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Santa Claus
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| Year: |
1959
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Director: |
René Cardona
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| Stars: |
José Elías Moreno, Cesáreo Quezadas, José Luis Aguirre, Armando Arriola, Antonio Díaz Conde hijo, Ángel Di Stefani, Lupita Quezadas
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| Genre: |
Fantasy |
| Rating: |
  3 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
In the clouds above the North Pole, Santa Claus (José Elías Moreno) prepares for the big day, as Christmas Day is tomorrow. He lives in a sky palace accompanied by children from all four corners of the world, and just now he's checking on them with the aid of his organ, which he plays to make the images of the children appear on the screen: children from Africa, England, China, Japan, Mexico, the United States of America, well, you get the idea. However, this Yuletide things are not going to run smoothly for Santa, as down in Hell Satan himself is ordering Pitch (José Luis Aguirre), one of his wicked minions, to sabotage the present delivery as best he can to turn all the children in the world to evil. Will he succeed? Or will clever Santa win out and make this a Merry Christmas indeed?
There's a bit of competition at the bottom of the pile for worst Christmas movie ever, and this Mexican effort usually finds itself jostling for position with Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, with which it shares a similarly inane execution. Scripted by Adolfo Torres Portillo with the prolific director René Cardona, it quickly hits the problem that most Santa movies encounter, which is that the legend of Father Christmas is a flimsy one, with no real narrative other than the protagonist zooming about on Christmas Eve in his reindeer-drawn sleigh delivering the gifts. So it is that this Santa is offered an adversary in the shape of a demon, but still gets sidetracked into mapping out his preparations in tedious detail.
In its dubbed into English version, this was distributed throughout North America by K. Gordon Murray, and became, well, famous is not quite the right word, perhaps notorious is better, for its rather twisted view of the folk tale in those territories which showed it. Out hero is a constantly laughing, jolly fat man, in the traditonal red and white costume, laughing so much that he becomes sinister - nothing is that funny. In addition, he spies on every little girl and boy with his special telescope. Nowadays, lazy comedians and cultural commentators are wont to fall back on the "Oh, is he a paedophile? Is he on drugs? Is he a paedophile on drugs?" style of revisionism when sizing up children's entertainment figures of the past, but they might have a point here, with this Santa putting the kids to sleep with his own brand of narcotic before emptying his sack on the carpet.
It's all entirely innocent for the time of course, but the main little girl in this, Lupita (Lupita Quezadas), doesn't seem to find much to amuse her in this tale, remaining noticeably straight faced and even miserable throughout. She has a reason to be sad, because she is a poor child and Pitch tries to persuade her to steal a doll, but after an unsteady moment she refuses. In contrast, we are shown that rich children can be unhappy too, as one wealthy little boy is feeling neglected by parents who don't take much notice of him, preferring to go out for cocktails - but a Santa-brewed cocktail soon changes their minds. There are many bizarre, and frankly unsettling, scenes to be endured, sorry, enjoyed, like Lupita's dream which is supposed to be amusing, yet with its life sized mannequins dancing about is more the stuff of nightmares. But let's not concentrate on the negative, as I have a feeling that this film was hijacked by Pitch to turn people against Santa by portraying him in a bad light. Don't listen to him! Just try not to think of that laughing, clockwork reindeer (shudder). Music by Antonio Díaz Conde.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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