Weirdhouse Cinema: Santa Claus, the Movie

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss 1985’s “Santa Claus: The Movie,” starring Dudley Moore as an elf, John Lithgow as a scheming tycoon and David Huddleston – the Big Lebowski himself – as Santa.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
today on Weird House Cinema, we are going to be
talking about the nineteen eighty five holiday classic, should we
say classic Santa Claus. Santa Claus, the movie starring David
Huddleston the Big Lebowski from The Big Lebowski as Santa Claus.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
That's right, this is good. This is our third bona
fide Santa Claus movie that we've looked at in Weird
House Cinema. We'd previously done episodes on nineteen fifty nine
Santa Claus aka Santa Claus Versus the Devil, the Mexican
Santa Claus film, Yeah, as well as nineteen sixty four's
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
I think, in their own ways, both actual holiday classics. Yes,
this movie. You know, I don't want to be mean,
but I'm going to be honest right up front. This
movie is nowhere near as interesting to me as the
other two. But I think we're gonna have a great
time talking about it.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, it's mostly interesting to me because I saw it
as a child. Yeah, and I remember the feeling of now. Honestly,
can't remember if I saw it in the theater, which
is possible, or I saw it on VHS, which is
perhaps more likely, but I remember there being a sense
of grandeur and excitement about it because Joe, this wasn't

(01:31):
just Santa Claus. This was Santa Claus the movie.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Right, and it feels like it's the authorized Santa Claus film.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
It's like, yeah, it did. It felt like it had
an air of authenticity to it.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
I was a clause the state has approved it.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah. I wasn't familiar with these other two Santa films,
the superior Santa films that we've talked about. Really, honestly,
I consumed a lot of Christmas media as a kid,
but aside from Miracle on thirty fourth Street, which to
be clear, keeps it a little bit ambiguous about whether
you're deal with Santa or not. Yeah, it's messaging is
a little too advanced. Yeah, I don't know that I

(02:07):
ever saw anything that was like, here is the story
of Santa. Here is the codified mythos of Santa Claus.

Speaker 3 (02:14):
That's right, This movie does a superhero style gritty origin
story for Santa Claus. It's like Batman begins, but for
Santa exactly.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, the first half of the film is Santa Claus begins,
and then the second half is Santa Claus Conquer's capitalism,
or at least that's what it aspires to be in
the second or third rewrite that the script needed, as
we were chatting about before we turn on the mics here.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Yeah, Yeah, feels very much like a brainstorming draft of
a script. And you can tell that in ways that
the subplots never end up really connecting with each other.
The Santa Claus never meets the villain of the movie.
There are elements that just feel like, feel like somebody
threw them in there to try them out, see like
would it work to have something about exploding candy in

(03:06):
this movie? I don't know. But now it's just suddenly
they rushed the brainstorming draft to shooting and I don't
know this is how it happened, but that's what it
feels like. It feels like they were just kind of
getting stuff on the page, thought they'd work it out later,
and then and then suddenly the movie was made.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
You don't make Santa Claus the movie with the script
you want, You make it with the script you have.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah, this is what they had apparently.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
But yeah, I was drawn to discussing this one because
of my past with it, also because it is, for
all its faults, they largely cheerful, family friendly Santa movie,
and uh huh, I decided that was there. I was
tempted to do something like Black Christmas or or something
a little something with a much more complicated plot like

(03:51):
Terry Pratjet's The Hogfather. Will say one or both of
those for another holiday. But I was also fascinated because
we've to a Santa movie plays an important role in
codifying Santa Claus, defining the legend for the generation of
children it's aimed at. Yeah, the nineteen fifty nine Santa
Claus movie largely introduced the concept of Santa to Mexico.

(04:14):
The sixty four film gave us our first cinematic missus clause. Also,
you know, established Santa Claus as an interplanetary figure. What
did this movie do? What did this movie teach my
generation about Santa Claus. That's a hard question to answer.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
Well, can I raise a question? I truly don't know
if it originated here, but something I remember being aware
of when I was a kid. I was born, you know,
within a couple of years of this movie coming out,
And I never watched this one as a kid, so
I don't remember seeing it, but I remember a lot
of themes, a lot of Christmas movies with themes of

(04:53):
anti commercialism, where it was almost like the idea of
a Christmas movie. It was about how commercials for mass
manufactured toys are really bad. There's something icky about that,
despite the fact that like that's what we all wanted
for Christmas. We all wanted like toy, mass manufactured toys.

(05:14):
But I don't know, it just seemed like it was
part of the media zeitgeist of the season. You know,
the Christmas is really about something more important, and the
commercialism and the consumerism that's something that's the part that
we should eschew, and that is very much a part
of this film. It feels only loosely thought through, but

(05:35):
those are the themes that are being played with.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, it's weird because you can try and craft some
sort of complex metaphor with it, but at the end
of the day, you're generally presented with this scenario, Santa
Claus in most cinematic incarnations, brings handmade toys, wooden toys
to children. Yeah, and if we're dealing with pretty much
any like twentieth century or twenty first century household, we're

(06:02):
dealing with children that just don't want that crap anymore.
Like it's Yes, we get as grown ups that it's
made with love by the Tuapha Diden and or some
other mysterious Elvin race, that it's made with magic and
love and it's authentic, and it's not mass produced, and
it's made to last and so forth. But that's not
what children were excited about. You know. Children wanted Transformers

(06:24):
and Teddy Rutsman's and you know whatever the latest thing
la boo boos, you know, you name it. It's whatever
the trend is, and the more mass produced the better.
And yeah, we can agree with the basic sentiment that,
you know, all this highly commercialized, mass produced stuff isn't
as good, but it's still more desirable. But they give
us on the screen.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah, yeah, and the movie really does associate some kind
of virtue or moral purity with wooden toys as opposed
to I don't know, well, I was gonna say plastic toys,
but then we don't even really see plastic toys in
the movie. The toys that the bad guy makes are
teddy bears that are full of nails, dolls that catch
on fire, and various forms of poisonous or dangerous candy. Yes.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah, One detail that I love about this film is
that supposedly they made all these wooden toys for the film. Yeah,
and then after the production wrap, they did the Christmas
y thing and they gave those toys to children, and
I'm wondering how many of them just went like right
in the trash. Can you know, like, thanks Hollywood, sand

(07:32):
I really needed a wooden tricycle.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah, this lovingly made item. No, thank you. I want
the big wheel, big Kahuna rover, whatever it's called. Speaking
of things in the script that feel undercooked, did you
also notice on your first viewing that the finale of
Santa Claus the movie takes place in what I take
to be late January.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah, it's not even a Christmas Eve finale. Everything up
in the weeks that the dreary weeks following Christmas.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
It's like the least Christmas E time of the entire
year is four weeks after Christmas.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's Christmas is almost a year away
at that point. Now, you mentioned that that this was
not a movie that was inflicted on you when you
were a kid. And one of the big reasons for
this is that despite this being a big budget film,
it was a flop in the United States. It was
a US UK co production, and famously it was a

(08:32):
hit in the UK. It really resonated with UK audiences,
and folks such as John lilithco have have pointed out
that when they go to the UK like people ask
about this movie. Lets Go has said that this is
this is one of the things that he was for
the longest time, most half of his popularity was due
to this movie.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
In the UK, he doesn't have kids running up to
him asking to autograph their picture of Doctor Lizardo.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
No, it's all about the villain of this film BZ.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
So I find that quite interesting because, yeah, this doesn't
seem to be a film that really hit in the US.
It didn't didn't become annual viewing for the vast majority
of households.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
I actually have a question here, is John Lithgow incredibly
tall or were they doing force perspective shots in his
scenes with Dudley Moore to make it look like he
was much bigger because Dudley Moore is supposed to be
an elf.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
The Internet tells me John Lithgow is six feet four
so okay tall. Yeah, I think Dudley Moore, I'm not
going to look up his height as well, but I'm
under the assumption that he was also a reason he
was somewhat shorter than that at any rate.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
Yeah, well, the movie makes it look like Lithgow is
like at least a foot and a half taller than.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Yeah. Yeah, he's tall. He's taller than me.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
Shows his teeth a lot. Yeah, we'll have a lot
to say about this. This performance probably perhaps the hammiest,
Like I would say Litgo's performance here is hammier than
when I've seen him do impersonations of.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Rudy Giuliani on The Colbert Show. Like it's like this
is that's a more restrained performance compared to this.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
I mean, he's kind of doing an impersonation of Giuliani
in this movie. Yeah, a little bit feels feels like it.
The teeth kind of thing and the chomping.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, yeah, all right, Well I think I already already
did my elevator picture for it. This is a this
is a holiday double feature. Santa Santa Claus begins, followed
by Santa Claus Conqueror's Capitalism, but really, Santa Claus the movie,
the motion picture. Let's listen to a little trailer audio.

Speaker 3 (10:46):
In a world where children are greedy.

Speaker 5 (10:53):
Every year, the magic happens again, certainly should be until.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
Now, what are you I'm an elf? An elf? Yeah,
you mean o very.

Speaker 6 (11:08):
I mean I'm talking mutton messages of production here, I'm
talking assembly line.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
I'm going away for the future.

Speaker 6 (11:14):
Now, someone wants to take the magic out of Christmas.

Speaker 5 (11:18):
We say, figure, brother's just going to cost your cost cost.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
Who are the people who buy.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
The toy for nothing? We're going to give them away free.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Well that's how we do it at the North Pole.
Well that's not how we do it here. Santa Clause.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
He's finished.

Speaker 6 (11:35):
Only one man can stop him, only one man can
help us. And he's coming to take you for a
sleigh ride. In the Star Alexander self kind Presents Having Heaven.
Santa Claus the movie scene is Believey.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
All right, Well, if you would like to watch Santa
Claus the movie. Well, it's widely available for your digital
purchaser rental also as a physical release, but check your
region because, as we mentioned, more popular in the UK
than in the US, so I think some of the
more robust looking Blu rays are actually for the UK
market and maybe not for the US market. So just

(12:24):
make sure you're ordering the right thing as you inevitably
double down on a forever purchase for this film.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
When I streamed it, the version I found was called
something like the twenty fifth Anniversary.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
Edition or something.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
It's like, wow, okay, so somebody's out there given this
film the treatment.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
Yeah, yeah, it has its fans, and you know it
had been you know, if this had been one that
my parents said loud for some reason or another, and
it had been something we watched every year, or of
it just happened to be aired on TV with the
regularity that some hallowed classics and holiday favorites have been aired,

(13:04):
then I think it could have been a different story.
All right, let's get into the people behind this film.
The director here is Jane Sewark who lived nineteen thirty
seven through twenty twenty five, a French director who had

(13:24):
a prolific career as an American TV director across six decades.
This guy's filmography is incredible, especially when it comes to
television series. A special note to me. He directed nineteen
episodes of Rod Serling's Night Gallery, so nearly half of
the total episodes, and then includes some of the best episodes.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
Any of the ones you've done on our anthology series.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
Possibly not, but like some of them, like the one
that's an adaptation of the Clark Ashton Smith story that
I believe had Vincent Price in it, The Return of
the Sorcerer that was one that he directed. So he
had a hand in some of the some some of
the big episodes that people remember. And on top of that,
he directed episodes of Colombo, The Six Million Dollar Man, Kojak,

(14:16):
the nineteen eighties Twilight Zone, Ali McBeal, CSI, Miami Heroes, Smallville, Fringe,
Gray's Anatomy. So just you know, this guy was in
TV for a long time now. In film, he kicked
things off with the seventy two TV horror film Night
of Terror and also nineteen seventy three's The Devil's Daughter

(14:36):
starring our favorite work best Robert Foxworth. Ah yes, yeah,
it was a Heyday for inventive and sort of daring
made for TV films, So it's a good era for
him to have come up in. Now. I believe his
first theatrical film was seventy three's Extreme Close Up, and
in seventy five he did a mutant cockroach film called Bug,

(15:00):
not to be confused with the Tracy Letts play or
it's two thousand and six film adaptation. Plus there have
been some other thing, other movies called Bug that have
nothing to do with this one.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
Oh wait, is that film adaptation, the William friedkin one?

Speaker 2 (15:12):
It is? Yes, Okay, I haven't seen the film adaptation,
but I saw an Atlanta area production of the play
a long time ago and remember thinking it was quite good.
Also very naked. It's a very naked play, one of those. Yeah.
In nineteen seventy eight, though, our director here, so Wark
directed Jaws two. You know, this is what we were

(15:36):
talking about this off mic before we started here. Jaws
two is not one I remember all that.

Speaker 3 (15:41):
Well. Yeah, I've seen it several times. It's been years
since I've seen it. It doesn't really stick in the
memory a lot, I think because it is not bad
enough to be notably bad. And not good enough to
be notably good. It's I think it's kind of like
Halloween two in that regard. It's a competently made but
unnecessary sequel to a very excellent original horror film. So,

(16:06):
you know, the original Jaws. We've just talked recently on
the show about how I think it's almost a perfect movie.
It's like, so so good, exceptional in all these different ways.
Some of the later Jaws sequels are so bad that
they are quite memorable, as the Revenge is hilarious, and
Jaws two it just doesn't quite go far. And you know,
it is neither hot nor cold, so I must spit

(16:28):
it out of my mouth.

Speaker 6 (16:29):
You know.

Speaker 3 (16:29):
It's a pretty well made, but forgettable shark movie.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah, okay. Nineteen eighty though. He followed this up with
Somewhere in Time. I've not seen this one, but it
was scripted by Richard Matheson, which is always a great sign,
and it started time traveling Christopher Reeve alongside Jane Seymour
and Christopher Plumber.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
Oh my interest, this has my interest.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yeah, yeah, it's supposed to be rather good. He followed
this up with the nineteen eighty two spy thriller Enigma
nineteen eighty four is Supergirl, which this is one of
those films that I liked when I saw it as
a kid, but then later on I would read people
talking about how terrible it was. I don't know, I
haven't revisited it, but I don't think I ever really
watched the Superman movies in full, but superal Girl I

(17:16):
did watch, and I was like, oh, it's pretty fun.
I think I saw part of the Superman movie they
had Richard Pryor in it. That was the third one.

Speaker 3 (17:23):
I think, Yeah, you know, I don't know if I've
ever seen Superman three all the way through. I've definitely
seen the first two, and i've definitely oh, there's a
similar thing with well, not with Superman two, because I
think the Superman two is actually great, unlike Jaws two.
But Superman four is so hilarious it becomes great.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
It's Superman four the Solar Man.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
That's the Quest for Peace, Yes, where Alex Luthor has
Superman throw all of the nuclear weapons and attaches his
DNA to them so that it makes a like a
nuclear Man.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
Yes, Okay, I've seen that one. It's just the first two,
the really good ones that I've never seen.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
Yeah, Oh wow, you've never seen the first two supermanen Oh.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
No, it's weird. It's a big hole in my film viewing.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah, I like them, but yeah, Superman four is very funny.
There's one part that always sticks in my head where
the bad guy Solar or not Solar Man. I think
he's called radio not radioactive man, I don't know, something
like that, radiation nuclear man, I think. And he's you know,
he's out like attacking Superman and he threatens him by,

(18:31):
you know, motioning to a crowd of terrified earthlings, and
he says, I will hurt people, and Superman says, no,
the people.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Tremendous well. Zark follows this up with various other films.
It's a nineteen eighty six adaptation of The Murders in
the Room Morgue, and his final film before returning to
TV was the French dog crime comedy film Hercule and Sherlock,
starring Christopher Lambert. I'm not sure if the dogs talk

(19:02):
in this one. I'm not sure if anyone's actually seen
this movie. It doesn't look like it has a huge
footprint out there. I'm not looking to pull it up
any time soon. Now speaking of Superman. The writers on
Santa Claus the Movie are David and Leslie Newman. This
was the married screenwriting duo David lived nineteen thirty seven

(19:23):
through two thousand and three Unless We Live nineteen thirty
eight through twenty twenty one, best known for their work
on the first three Superman films together and critics have
long noted some plotting similarities between Santa Claus and the
first Superman. I think it has to do with how
long you have to watch the movie before the villain
is introduced.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, both of
them have extended origin narratives. And you know, I think
that the first couple Superman movies are much better scripts
than Santa Claus the Movie, much more I don't know,
coherent focused, like they tell a better tale, but they

(20:03):
do have some similarities. They both have a very g
golly quality, a kind of innocent, wholesome, hold onto your
hats kind of a sense of fun and adventurer. So
that's in common. Like, there were parts of this movie
that I think do not work at all, but the
parts were, like Santa Claus is trying to execute a

(20:24):
stunt on his sleigh, that feel like writing moments in
the first couple Superman films.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
Okay, all right, now these two. Leslie was also a
cookbook author, and David's other screenplays included nineteen sixty seven's
Bonnie and Clyde, seventy two's Bad Company, eighty four sena
Queen of the Jungle, and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
So I'd assume they did not consider Santa Claus the
movie their best work. Probably.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
I mean, I didn't run across them particularly trashing it
or anything, but how could they write?

Speaker 3 (20:56):
Yeah, now, wait a minute. We already mentioned at the
top one of the weirdest things about this movie for
modern viewers, which is that, at least one of the
weirdest things for me. Santa Claus is played by David Huddleston,
a character actor known for a bunch of things. But
the thing I know him best for is playing the
other Lebowski, the Big Lebowski, in the film The Big Lebowski.

(21:17):
And so I couldn't but hear his voice delivering Big
Lebowski lines while I'm watching this Movie's talking about the
naughty children and the nice children, and I'm thinking about
him saying, like your revolution is over the bottom's loss.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
Yeah, it's true. We do have The Big Lebowski himself
playing Santa Claus. Here Huddleston, who have nineteen thirty through
twenty sixteen enjoyed a very long career playing a variety
of characters, but he often excelled in playing heavies and villains,
such as to a large degree, The Big Lebowski, but

(21:53):
also the brutal gang leader Big Joe opposite a twenty
three year old Jeff Bridges and Bad Company, which I
referenced just a second ago.

Speaker 3 (22:02):
I've never seen that.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
I haven't either, but it looks interesting. It's weird when
I see I'm so used to Jeff Bridges from a
certain point in his life forward, and when I see
really young Jeff Bridges, I almost feel like I'm looking
at a computer. The aged Jeff Bridges, I almost get
Uncanny Valley from it, despite the fact that that's just
how he looked when the dude was in his early twenties.

Speaker 3 (22:26):
I grew up watching some movies with younger Jeff Bridges,
like Tron, so I was familiar with him, but somehow
still my brain always sectioned older Jeff Bridges and younger
Jeff Bridges into two different actors.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah. Yeah, So it's interesting here that David Huddleston again
played a lot of heavies is here playing the cheerful
or mostly cheerful Santa Claus. But it did remind me
it's kind of like the Mexican Santa Claus movie where
we had jose LEAs Moreno playing Chris Kringle, and he
himself also played a lot of heavies, authority figures and

(23:01):
the like, so perhaps similar casting wisdom here. Did Brimley
ever play play Santa Claus?

Speaker 5 (23:08):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (23:08):
I bet he did? I bet?

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Yeah, there's something about it. There's like a there's some
sort of a Venn diagram to be made here of
the sort of actors that play Santa Claus and the
other sorts of roles.

Speaker 3 (23:18):
They play Henchman types. Did Michael Ironside ever play Santa.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
Oh there's still time. He's still with us. Get him
in there.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
I was reading a little bit about Huddleston and there's
a quote that pops up in various forms of his
obituary where he had said, even when I play heavies,
I try to play them with a twinkle in my eye. Besides,
it makes him seem much meaner when he does kill,
which I thought was interesting, But I guess that means

(23:47):
we just have all twinkle here, because Santa Claus never
kills anybody. He does Santa Claus.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
The movie there, but there are moments where he's a
little bit menacing. You remember the scene where he first
meets the elves and Dudley Moore gets caught inspecting his
sleigh without permission, and then he like pops out from
under it, and Claus is just standing there over him
with this cold look like he's gonna stomp his face.
It is intimidating. Yeah, and he's a big guy in

(24:15):
this movie.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
He is. He towers over all the elves. So Huddleson's
other roles include Let's See. Other films include nineteen seventies
Rio Lobo, seventy one's Brian Song, seventy four's Blazing Saddles,
seventy seven's Capricorn one, and nineteen eighty eights Frantic. All right,
we've mentioned this actor already as well, but Dudley Moore

(24:36):
plays Patch the Elf. Dudley Moore lived nineteen thirty five
through two thousand and two. British comedic actor who earned
an Oscar nomination for his role in nineteen eighty two's Arthur.
Other films include nineteen sixty seven's Bedazzled, the Hound of
the Baskervilles in nineteen seventy eight, and he played Watson
in that opposite Peter Cook. This was a comedy. Peter

(24:59):
Cook and Dudley Moore work together. They had a long
running comedy act as Derek and Clive Let's see. Other
movies from Dudley Moore include foul Play also from seventy eight,
Blake Edwards ten and seventy nine, and Yeah, he co
wrote be Dazzled with Cook. So Dudley Moore when I
was a case, he seemed to be just a comedy staple.

(25:20):
He was in all these different films you saw. If
you walked into the comedy section of your VHS rental store,
you'd see a lot of deadly Moore smiling back at you.
I haven't I hadn't watched one of his films in
quite a while. This is probably not a fair selection
to judge his abilities on. He's fine in Santa Claus

(25:41):
the movie, but man, he's working with some pretty lackluster
comedic material here.

Speaker 3 (25:45):
A lot of elf related puns. Any two word compound
you can think of with the word self in it
to this movie will use the same thing, but with
the word elf. So he needs to practice a bit
of elf control, a little bit of elf confidence. I'm
entirely elf taught that sort of thing. Also, it's interesting

(26:07):
the role they have him play here, which is that
in a movie where the villain is in some ways
mass production of toys and you know, mechanistic approaches to
bringing children good cheer, Dudley Moore, who is a good character,
essentially embodies the same thing. He's like. He is the

(26:30):
Q branch of the North Pole. He is trying to
introduce technological changes and new mechanical efficiencies and automation processes
to the North Pole.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
Yeah, and I kept thinking that his character, Patch not Pitch,
is kind of the satan figure of this piece, but
not in a way that's really explored or thought out.

Speaker 3 (26:53):
He's well meaning.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
Yeah. He is an ancient being who is part of
in this case Santa's Kingdom who has brought some new
ideas to the table. Those ideas don't work out, and
he is cast from Santa's Kingdom into the mortal world,
where he begins to create mischief for one reason or

(27:14):
another and ultimately sets him up. He sets himself up
as a direct rival of Santa in the mortal world.
He is a traitor to the North Pofle.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
He's a Prometheus figure.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
He brings the fire of Olympus, in this case the
golden dust that they feed to the reindeer. He brings
that down to the mortals and it creates big problems.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
He is a Promethean figure. This will be yeah, this
will be fun to discuss and think about. Though again
one does not get the impression that anyone making the
film gave these ideas much thought. All right, and once more,
our villain Bez. I don't know if we ever find
out what that stands for. But Bez is played by
John Wiskow born nineteen forty five. Yes, two time Oscar nominee.

(28:00):
A skilled performer capable of bringing to life chilling murderers,
mad men, sympathetic father figures, and comedic buffoons. And here
he just hams it up all the way to play
barely a cardboard cutout, just a sketch of an old
school tycoon who just wants to milk parents out of
their hard earned cash in exchange for dangerous toys that

(28:22):
are loaded with broken glass or high grade magic reindeer fuel.

Speaker 3 (28:27):
He is he is a living cartoon. At this level,
the level of overacting really cannot be communicated in words.
You just need to see it. He is a cartoon
level depiction of a robber, baron, corrupt industrialist.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yes, yeah, it's just a cartoon character. And he's very
entertaining in the role. Like clearly it's a case where
he knew he didn't have much to work with. He
knew the sort of movie this was and knew exactly
what levers to pull to give it his best.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
Literally chomping a cigar through the.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Phone, Oh my god, shopping it just yeah, the cigar
work alone, it's it's quite intensive.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
You can see the structural integrity of the cigar failing
under his teeth as he performs the scene. It's coming
apart and it's getting in the mouth. And also I
was quite surprised that this character does direct product placement
for Peraps Blue Ribbon.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Yes, did they get a say in which characters interact?
Because you hear things about like I don't know if
this is still the case, but for a while, the
story was that Apple was like, Okay, you can have
iPhones in movies, but the villains can't use them. Villains
have to use something else where. They peraps the blue
ribbon where they're like, yeah, we want, we want the
villain drinking our beer the evil coup glass or something.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
The bad rich man in the movie drinks paps to
blue ribbon. I guess it still makes it look like
a luxury item, but that's one of the main three
product placements we get in the film. There is mac
in the level integration of McDonald's in a truly hilariously
bad scene where an impoverished child like stares through the

(30:10):
glass into a McDonald's wanting to eat all of the
menu items, and you see the different menu items. It's
like he's wanting a big mac. He's wanting nuggets. And
then there's also a scene where the same child is
given by a rich girl a holiday meal. It's like
a plate with roast dinner and Yorkshire puddings and all

(30:30):
that kind of stuff, and a coke, a can of
coke held out so you can see the label. And
then finally, yeah, the villain pours himself a big, nice
frosty glass of pbr right when he's about to murder
a child.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
All right, well he's good. I'm not gonna list all
the things he's been in. Just briefly, I'll say. Yeah,
this is the same guy who was in Harry and
the Henderson's Raising Cane in ninety two Conclave, you know,
just all over the place, Third Rock from the Sun
on TV. He played a pivotal role in Dexter. Again.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
He can do anything the villain and Cliffhanger.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
That's right. Yeah, yeah, he's a great villain performer. He
doesn't do it all the time, and he's not a
villain specialist, but when he does it, it's memorable. I
mean here, it's memorable.

Speaker 3 (31:20):
Did you understand who is this character played by Burgess Meredith?

Speaker 2 (31:25):
Ah? The Ancient Elf?

Speaker 3 (31:27):
Is that what it is? Do they say that is?

Speaker 2 (31:29):
I think how he's credited as ancient Elf? An elf
with a beard so long that it is split in
two and must be held by other elves.

Speaker 3 (31:37):
It's held up like the like the wedding train of
a bride going down the aisle. You know, they got
this long mustache suspended he has. He's a wizard like quality.
Also a strangely Old Testament religious quality.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
I would agree. Yeah. When we watched it with my wife.
Weirdly enough, our child was not interested, so it was
just the parents watching this one. But when we watched it,
my wife theorized that this guy was sort of like
the original Santa or he was the prime gift giving
entity who is now dying, and it must pass the

(32:12):
mantle on to this new mortal that has been brought
into the immortal world.

Speaker 3 (32:16):
Interesting theory that I don't think they say that, do they.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
No, they certainly don't tell us that. But it's Burgess Meredith.
And like we were discussing in Clash of the Titans,
he just classes up anything he happens to walk into,
and I think that the same can be said here.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
I was wondering if we were gonna have to see
him like cut the bruise over Santa's eyes and get
the swelling to go down. But no, he doesn't even
show up to give a pep talk later in the film,
does he. I think we just get one scene of
this guy and that's it, right.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
Yeah, and then he's gone. We don't see him die
or anything or turn into into light. No, he's just
he gets this one scene. But hey, one of the
great American character actors here, two time Oscar nominee for
Supporting Roles in seventy six is the Day of the Locust,
and of course seventy seven's Rocky, So yeah, one of
the greats. I can't remember what he was actually talking about,

(33:08):
but man, I was enraptured by him while he was
reciting these lines. All right, let's move into some of
the more minor characters here. We have Missus Clause once more,
and she has a little more to do, I would say,
than other Missus claus featured films.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
Probably because we get the origin story. We learned that
her name here is Anya.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yes, Yes, Anya Clause. She's played here by Judy Cornwell
born nineteen forty BAFTA nominated actress, nominated for seventy five's
Cakes and Ale. She was also in nineteen seventies Worthering Heights,
and she was in Curtis Harrington's nineteen seventy two film
Whoever Slew Anti Roue. That's not a Harrington film I've seen,

(33:50):
but you know of note for stuff to blow your
mind listeners. All right, we also have Jeffrey Kramer playing Cowser.
Towser is Beezy's Toady, he is his Smithers. There are
even some Smithers adjacent jokes made in the film. And yeah,
Kramer played the character Hendrix in both Jaws and Jaws two.

(34:13):
He was also in nineteen eighty five's Clue.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
Yeah, just wretched subservient helper of the villain who really
likes the color puce, we will learn, and is aware
of the difference between between puce and other colors on
the color wheel.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah, that's pretty much all the character development we have
for this guy. I also note that there's there's a
character named Grizzard, and I'm not sure what role Grizzard
actually has in the villain power structure here, but he's
played by John Hallam who lived nineteen forty one through
two thousand and six, a British character actor who frequently
played villains, and we previously mentioned him because he was

(34:50):
in both Dragon Slayer and Flash Gordon. But really almost
a background character here.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
Yeah, I don't remember what he does. Oh but wait,
we got it. You know, you would think that the
main character of Santa Claus the movie would probably be
a lovable child of some kind a lovable child who
learns about the magic of Santa Claus. But no, as
we've established the main character of the movie is Santa Claus.
Halfway through the film they do remember to introduce some children.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
Yeah, so we get one of both types. We have
a rich kid and we have a poor kid. Because,
of course, any consideration of Santa Claus involves the unanswerable
questions of why, you know, why do good things happen
to bad people? And why do bad things happen to
good people? Why do children not get Christmas gifts from
Santa just because they are poor? And so forth. This,

(35:38):
of course, was explored with much more depth in thought
in the Mexican Santa Claus film. Here they kind of
swirl their toes around in it a little bit.

Speaker 3 (35:50):
Well, it's a little bit different here too, because in
the Mexican Santa Claus film we get a different kind
of contrast. We meet two children who are both good, kind, chill,
but one is rich and one is poor. Here we
meet well, actually, I guess both the kids in this
movie are good, but the poor kid has a much
harder edge. She's kind of a little Fonsie like. He

(36:11):
wears a leather jacket, and he's street tough, and he's
very skeptical of Santa at first, but he's got a
good heart.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Yeah, this is Joe. He is yeah, kind of a
Dickensian street urchin, Yes, transplanted into nineteen eighties New York City.

Speaker 3 (36:27):
He's the artful dodger by way of the Fawns, but
living in modern New York.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
But a child, Yes, and he is played by Christian Fitzpatrick,
a child actor whose only other credit was nineteen eighty
eight vice versa. And then Our rich Kid is Cornelia,
played by Carrie kai Heim born nineteen seventy three, child
actor who also appeared in nineteen eighty six as the
parent Trap two. She went on to become a lawyer
and novelist. Now there's a scene in the film where

(36:56):
Cornelia is at ballet practice, you know, some sort of
I guess pricey New York City ballet class for little girls,
and she encounters a couple of I think they're just
billed as braddy kids in ballet bullies. The bullies that
start pushing her around. Two of them are of note.

(37:17):
One of them is played by future Canadian British pop
singer Nicole Appleton, and then the other is played by
future pro wrestler Shannon Spurrell, who was known as Daphne
in like WUCW and some other promotions.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
Oh wow, I never would have caught that is Daphne
a face or a heel.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
She played kind of like Banshee, screaming like wild.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
Woman type roles. Yeah, okay, cool, Yeah, that.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
Was kind of her character all right. And finally, the
score for this movie is by the legendary Henry Mancini
who lived nineteen twenty four through nineteen ninety four. This
is the guy, of course, gave us the music for
such films as nineteen sixty one's Breakfast at Tiffany's in
nineteen sixty three's The Pink Panther.

Speaker 3 (38:00):
I love the Pink Panther theme. That was one of
the ones I always tried to plink out on the
piano when I was little.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
Yeah, it's a great track. I recently attended a concert
by Russian horror surf band Messer Chups and they did
a great rendition of the Pink Panther theme song. But yeah,
mensining multiple time OSCAR nominee and winner for Breakfast to
Tiffany's nineteen sixty threes Days of Wine and Roses and
nineteen eighty three's Victor Victoria.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
All right, you ready to talk about the plot?

Speaker 2 (38:35):
Oh yes, let's get into the plot.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
Okay, I'm not gonna I think we're not going to
do the full, extensive scene to scene kind of breakdown
we do with some movies. Some parts of this movie
are kind of light on plot. Other parts. I don't
know how interesting they'd be to cover all the machinations.
But I think we'll do that thing where we cover
some of the beginning and more detail and then talk
about the broad strokes later on. So I want to

(38:59):
say again, alluded to this earlier, I think, but when
the movie started I was really thrown off because I
kept thinking I was watching some sort of prologue which
would play out before we meet the actual main characters,
presumably again like modern human children the audience can identify with,
And instead it just kept going and going and going

(39:21):
with the Santa Origins chronicle, and then half the movie
was over. So it is strange how late the human
children are jammed into the story.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. How long are we going to be
stuck in the Middle Ages for this movie? More than
you might expect.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
It's like forty minutes basically. So yeah, Anyway, where does
this origin story begin. It begins sometime in the Middle Ages,
in a far northern region of Europe. I assume this
is supposed to be Laplund, which is interesting because it
put me in mind of the White Reindeer. Another movie
we've covered on house this was the ware Reindeer film

(40:02):
as in Werewolf, about a woman who consults the help
of a wizard and then is transformed by some kind
of magic into a being that turns into a reindeer
and kills men. We watched that earlier this year. It's
set among the people of northern Finland, and that movie was,
from what I understand, a fairly authentic portrayal of traditional

(40:25):
life in Lapland, which was hugely based around reindeer herding.
This movie presents a much more idealized vision of winter
life in northern Europe. There's a Thomas Kincaid quality to it,
warm orange light coming out of the cozy windows of
cabins and the snow smoke pouring from the chimney. So
the first real thing we see in the film is

(40:47):
one of these cozy cabins zooming in on it as
the narrator sets up the story. The narrator, it's a
woman's voice. I remember thinking she sounds kind of like
Angela Lansbury. And she says, in a certain time, in
a certain land, once there lived, and once there was
a magic kingdom at the top of the world. If
a traveler came to that cold, freezing place, and no

(41:10):
traveler ever did, all he would see would be ice,
mountains of ice and snow. But on certain nights, when
stars of the sky shined like jewels, a wonderful light
appeared in the heavens, and then many lights, all the
colors of the rainbow, and some colors never seen before.
Way on top, the north Star sparkled. Do you start

(41:33):
picking up on something weird about this narration that it
starts as like a continuous, you know, there always was
kind of story, and then sounds like it's talking about
a specific time something happened.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
Yeah. Yeah, it really feels like different drafts, different Dosanta
films kind of were stitched together here.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
Yeah, And so it goes on to say, and suddenly
the ice mountains cracked open, and beautiful, beautiful lights pierced
the sky, and then out came the Vendiga, hundreds of them,
all in their bright colored clothes. Rob I looked up
vindigums and I didn't do a deep dive, but from
what I could tell, I think this is made up

(42:11):
for the film. I don't think vindigums are a type
of creature pre dating Santa Claus the movie.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Yeah, which would be interesting because there are so many
words for the little people yea, and the little people
adjacent entities. You really have your pick.

Speaker 3 (42:27):
At this point, it's not just voiceover. By the way,
we can see that an old woman is telling this
story to a group of children gathered around to fire.
The children ask her what the vindigums are. She explains
that they are the little men who live in the
ice mountains at the top of the world, which isn't
that what she already just said. Anyway, so we're looking
at a big family. Now, there's big family keeping warm

(42:48):
inside the winter, inside the cabin in the winter, and
they are awaiting the arrival of Uncle Claws, who comes
to visit every year at Christmas in his sla with
his wife Anya. And suddenly Claus and Anya arrive in
a sleigh drawn by reindeer, and Clause comes into the
cabin with that distinctive big Lebowski voice. He's ordering all

(43:11):
the children stand back as he hauls in this big,
enormous sack of packages. So it seems that the deal
is every year Claws and and Ya, Klaus and Klaus
Claws Claus, I think they call him Claws and and
Anya bring with them these copious gifts for all the
children and all their nieces and nephews, because Claws and

(43:31):
Anya have no children of their own.

Speaker 6 (43:34):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (43:34):
And it's explained that Claus is a woodcutter in the
village and he carves all of the toys out of
wood by himself. He makes them all by hand. They're
and they're like little statuettes, little carvings of figurines, people,
people shaped things. So, after a bit of warm celebration,
the exchange of gifts that this cabin, Uncle Claus and

(43:55):
Anya have to move on to another cabin. I guess
they got more nieces and nephews somewhere else to visit.
So they hitch up their sleigh and their two reindeer,
which are named Donner and Blitzen. It's really snowing hard outside.
In fact, it's basically a white out blizzard, and then
they like saddle up the sleigh and they just push
on out into the blizzard and into certain death.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
Yes, yeah, it's it's a big grim this medieval opening here.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
Yeah. So they get lost in the snow. It's really
tough going. The snow is piling up in front of them.
The reindeer eventually collapse. Clause gets out of the sleigh
to like get the reindeer to get back up, but
they won't. It's actually quite sad. And the reindeer are
their puppets here, which I like, I'm glad they're not,
you know, cgi reindeer.

Speaker 2 (44:41):
Yeah, they look really good. I love the animated here.

Speaker 3 (44:43):
Yeah, I like the puppet reindeer. They're a little bit
creepy sometimes, but in a way that I get down with.
And they, you know, they're expressive and very sad in
the way that they appear to be failing and dying here, and.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
So Claus sadness it is.

Speaker 3 (44:58):
It's like that. So the Clause goes to Anya and
they like cuddle up and basically go to sleep in
this driving blizzard, and then later they wake up to
a kaleidoscopic almost lysurgic vision of this icy northern landscape
with colors in the sky and a star making this
big Christmas tree shape of colors in the atmosphere. And

(45:21):
here they meet an assemblage of little people with bright,
colorful clothing and long beards, whom Claws initially identifies as
the Vendigum, though the people here explained that they prefer
to be called elves. For some reason, the elves here
reminded me of the pirates in Hook, so I kept
looking around for David Crosby and Jimmy Buffett. I wanted

(45:42):
to see a Glenn Close cameo that there was something
in common there is. There's similar costuming and makeup, sensibility
and whimsy about them. The leader of the elves is
a guy named Dooley with long, wispy mutton chops and spectacles.
We also hear meet Moore hanging around as the elf
Q branch named Patch. He immediately starts investigating Claus's sleigh

(46:06):
for technical defects. I don't remember all the elves names,
but we, you know, see them like they have their
names on their beds. Later and they talk to each other.
They're called things like Honka and Booger and stuff. One
is called Puffy Puffy, the Elf Puffy, the Elf Puffy,
the magic Elf lived by the sea. And so Dooley says,

(46:27):
you know what, clause, this is not a chance meeting.
We have been expecting you. We've been expecting you to
come join us for a long time. And the clause
is like, no, no, We've got to get home. But
Dooley says, in a way that could be I think
to the adults. To the adults could be interpreted in
a kind of sinister way. Dooley says, this is your
home now. And Dooley reveals the magically disguised elf workshop,

(46:52):
a massive glowing factory complex in the ice. Again with
those Thomas Kincaid sensibilities. There's you know, it's a co
gigantic wooden cabin with light pouring out of the windows.
And they lead mister and Missus Claws into the shop
and of course on the approach, Patch starts off starts

(47:12):
the tradition that will continue throughout the film of these
elf puns. He's like saying, now that clauses here, I
have a real feeling of elf confidence.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
Yes, and if it's not funny the first time maybe
the fifth or sixth time.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
It'll finally hit fifteenth or sixteenth time. I would just
like to flag that the way the previous scene flows
into this one, and then the way this scene flows
into everything else that happens, It really feels like the
entire movie could be interpreted as the death tunnel hallucination
of either Anya or Clause's brain as they freeze to

(47:48):
death in the snowstorm. They're collapse before all this is
staged to look a lot like death, and they're waking
up to this vision of the elves is highly hallucinatory.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
Oh, absolute, yeah, and it's like, yeah, it's the sense
of like cosmic light from another realm.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
It is.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
It is really there is a strong sense of they
they have died, but have not truly been permitted to die,
because the elves have intervened and they say, no, no
death for you, Santa Claus, for you, everlasting life.

Speaker 3 (48:20):
We have such sites to show you, yes, and truly
they do. Because the next thing that happens in the
movie is this long stretch of basically touring the elf
workshop and taking in the weird sights and sounds. We're
still in origin story mode here. Clause is still a
fish out of water through all of this, and he's
not Santa Claus yet. He's marveling at all of the

(48:41):
elfin weirdness, at the bounty of toys manufactured in the shop.
Rob Any comment on this stretch of the movie.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
Oh, I mean, to a certain extent, it's exactly what
you expect it to be if you've seen any other
Santa films. It's the joyful workshop where the elves are
making all sorts of again, hand crafted toys that no
child actually wants, that adults may aspire for their children
to want, or then may themselves think, oh, well, I

(49:09):
was a kid, I would have loved to have that.
But for the most part, nobody's asking for any of
this stuff. Though I guess, to be clear, at the
time these were high tech toys.

Speaker 3 (49:17):
These were I guess. I mean, I guess because it's
the Middle Ages.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
Ye, yeah, it's Middle Age. I mean, they're not, like,
you know, we're not getting into the realm of automatons here.
Though some of the Elf technology is atomaton adjacent.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
Yeah, it totally is, because some of it's made by Patch,
and Patch is again C Branch. He's the lucious Fox
of the of the operation. Uh Patch reveals several fanciful inventions,
including the idea of central heating with a radiator. Uh
He describes the concept of an alarm clock, and as
we will see later in the film, he comes up

(49:50):
with the idea of automated assembly lines to replace elf
craftsmen in toy manufacture. Uh So. One thing worth noting
is that the worldwide toy distribution scheme at Christmas is
not Santa Claus's idea. The elves have already planned this somehow.

(50:13):
They have made millions of toys, and now they have
recruited this human from one of the gates of death,
this human Clause, to deliver all of the toys they
have made. And when Clause hears this, he objects, he's
like looking at this endless hall of toys. He says,
there wouldn't be enough time in my whole life to

(50:34):
deliver all these toys. And then Duley says, you know,
don't worry about that, both of you talking to him,
and Anye says, both of you will now live forever, buried.

Speaker 2 (50:45):
Alive, essentially entombed in Christmas in an endless night of
gift giving.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
That's right, And oh well, Actually we'll get to something
about that in just a minute, because, yeah, it takes
on another level once they meet Burgess Meredith. There's another
part here where Clause meets the six in house reindeer.
His two reindeer, Donner and Blitzen have been added to
all the others to the team, and they're all magical
and can fly. Now we also meet Patch here because

(51:15):
you know, we get to see that Patch is really
nice because he's taking good care of the reindeer. He's
feeding them liken and he's like, oh, he's all right,
he'll be all right. He just needs a little elf control.
And we watch the elves dancing and working a lot
of whimsical choreography.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
No songs though I don't think they singtunity.

Speaker 3 (51:34):
There's music, but I don't recall them singing anything with
words in it. Yeah. One of the things manufactured in
the elf workshop, by the way, is coming out of
a big cooking vat that looks like a cottage core
drug lab, and it's the magic elf dust. It's like
gold dust which allows the reindeer to fly.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
Yeah, and I think we see that it's it's refined
from strange cosmic light from another realm.

Speaker 3 (51:59):
Yeah, okay. After the shock settles in, we see a
montage of Claws becoming Santa, including a suit fitting scene.
Initially they try to put him in a green suit.
Seems ill advised to me because wouldn't that draw the
ire of the fairies.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
So yeah, that's that's a good point. Also, it seems
like this there's always so yon inducing an origin story
works for characters we're very familiar with, Like, yeah, we
know he ends up in a batcustume. We but do
we really need to like drag it out and discuss
why he chooses the bat, Like he chooses the bat,
he chooses the red jumper. I mean, it's it's just

(52:37):
how it goes.

Speaker 3 (52:37):
People are going to be in suspense, like, Oh, when's
he gonna finally look the way I know he's gonna look.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:44):
Uh, And Anya suggests they try red. So I guess
that's the moment here where in the in the audience
there would be going like, Oh, he's gonna do it.
He's gonna dress up in red? Uh? Oh? Rob, what
did you make of the scene in here where the
elves like a symbol to worship a supernova in the sky?
I thought that scene was quite strange.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
Oh yeah, I love this was this. Were they gathering
or somehow producing the golden.

Speaker 3 (53:08):
Dust maybe that's what it was. Yeah, they were timing
out some astronomical thing like with the telescope.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
Like the Great Conjunction or something. There is a sense
of the skexies to these elves here. You know, they
have these ancient ways that are very concerned with astronomy
and distant worlds and strange waves and so forth, you know,
long life. Yeah, they're they're kind of they'res skexy esque

(53:37):
for sure.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
Totally. So Santa is getting ready to well he's not
Santa yet, he's still Claws. He's getting ready to launch
on the world for his first ever Christmas delivery tour.
But first he's brought face to face with this ancient
elder being that we talked about earlier, played by Burgess Meredith.
And this character again has a weirdly religious quality. I

(54:00):
found a transcript of his lines here. The elder comes
up to clause and he says the prophecy has come
to pass, that there would come to us a chosen one,
and that he, having no child of his own, would
love all children everywhere and that he himself would be
an artisan and a craftsman and a skilled maker of toys.

(54:21):
And now, chosen one, come forward from this day on,
now and forever you will bring all our gifts to
all the children of the world, and all this to
be done on Christmas Eve. And san At this point
clauses like, how can I do all this in just
one night? And then they break it to him. The
elder says, oh, yes, well, know this time travels with you.

(54:47):
The night of the world is a passage of endless
night for you until your mission is done. This is
your legacy and your gift, as is the gift of flight. Now,
all those within the sound of my voice, and all
those on this earth everywhere that know that henceforth you
will be called Santa Claus. And now everyone Merry Christmas.

(55:11):
So like two things I was taking out of this.
One is that clause he's not always Santa Claus, it's
it is a title that is bestowed by the elder.
Clause becomes Santa Claus as one is given the title
of Darth by their sith Lord master.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
And then also this thing about the time dilation on
Christmas night, it seems the lore is time passes normally
for Santa Claus during delivery, but his time slows relative
to the rest of the world. So it's shades of
the jaunt. Millions of years pass for Santa Claus every

(55:49):
Christmas night while he delivers the toys. It's it's like
longer than you think, Dad.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
Yeah, I think we should all pass this on to
young people in our vicinity this holiday. When you're putting
out the cookies and the milk and maybe the carrot
for Rudolph, you say, let us be generous in our
gift giving to Santa for he is cursed with eternal night. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:13):
He is imprisoned for millions of years in this Christmas
and every Christmas hints.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
And must continue until it is done, until there are
no more children left to be delivered into.

Speaker 3 (56:24):
Oh that would be a good Christmas movie if it's
like Santa Claus is like a genie. He's like imprisoned
by this task he has to do, and he would
be like seeking release, you know, trying to get out
of the pact he can.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
Yeah, he must deliver gifts until there either are no
more children to give gifts too, or all the children
are bad. That'll work. If they're no good children, then
he can finally rest.

Speaker 3 (56:49):
So after this we get a montage of Christmas through
the Ages, cause Santa goes out and he does his
first ever Christmas and we see the years passing in
a blur. Oh wait, I forgot to mention this the
first time Santa and the reindeer fly out for Christmas delivery.
We see Donner getting vertigo looking at the ground. He
does a double take and goes.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
Yeah, some great, great puppetry work here.

Speaker 3 (57:14):
Yeah. So, but yeah, we get the Christmas through the
Ages montage. I think it suggests that this begins in
the fourteenth century. The years pass in a blur. We
see children all over the world sending notes to Santa
and receiving gifts on Christmas. At one point we see
Duly imply that literacy around the world is increasing because

(57:35):
children are so eager to be able to write to
Santa Claus and beg for toys that they're learning how
to read and write.

Speaker 2 (57:42):
Yeah. I don't remember this from James Burke's Connections, But
all right.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
There's also I loved this part, this bizarre diversion in
the seventeenth century to see a little boy practicing animal cruelty.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
Oh yeah, what was this about? Because looking back, I
was like, is this the origin story for the villain?
But no, like, it's totally way too early.

Speaker 3 (58:04):
For It was just to establish random Santa lore. So we're,
you know, going this montage through all the year, is
not really stopping any place in particular, and then suddenly
here we are, in I think it's supposed to be
the seventeenth century. We see these little rich kids in
a palace somewhere, and this little boy is like torturing
a cat, and the and then the girl who's just

(58:26):
y not like cutting its head off, just like annoying
it really bad. And the girl who the cat belongs to,
rights to Santa and tattles on the boy for being
mean to the cat. And this establishes, for the first
time in history that some children do not deserve presence.
And at first, Santa Claus is opposed to this arrangement.
He's like, everybody's got to get a present. You'll have

(58:49):
people saying that Santa Claus only rewards good little boys
and girls. And Anya Anya is like, isn't that how
it should be? So she's cracking the whip. She's like
only the good children shall receive. We shall punish the
bad children, and he goes for it. They established naughty
versus nice.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
This is fine enough, and we'll never discuss it again.

Speaker 3 (59:09):
That's right. Yeah, don't do they talk about it again?
Oh well, no they do, Actually they do. They talk
about how Bez the evil guy, he never got to
give him Santa as a child because he was never nice.
He was always naughty.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
Yeah. See, this policy led to the creation of Bez
Way to Go.

Speaker 3 (59:28):
Yeah, So people all over the world get more and
more used to Santa. They start leaving cookies out for him,
and then we also see a montage of Santa eating
the cook cookies left out in people's homes. People who
have seen the Santa Claus the Claws with a knee

(59:50):
with Tim Allen will be familiar with, you know, like,
oh no, I'm gaining weight. And this is established in
the scene where they read poem Twas the Night before Christmas,
when it's hot off the presses. It's like brand new.
So all the elves gather around. They've got a newspaper
from you know, the people of Earth that's got the
poem printed in it, and they read the whole thing.

(01:00:12):
You know, he had a broad face and a little
round belly that shook when he laughed, like a bowl
full of jelly. And Santa's like, what what to read
that last part again? And they really draw this out,
but he Santa is mortified. He's like, He's like, this
is that really what people think I look like? And
Anya says, well, it's it's the cookies, and everybody agrees

(01:00:34):
it's the cookies. So this makes missus Claws put Santa
on a diet and we see him miserably eating celery
sticks for dinner.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
Yeah, this whole bit was was fairly amusing. Like everything else,
I feel like it could have been tightened up a
bit and maybe punched up a little, but they have
the It was still pretty good.

Speaker 3 (01:00:53):
Can I say? Also, this has got to be the
most depressive Santa Claus ever rendered on film. There are
lots of parts of the movie where Santa is just
down in the dumps. He's unhappy here about he doesn't
like what people think about his appearance. He clearly is
unhappy being on this diet. He's eating the cellery sticks

(01:01:14):
and just looking so bummed out. The whole third of
the movie he is depressed. He just feels like, what's
even the point of Christmas? Why should I even try?

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
It's really a long, dark night of the soul. Yeah,
for Santa Claus here in this film, he's not overflowing
with holiday mirth.

Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
We also see Santa Claus just really bending under the
strain of like all the work that's on his back.
It's taken its Christmas is taking a toll on him
because one year after he gets back to the North
Pole from a delivery run, Santa is like falling asleep
in his soup at the table. And they decide the
solution is Santa needs an assistant to help lighten the load.

(01:01:56):
And here we get a whole thing. I'm not going
to go into huge detail about this, but there is
a contest between the two lead elf you know, contestants
for the role of Santa's assistant, Patch versus Puffy. Santa
says they're they're gonna see who can make the most
good toys, and Puffy does. He commands a you know,

(01:02:17):
a whole team of elves to make toys the normal way,
and they make some toys, but Patch builds a mechanical
assembly line, an automated assembly line, to really crank him out.
They're coming out on a conveyor belt, and he makes
ten times as many toys as Puffy. So Santa gives
Patch the contract. He win, you know, he gets the bid.

(01:02:37):
But we can see trouble brewing because we notice that weld,
Like we get to see inside the machinery and notice
there are malfunctions with Patches equipment. Not doing it by
hand is leading to bad consequences like screws are not
getting screwed in and stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
Yeah, yeah, this is gonna be a problem.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
So here we come to our first modern cres. This
is where Santa first meets the main children of the film.
We already talked about them in the cast section. But
again you have Joe, the poor child, who is it
established that does he just live on the streets. We
never see him in his own home at all, so
maybe he just lives on the streets. But he wears

(01:03:17):
like a leather jacket and finger gloves and he's got
a flat hat, I think, and he's just like a tough,
little street wise kid.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
Again, it's just totally Dickensian in its presentation. This is
not an accurate depiction of what it is or what
it was to be unhoused in nineteen eighties New York.

Speaker 3 (01:03:36):
City, of course not yeah, but he's in New York.
You see him looking in windows, yearning for McDonald's. And
then you also see the little girl, the little rich girl, Cornelia,
who is I believe her parents have passed away, I think,
and so she's just taken care of by her nanny
in this big house in New York. And you see
her looking out the window at Joe, the little child,

(01:03:57):
and sympathizing with him. And at one point she goes
out and leaves a plate of Christmas dinner out for
him and a Coca Cola for him to have, and
Joe is, you know, he's his heart is warmed by that.
Also another person to take pity on Joe is Santa Claus.
When he flies into the city and sees Joe, He's like, oh,
I need to visit this kid. So he goes down

(01:04:20):
to like stand next to him while he's warming with
Joe is warming his hands by a flaming garbage can,
and Santa Claus shows up there and he's like, hey,
do you know who I am? And Joe says, sure,
you're a nut. And Santa Claus says I'm Santa Claus,
and Joe says, right, I'm the tooth Fairy. But Santa
Claus proves his real identity by doing magic and then
takes Joe on a flying tour around the city where

(01:04:44):
there are a couple of notable things here one. I
hope this is not correct, because oh, this would be
bad coincidence, but I think there might be a part
where the sleigh almost flies into the World Trade Center.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
This does happen, yes, yeah, okay, it was again obviously
time well.

Speaker 3 (01:05:01):
They didn't know what they didn't Yeah, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
Like but but it did make the whole scene a
little creepy to watch, yes, because I'm just like.

Speaker 3 (01:05:09):
Yeah, so they almost fly the sleigh into the towers
and then also Santa tries to pull off a move
that you know. So the kid is like, what can
your reindeer do? And Santa says they can do everything
except the super duper looper. I was thinking, why does
it have a name if they can't do it, it's

(01:05:30):
the only thing they can't do. It's apparently it's the
only thing they can't do. Would it surprise you to
know that this move is something that the reindeer are
going to have to do at the end of the film.
It's gonna be the finale.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
It's it raises questions like what is it? Why would
you want to do it? Yeah, And you'll still have
those questions later like why was this necessary? Just because
it's dramatic.

Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
It's just doing an inverted loop like a you know,
a backflip basically in this sleigh.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
Yeah, it's the only way to intercept people falling out
of another flying sleigh obviously.

Speaker 3 (01:06:02):
Yeah. And so Joe follows Santa around for this Christmas
delivering all the toys in New York City that night,
and he ends up going into Cornelia's house because Santa
is delivering toys to her. And I think in this
scene to the kids meet and make friends.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
They do. Yes, Now, Joe is not dead, right like
it'd be. It'd be an easy mistake to make at
this point to think, well, Joe froze to death in
the street and that's why.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
Oh that's right, Yes, the meeting of the Lost Souls. Yeah,
because Santa is also Yeah, he's from this other nether world.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
That doesn't seem to be the case. I think Joe
is very much alive.

Speaker 3 (01:06:39):
He's alive and he's just hanging out with Santa. Santa's
decided to show him a good time because he takes
pity on him. And so Joe gets to make friends
with Cornelia or Corny as he calls her. Her name
is Corny. Uh And that will pay off later in
the film because when we meet the villain, we're gonna
learn that he's basically Corny's only surviving relative, and I

(01:07:00):
guess he's where all her money comes from. So that
will put Corny in the Corny and Joe and the
crosshairs of an evil toy making business conspiracy. Now there's
fallout from this Christmas. After Santa gets back, we learn
uh oh, Patch's high tech assembly line, as we saw earlier,
was faulty, and it made billions of faulty toys that

(01:07:22):
collapse and fall apart and make children cry. So we
see kids riding around on the sidewalk on wooden tricycles
that just break and then they fall down and start crying.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
Yeah, not only the sorts of toys that no child
actually wanted, but these are are faulty, and they start
returning them, and we see the returns going back to
the Elvin realm back to the North Pole like magically
falling through a chimney.

Speaker 3 (01:07:46):
Dumping down through the chimney. Also in this movie, they
the way mailing letters to Santa Claus works is that
you don't have to mail them. You just write the
letter and then it magically like floats up and floats
way to the North Pole.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
Yeah, yeah, I guess that's how it works.

Speaker 3 (01:08:04):
I'm just surprised given that fact that there are so
many people in this world who seem to doubt that
Santa Claus exists when there is clear evidence of magical
intervention on any letter written to Santa.

Speaker 2 (01:08:15):
Well, not any letter you have to believe.

Speaker 3 (01:08:17):
Oh okay, yeah, okay. After this, Patch resigns in disgrace
leaves the North Pole because obviously, you know, he is
shamed for having made all these faulty toys. He feels
bad about it, so he decides he's going to go
redeem himself, do something, do something good in the human world.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
Which I get that that's his motivation, but this is
ultimately going to take the form of introducing, like betraying
the North Pole and bringing highly dangerous Elvin magic, delivering
it into the hands of a greedy, immoral of businessman

(01:08:55):
and kind of and essentially setting himself up as a
as a Santa imitator on earth. But he's seemingly not
conscious that he's setting himself up as a villain, and
the film doesn't really explore that either.

Speaker 3 (01:09:07):
No, no, no, he's oblivious of all of the moral
implications here. So finally we're well into the second half
of the movie at this point, I think, but we
finally get to meet Beezy, the villain of the film.
We meet him in a Senate subcommittee hearing where he
is being interrogated by elected officials about all of the

(01:09:30):
dangerous toys that his company has manufactured. So we see
that he makes dolls that are highly flammable. It's like
they're soaked in kerosene. You know, you light a cigarette
near the doll and it just poofs up in flames.
They also he was making stuffed toy panda bears for
children that are full of nails and sawdust, and he

(01:09:53):
just makes excuses about it. He clearly he does not
feel any guilt or remorse. He's just like, oh, you know,
this is surely these are isolated incidents, But the Senate
is not having it. So Bez is having a public
relations nightmare for his toy making company and he wants
to be able to do something that will take the
heat off enter Patch. Bez comes into his office, and

(01:10:21):
you're right, yes, he tries to call for help. He's like, wait,
who's this guy in my office? And Patch is like, look,
if you have somebody come in here, I'm just gonna
vanish and then you're gonna look crazy, So you might
as well just hear me out. So yeah, he's somewhat manipulative,
but Patch has got a pitch. Patch has a pitch.
He's like, I want you know, I know you're the

(01:10:42):
biggest toy maker in the world, So what I want
to do is make a toy to give to all
the children of the world for free, using your advertising
and marketing infrastructure and uh and together we will do
something nice for all the children of the whole planet.
And initially when he's like give away for free, that's insanity.

(01:11:03):
You know, you can't do that in free enterprise and
all that kind of stuff. But he eventually comes around
because he gets the idea that ah, this will help
him put out the public relations nightmare he's going through.
Due to releasing all of these fatally dangerous toys, and
so he so he decides he is going to work

(01:11:24):
together with Patch to make a magical toy that will
be like the best toy ever. Patch promises, it'll be
better than any toy ever created, and we'll give it
away for free to all the children in the world.
And all he needs is to buy one minute of
commercial time on every TV channel in every country in
the world to run on Christmas.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
Eve, which initially just drives BC crazy.

Speaker 3 (01:11:48):
He's like, what, yeah, but so what is this toy.
There's a whole thing leading up to the creation of
this toy. And it turns out the toy that Patch
makes for Beezy is a lollipop and not a toy, lollipop,
actual candy.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
It makes sense because he is banned at this point
from distributing toys within the United States. They didn't say
anything about candy, and that is the product they're working on.

Speaker 3 (01:12:14):
Oh, that makes sense. But the thing is, this is
magic candy. It's a lollipop that's puce, a puce lollipop
that is infused with the magic golden dust of the elves,
and thus when people eat it, they gain the ability
temporarily to fly a little bit. They float up in
the air and can walk around and fly hover in

(01:12:35):
the air. They're not flying quite like Santa Claus there,
but it's hover candy.

Speaker 6 (01:12:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
It kind of like gives you a sort of zero
G experience. You know, all sorts of problems with this, obviously,
but also I remember seeing this as a kid and
thinking that is amazing. That would be amazing. Yes, that
would be the greatest Christmas gift ever.

Speaker 3 (01:12:56):
I would really like that. I would have definitely liked
that when I was a kid.

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
But what's the dosage? Like, I have no idea that
it was like one lick and you float for a week.
You have to eat the whole thing and then you
float for five minutes. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:13:10):
Yeah, they never show when the kids come back down,
do they?

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
Yeah, how does Yeah? I don't know what the dose
is like.

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
So this is a big hit and it rehabilitates Bez's
image because they give this to all of the children
of the world. I guess, oh, I remember, I maybe
getting details mixed up, but basically they build a flying car,
a rocket car. I think that's to distribute the lollipops.
To every house on Earth on Christmas night.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
Yeah, yeah, Christmas high tech sleigh that built again. He's
not a villain who's trying to replace Santa Claus, but
has created his own high tech imitation slay.

Speaker 3 (01:13:46):
He's just trying to do something nice. Anyway. Again, it's
a hit, and then it's January, after you know, Christmas
is over. The people like these lollipops, and Bez is like, look,
we got to capitalize on this. We've seized the moment.
We got to seize it again. So I wrote down
the line here. Bez says, to Patch, when you've got

(01:14:06):
a hit like we have, Patch, the people don't want
to wait a whole year. They're dying for a sequel.
A sequel, that's it. We'll bring it out on March
twenty fifth, and we'll call it Christmas two. So the
idea is, he says, you know this stuff, the stardust,
you've got, the reindeer corn flakes. He says, what would

(01:14:27):
happen if you were to juice up the formula, make
it stronger? And Patch says, well, it's elf explanatory. It
would make them fly so a little bit, and you
hover a lot, and you full on fly like the reindeer.
So that's what they're gonna do. They're gonna make some
candy canes, now, candy canes to come out on March
twenty fifth that will be juiced up with super stardust

(01:14:52):
that will allow people to fly like Superman.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
So like the crack cocaine of Elven flying powder.

Speaker 3 (01:14:58):
Really yes, highly concentrated, really powerful stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):
I can't help I love this whole bit about Christmas too, though,
and having discussed the various filmmakers' roles in both Jaws
two and of course Superman sequels, you can always suspect
that there's are they're channeling a little bit of that
into it.

Speaker 4 (01:15:27):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:15:27):
I mentioned that in the last third of the movie,
we see Santa Claus really down in the dumps. He
gets depressed. He's like, what's the whole point of Christmas?
There's one scene where he's talking to Anya. He says,
maybe the whole idea is no good anymore, and she's like,
what are you talking about, and he says Christmas. He says,
the whole world. The world is a different place now, Anya,

(01:15:48):
you don't see it that people don't seem to care
about giving a gift just so they can see the
light of happiness in a friend's eyes.

Speaker 2 (01:15:56):
And all they want is spacecrack. Now, So we're.

Speaker 3 (01:16:00):
Leading up to the conclusion here, and we've got actually
a lot of pieces in play. There's a lot of
stuff going on. So the of course, the villains are
planning to release this candy cane in March, and they've
got Patch creating prototypes and they discover that uh oh,
the candy canes they're dangerous. Not only dangerous in that
they do make you fly, which could be dangerous in itself,

(01:16:23):
but also if they get warm, they explode. It's like
you know, it's like gasoline. They ignite and explode.

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):
Yeah, they lost a whole factory, we find.

Speaker 3 (01:16:33):
Yeah, blew up a building. And they're keeping this secret
from Patch right now. He doesn't know that, I think,
but they Yeah, they've up to the formula. And so
they've got these really dangerous candy canes. But Bez's like,
I don't care if they explode. We got to send
them out anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:16:46):
Yeah, so this is some tubes in just a month.

Speaker 3 (01:16:48):
Yeah, this is sometime in January, though, they say, And
they're working on these candy canes and the kids Cornelia
and Joe, who have been hanging out a lot together there.
They're friends now and they like, overhear this plan and
now they've got the scoop on it. Somehow they spilled
the Oh they spilled the beans to Santa Claus. Oh no, wait,

(01:17:11):
first they hit the bad guys. Kidnapped the little kid,
Joe because they catch him listening. And then Cornelia is like,
oh no, he's you know, they've got him locked up
in the basement. He's running out of air. What can
I do? I got to write in a note to
Santa Claus.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
Oh did you mention that Cornelia's uncle is busy?

Speaker 3 (01:17:27):
Yeah, yeah, I mentioned that earlier, but yeah, that's why
they Yeah, yeah, he comes to the house and yeah
he's the uncle that that sustains the swanky lifestyle there.
So he's drinking PBR and scheming and then kidnapping her friend,
her little friend. She writes a letter to Santa Claus
and then Santa comes to the rescue. But the final

(01:17:48):
showdown happens when it's not really a showdown between the
hero and the villain. What happens is Patch and Joe
get into Patches rocket car and they're just going on
a joy ride. I think they're just like driving around
and the candy canes, the exploding candy canes, are in
the back of the car. Yeah, and they're getting.

Speaker 2 (01:18:06):
Crunk full of just highly volatile candy.

Speaker 3 (01:18:09):
Can They're getting hotter and hotter. Meanwhile, Santa Claus and
now Corny are flying in the sleigh trying to catch
up to them to stop them and save them. And
it turns out in the end, the only way they
can stop them is the good old super duper looper,
which makes no sense.

Speaker 2 (01:18:25):
Like, basically, as they are in a sleigh that is
about to explode with the energy of a thousand suns,
and when that explosion occurs, they're going to fall harmlessly
out of exploding sleigh. So one needs to pass underneath
them and over them in order to do a complete
loop de loop and then catch them as they fall out.

Speaker 3 (01:18:46):
Yeah, but they manage its, Yeah, of course, so they're
fine in the end. And then what is the inn
for Bz. Since we never get a confrontation between him
and Santa he gets the Clinton Dole treatment from citizen Kang.
He he the police arrived to arrest him because he's
you know, if only it worked this way. He was,

(01:19:07):
you know, because he was doing corporate malfeasans. The police
arrived to arrest him, and then he's like, you'll never
take me alive, and he crams a bunch of the
fly you know, flight granting candy canes in his mouth
and then flies away.

Speaker 2 (01:19:19):
Yeah, he like he eats these jumps out the window,
kind of like a you know, you know, villain suicide
in version here, but instead of falling to his death,
he falls up.

Speaker 3 (01:19:29):
But speaking of falling to his death, the effect when
he jumps up into the sky looks like when Ronnie
Cox falls out the window in RoboCop. He's got the
long looking arms and he's floating up into the sky.

Speaker 2 (01:19:40):
So honestly looks a little better than the RoboCop.

Speaker 3 (01:19:43):
It looks a little better. Yeah, and then the stinger
at the end is he he gets, you know, clinton
like he's out in space, just like floating away into space.
He's still moving around. So it's not suggested that he's dead,
but I think the adults will know like, ooh, that's
not survivable.

Speaker 2 (01:20:00):
Yeah, he's gonna it's gonna be like Outland here in
a minute, he's gonna explode depending on which movie you're
you're referencing, He's going to either explode or freeze and
shatter or burn up something. He's not gonna last long
up there.

Speaker 3 (01:20:13):
Yeah, it's it's it's gonna be rough. So that's the
end of Santa Claus the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:20:20):
So Christmas was threatened? Was it saved? Hard to tell?

Speaker 3 (01:20:25):
Well, the end didn't take place at Christmas.

Speaker 2 (01:20:28):
No, so hard. Yeah, we're moving into the next Christmas
where all of the things that made Santa so doubtful
are still in play, right. I mean, it's not like
we defeated consumerism and capitalism and all these other aspects
of modern times that the movie seems to position in

(01:20:49):
opposition to the true spirit of the holidays. All of
that's still out there. But I guess everyone's safe for
the time being.

Speaker 3 (01:20:59):
Yeah. So they prevented the candy canes from being distributed
to all the children of the world and exploding and
killing them all.

Speaker 2 (01:21:06):
That's good.

Speaker 3 (01:21:06):
That's good. Yes, So that's good. They I think Santa
Claus is it's implied that he is somewhat rehabilitated at
the end because he was suffering a low reputation because
he gave all those bad toys the year before, and
the next year he will be using good handmade toys again,
so he will not so his reputation will improve.

Speaker 2 (01:21:27):
Patch has perhaps learned the era of his ways. Yeah,
and he's going to come back into the fold and
be a good elf. I don't know. I mean he's
he's a dreamer. He might work some more high tech
ideas in who knows what he's picked up from BZ
that he can bring back to the North Pole.

Speaker 3 (01:21:44):
Do just think if he takes that fairy dusk to
Silicon Valley instead of the industrial toy making center, is like,
what kind of technological nightmares would they come up with?

Speaker 2 (01:21:52):
Can you imagine Santa Claus the motion picture too? Santa
Claus the movie too?

Speaker 3 (01:21:56):
Rather Santa goes online and.

Speaker 2 (01:21:58):
Yeah, yeah, it's like in Silicon Valley, we're trying to
crack this new virtual reality headset. We can't get it
just right, but does the kids are going to go
wild for this. Here comes Patch with a handful of
gold and dust and he's like, put this in there
and see what happens. Instant timeless immersion in another.

Speaker 3 (01:22:16):
Realm, terrifically cyber I would watch Cyber Christmas Christ. Okay,
does that do it for Santa Claus? The movie?

Speaker 2 (01:22:26):
It does again? This movie is a mess, you know,
it's it is not fully baked. It has some interesting ideas,
but yeah, one really gets the impression that it could
have used a few more rewrites before they actually brought
it to production. The film is itself is like one

(01:22:47):
of the mass produced toys from the North Pole that
inevitably break and are sent back through the return system.

Speaker 3 (01:22:55):
Ah yeah, and maybe in the same way that one
of those toys would be interesting to examine if you
are like an industrial engineer, to see where the process
went wrong. The film maybe something people could learn from.
But I sure had a heck of a good time
talking about it today here.

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
Yeah. Yeah, it's a it's a fun film. It's a
fun Christmas film. But I would love to hear from
folks out there. I want to hear from people who,
like me, saw this film as part of its intended
childhood audience. I want to hear from people in the UK.
I want to know a little more firsthand about the
British reception to this strange movie. I understand it had

(01:23:36):
you know, we saw the product integration with McDonald's and all.
I think there was a happy meal for this movie.
Does anyone have any memories of that? I want to
hear about that as well, So all of that is
certainly on the table, or just Santa films in general.
If you have thoughts on Santa Claus at the movies
right in, we'd love to discuss it in the future.
Just a reminder that stuck to blow your mind. As

(01:23:58):
primarily a science and culture podcast with episodes on Tuesdays
and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do a short form episode
and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
If you are on letterbox dot com, you can look
up weird House Cinema there. That's our username, and we
have a list of all the movies we've covered over
the years and sometimes a peek ahead what comes next.

(01:24:18):
If you liked our Christmas vibes here, yeah, we have
covered a handful of Christmas movies and films that just
happen to have a Christmas setting, such as Blue Sunshine
from last year, or you know, maybe an action or
horror movie here and there that have a definite Christmas setting,
or movies.

Speaker 3 (01:24:36):
That don't have a Christmas setting at all but just
feel like Christmas for some reason, like Robot Shocks.

Speaker 2 (01:24:41):
Yeah, it just feels like it should be wrapped under
the tree.

Speaker 5 (01:24:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:24:44):
Huge, Thanks as always to our excellent producer JJ Posway.
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 1 (01:25:05):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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