smoke and they spray it with their hose,
but of course the smoke is just coming off of Pitch.
He's a devil, and I guess sometimes he emits smoke
and he gets drenched too.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
Serves him right, serves him right, for all this despair
he's trying to spread.

Speaker 3 (01:11:08):
But Santa has escaped, and you know, so Merlin tells him,
you're out of time. You've got to come back to
the Crystal Palace at once. The sun's about to come up,
but no, Santa says he has one more friend to
visit before he leaves Earth, and then he shouts at
the sky to Merlin, I'll see you later, if possible.
Who's it going to be? Of course it is the

(01:11:30):
most perfect child who ever lived, Lupita. And so somehow
the Flower to Disappear has fallen into Lupita's house and
we see Lupita's in bed. Her father comes home, Lupita's
mother lets him inside and she says, did you find
any work? And he's dejected and he says, nothing, my dear, nothing,

(01:11:50):
And I like, on one hand the scene is like
there's great pathos and it works, but on the other hand,
it's like, wait, he was out looking for work in
the dark before sun rise on cre Ristmas Day.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
Yeah. Yeah, they're kind of laying it on a bit
thick perhaps.

Speaker 3 (01:12:04):
But Lupita wakes up. She tells her mother that she
has dreamed of Santa Claus, that he left her a
dolly out on the patio, and her mother tells her
go back to sleep, but Lupita goes to check and
there it is. There really is a doll, and it's huge.
It's like almost the same size as Lupita, and Lupita's
parents are amazed. Her mother makes the sign of the Cross,

(01:12:24):
and Lupita looks out the window and begins praying to
Santa Claus, and we see the sleigh making the journey
back through outer space, and the narrator tells us that
once again, Santa Claus returns to his palace from his
yearly Christmas rounds. He is happy and gay for once
again he has brought joy to the children of the world,
and we get a sort of title card at the

(01:12:45):
end that said, Blessed are those who believe, for they
shall see God, peace on earth, goodwill toward men. So
sidestepping some of the hard issues with magic, as we've said,
but also it's a sweet ending. And and I guess
what is the last thing we see of Pitch. The
last thing is he just gets sprayed with water.

Speaker 1 (01:13:04):
I think, yeah, yeah, there's no scene where he actually
has to go back to Hell and eat ice cream,
but you know, he's roundly defeated. It does seem like
maybe he should have had a little bit more of
a comeupance there than just getting a bit wet because
he was he was setting up the public murder of
Santa Claus.

Speaker 3 (01:13:21):
Here, that's right. Yeah, and he got really close to
having Satan rule over the earth.

Speaker 1 (01:13:26):
Yeah yeah, I mean, I guess it. I mean, you know,
a lot of authors have explored this. I mean, the
holidays have their roots and very old traditions that you
know are about you know, the dying of the earth
during the winter and the resurgence of the world in
the springtime, and that this is a threshold you have
to cross, and you know there's a certain amount of

(01:13:46):
sacrifice wound up in all of this, so you know
it's not completely out of character, but they do start
laying on just how dire the situation is right at
the end where it's like, oh yeah, if Santa goes,
Satan rules the world, like it's the end of it everything.

Speaker 3 (01:14:00):
And thus concludes the tale of Santa Claus.

Speaker 1 (01:14:04):
What is the sense of it? Tremendously fun holiday picture,
Like I say this and Santa Claus Congress the Martians
set the bar. There are other weird holiday films out there,
but you you, you almost can't consider any of them
except in comparison to these pictures. Yeah, and I wish
we could have had a crossover with the two Santas.

(01:14:25):
They're both excellent Santa Clauses or pitch. I mean, there's
so many ways you could go.

Speaker 3 (01:14:30):
But Dropo wasn't A wasn't really the villain. What's the
villain in Santa Claus Congress the Martians? The guy with
the mustache, Oh, oh goodness, I forgetting his name. I
want to say Zoltar or something Boldar, something like that, Voldar, Voldar.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
That's it. Voldar. Yeah, don't forget Winky and choke him.

Speaker 3 (01:14:53):
Okay, I think that's it for today.

Speaker 1 (01:14:55):
All Right, we're gonna go ahead and close out this
holiday episode, but we hope you enjoyed it as much
as we did. The Santa Claus Conquers the Martian episode
will also rerun over the next couple of weeks if
you haven't listened to that one, or if you want
to listen to it again. If you want to keep
up with the movies we've covered on Weird House Cinema,
and in some cases we want to get a hint
of what's coming up next, we can go over to

(01:15:17):
letterbox dot com. It's l E T T e r
box d dot com. We are a weird house on there,
and we have a nice list prepared of all the
movies we've covered so far. We're primarily a science podcast
on stuff to blow your mind, with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most
serious concerns to just talk about a weird movie here
on Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (01:15:36):
Here's thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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.

Speaker 2 (01:15:56):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.