Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		2.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		2.5

Santa Claus Blu-ray Movie Review

Have yourself a merry little acid trip.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 20, 2011

Sometimes not even the incisive commentary by those incredibly wise pundits at Mystery Science Theater 3000 is enough to fully deal with a film as patently outré as the 1959 Mexican opus Santa Claus. While our trusty friends at MST3K skewered the René Cardona helmed film (brought stateside by entrepreneurial distributor K. Gordon Murray) with their usual élan, the fact remains that Santa Claus still manages to defy description, satirical or otherwise, in a very big way. What can be said about film where Santa Claus is a space alien of sorts who comes to Earth to battle one of Lucifer’s minions, a red bunny-suited horned demon named Pitch, who is on a desperate mission to turn the world’s kiddies against the jolly old elf. The fact that there evidently wasn’t much of a Santa Claus tradition in Mexico in 1959 may help explain the utter weirdness of this film. Maybe. Other more jaded types may simply come to the understandable conclusion that Señor Cardona was in the grip of some little known sort of hallucinogenic fever, one which assumed near mythic heights of Good versus Evil, sprinkled with a few elements of equally strange precognition of things as disparate as “It’s a Small World” and Pee-wee’s Playhouse.

Santa Claus remains one of those films which seems permanently emblazoned on the synapses of a whole generation of kids who grew up either seeing it theatrically in the sixties or on television in the ensuing decades, but kind of interestingly it’s also one of those fondly remembered films whose fans don’t seem deluded about. In other words, few if any people insist Santa Claus is an overlooked masterpiece, and in fact most who have seen the film simply revel in its absolute awfulness, not to mention a number of completely hilarious non sequiturs, visual and verbal, which bring new meaning to the phrase “lost in translation.” The film has never had anything approaching a decent home video release, and even commentator Daniel Griffith sounds perplexed that this strange little movie should receive a high definition upgrade when so many more iconic films are still waiting in the wings for similar treatment. Griffith attributes this fact to a Christmas miracle. Whether or not audiences will agree remains to be seen, especially considering some of the technical problems with this VCI release.

VCI may get a lump of coal in its stocking this year for what is another puzzling release from this niche label based in the heartland of America. Things had been looking up for VCI’s Blu-ray releases, after a pretty spotty start with discs that wouldn’t even load properly on several brands of players and clunky menu authoring that frequently sent some players into endless loops of loading and reloading. VCI still has the tendency to drench their releases in really aggressive DNR, something which seemed to have improved lately with a really fine re-release of one of their most iconic catalog titles, the 1951 Alistair Sim A Christmas Carol. But in the “one step forward, two steps back” category, this Santa Claus is plagued by a number of technical glitches which will at the very least annoy some people, and may rise to the level of infuriating others. While I’ll get into the nuts and bolts of the actual video and audio presentation below, once again we’re in a waxy sea of DNR, which helps (obviously) to clean up the proceedings but which slathers the image in a Crisco-like smear that is really unappealing a lot of the time. Once again, the Menu authoring is inexplicably badly done, so that there’s no ability to chapter skip ahead in the Supplements, and exiting any given Supplement transports you back to the Main Menu, rather than in the Supplements Submenu, meaning you have to start all over again. Most troublingly, and probably embarrassingly to the QC department at VCI, there is a one frame color bar at approximately 50:00 that is completely visible despite its brevity and which is a mind-boggling situation that defies any easy explanation.

In terms of Santa Claus itself, the film defies description to such a degree that it’s probably best to not even try, at least not in any great detail. Santa Claus lumbers into his outer space workshop, sits down at a high tech organ and begins playing a jaunty tune which identifies children workers from all over the world who are busy manufacturing toys for the old guy. This is the sequence that seems to presage “It’s a Small World,” except this is no Disneyfied happily ever after land of tweeting bluebirds and happy little fawns. Notice the huge profusion of guns around this playland, especially the oddly prescient (if completely politically incorrect) assemblage to the left of the turban-clad kids of “The Orient,” meaning in this case Arabs. Santa is then tricked into invoking a demonic spirit named Pitch, whose mission it is to turn the world’s children against Santa Claus and all that is good, decent and righteous in the earthly realm.

The film is a weird, almost Dali-esque journey into a surreal environment where Pitch (José Luis Aguirre) seems like a graduate from the Martha Graham School of Interpretive Dance, mixed with some elements of the Jerry Lewis School of Over the Top Film Mugging. A handful of kids fall more or less under Pitch’s spell, some doing absolutely naughty things, while others manage to find the goodness within themselves, ultimately winning Santa’s approval. The film features unbelievable production design, which sees everything from a number of anthropomorphized accoutrements in Santa’s space age workshop (and these are the elements which may remind some of Pee-wee’s Playhouse), to robotic reindeer, which seem like lifesize remnants from the old Rankin-Bass stop motion specials of the sixties. As patently horrible as the film undeniably is, it also can’t be denied that it is an absolute trip to watch. If you’re a good little boy or girl and have never imbibed any illicit “enhancements,” and have wondered what your mind is like on drugs, look no further than Santa Claus.

Santa Claus Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Santa Claus is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of VCI Entertainment with a VC-1 encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Though some of the press materials suggest this was sourced from a negative, it looks much more like a somewhat faded 35mm print, which tends to be VCI's modus operandi. The Eastmancolor, as is its tendency, has faded appreciably over the years, though reds are still incredibly vibrant and help to make this presentation pop at least a little. Flesh tones on the other hand are virtually monochromatic and almost have the look of "colorizing" at times. Once again it certainly appears VCI has gone to the DNR well a bit too aggressively. While this means that the opening credits, for example, look beautifully pristine, once the film actually gets underway, fine detail all but disappears in a number of shots (look at some of the midrange screencaps where faces are little more than blurs for some good examples). There is still occasional damage to be seen on this print, including a couple of persistent scratches that run down the right side of the frame from time to time. Though this appears to have been sourced from a relatively decent 35mm print, a couple of fleeting shots are inexplicably much softer than the rest of the film (none of which is overly sharp to begin with), and though I can't state it definitively, I have to wonder if a few seconds have been interpolated from a 16mm print which may have been in better overall condition.

Santa Claus Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

One of the confusing elements about this VCI release is the different versions which are advertised (which include different languages) and what is actually on the disc. There are actually not two different versions of the film on the disc, simply two different language choices. This is the edited American release (though some of the edited material is presented as supplements, sourced from 16mm), with either an English language or Spanish language track available. Once again, VCI's menu authoring makes these choices a bit difficult to navigate. It's impossible to toggle through all of the audio options with your Audio button on your remote. Instead, you must go to the Setup Menu and choose either the English LPCM 5.1 or LPCM 2.0 (mono) mixes, which will then allow you to toggle through the English language mixes (including the LPCM 2.0 audio commentary by Daniel Griffith) as the film plays. If you choose "Spanish Version" from the Setup Menu, you get to the Spanish LPCM 2.0 (mono) mix, which, probably because of the three English language options, is repeated three times if you try to toggle through that language with your remote. This is one film that probably should not have been repurposed for a 5.1 mix for a couple of reasons. First of all, there's abundant hiss already audible on even the mono mixes, which is only blown up to pretty egregious proportions on the 5.1 mix, since obviously all the remixers have done is "double" various elements in the surrounds to approximate a surround mix. What that has also done is created an almost phase-like situation with the dialogue, which makes everything sound incredibly over-reverbed and boxy. By contrast, the two mono mixes, in English or Spanish, sound relatively decent, albeit with quite noticeable hiss. Other than the hiss, there's no really bad damage to report, and fidelity is at least passable if not overwhelmingly good, especially considering the lo-fi ambience of the film as a whole.

Santa Claus Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by K. Gordon Murray Historian Daniel Griffith. Griffith, head honcho for Ballyhoo Films, which contributed some of the supplements to this package, is an informative commentator, even if he stumbles at times with pronunciations (which he apologizes for). He seems dumbstruck that this film has received a Blu-ray release, which is kind of funny, but he provides a lot of background on the actors, director and of course K. Gordon Murray's involvement with the U.S. distribution rights.
• Santa Claus Original Trailer (SD; 2:40)
• It's a Howdy Doody Christmas (1080i; 8:32)
• Santa Claus Conquers the Devil Featurette by Daniel Griffith (SD; 14:00) is a Santa Claus retrospective featuring cult film historian Charles Kilgore and Mexican film historian David Wilt, as well MST3K's Kevin Murphy, discussing the film.
• Santa Claus Radio Spot (00:59) features K. Gordon Murray doing the voice work.
• Santa Claus TV Spot (SD; 1:01)
• Deleted Scenes (SD; 12:15) include:
  Hades Musical Sequence. This is the extended musical sequence featured in the original Mexican release, sourced from a 16mm print.
  Magic Toy Factory Sequence. This features the English language cards indicating the nationality of the various kids in the factory, also sourced from 16mm.
  Murray Version: Original Opening Title Cards
• Photo Gallery
• Shorts include:
  Santa and His Helpers (SD; 12:50), the first of the Santaland trilogy of short films released by K. Gordon Murray in 1964.
  Santa's Enchanted Village (SD; 12:49) is the third part of the Santaland trilogy.
  Santa's Magic Kingdom (SD; 12:49), though listed third in the Shorts supplemental menu, is the second of the Santaland shorts. This short and Santa's Enchanted Village were released in 1966.
• Wonder World Teaser (720p; 3:31) is a teaser for a documentary about K. Gordon Murray.

It should be noted that the Supplements main menu has a "More Extras" choice at the bottom of the page which was non-functional on the disc I received.

Santa Claus Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As weird as Santa Claus undeniably is, it's also undeniable the film retains a certain (drug addled?) charm that makes it (for want of a better term) rather "unique". This new Blu-ray has enough technical issues that even fans may want to wait for a repressing, though the supplemental package here is quite inviting, especially to K. Gordon Murray aficionados (and you know who you are). Could Murray's other "classics" (Tom Thumb and Little Red Riding Hood, The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy, Rumpelstiltskin) be far behind? Time will tell.