Santa with Muscles Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		0.5
Video		3.0
Audio		2.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		1.5

Santa with Muscles Blu-ray Movie Review

Calling it "Ho-Ho-Hum" would be way too nice for this naughty nightmare.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman November 16, 2019

The silver lining response to Santa with Muscles is that there might actually be a halfway decent concept at the heart of its story: muscleman dons the suit usually reserved for a jolly old fat man and takes out the trash, saving an orphanage and Christmas along the way. Done well (enough) the story might have yielded a modestly entertaining and unique spin on the legend of jolly old Saint Nick. As it is, John Murlowski's film is a sleigh wreck of epic proportions, a holiday disaster forced to shovel its way of out a dump truck's worth of Christmas coal from the beginning, but for every try to salvage the idea, along comes another load to pile on, turning disaster into misery into a cruel joke in no time flat.

Super wealthy health guru and fitness supplement entrepreneur Blake Thorn (Hulk Hogan) has it all: fame, fortune, and a staff that caters to his every whim, no matter how off-the-wall they may be. One day during a particularly raucous game of paintball that ultimately involves automobiles, Thorn finds himself under law enforcement pursuit. He winds up at a local mall where a head injury leaves him to believe he's Santa Claus. He's evaded the cops but now has no idea that he's not actually Santa. He takes it upon himself to defend a local orphanage under attack from a cunning villain and a gaggle of henchmen who are eager to take it over in order to harvest valuable crystalline resources underneath. As Thorn settles into the role of Santa and dons a sleeveless, muscle-accentuating red suit, he takes the fight to the villainy, but where will his loyalties lie should he remember that he's a fitness fanatic and not a Christmas miracle?

The film's failures begin with lead Hulk Hogan. Here's a man who, by 1996 when the film released, was a longstanding bonafide star in the wrestling ring, a magnetic, larger-than-life figure with countless hours of crowd-pleasing charisma under his numerous championship belts. But in Santa with Muscles the performance is painfully, and almost comically, flat, listless, uninspired: downright bad any way one wants to put it. The disconnect between good talent and bad output seems to lie at the script. Hogan obviously has nothing with which to work, mired deep in a character sorely lacking in depth within a story struggling to find relevance. Add in failures in humor, dismal production design, terrible support performances, and a generally amateurish construction and it's no wonder Hogan sleepwalks through the film. He's given no incentive to work hard, no support structure on which to lean, no content worthy of reassurance that his efforts would have rewarded him with anything other than a miserable model of motion picture morass.

The film features no serious character. Every individual is an overacted caricature of some sort, all weakly defined within a larger plot that is itself in a constant state of struggle to define the larger purpose beyond the vague idea of some sort of valuable crystal existing underneath the orphanage. Why the villain could not simply negotiate the rights to it with a generous gift to the orphanage instead is anyone's guess. Of course it leads to pitifully executed comedy-action and flat dramatic currents between Thorn (Santa) and various orphans and staff at the orphanage. The children quickly accept Santa as someone beyond their original vision of the character, quickly believing, for example, that the beard is fake because Mrs. Claus doesn't like how it itches when she's intimate with her husband. Hogan physically fills the suit well and the look of a musclebound Santa is at least something somewhat unique for viewers to enjoy; too bad the rest of the movie is an exercise in moviemaking debacle to a level few others films have reached or surpassed.

Santa with Muscles Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Get Santa with Muscles some more protein powder and a gym membership. The Blu-ray presentation is not flabby, but it could use some toning. The picture is generally watchable. Grain is never all that organic but the picture does not appear to have been processed to reduce or remove it. Compression artifacts do swirl through the background much of the time, but not to extreme detrimental density. There's nothing remarkable to detail and clarity. Core facial and clothing and environmental textures fare well enough but don't expect to see the most intimate elements with any sort of precision. Colors fare well enough with good foundational depth, but Santa's red costume is garish and tends to bleed. Skin tones are passable and nighttime black levels are fairly deep and accurate. Dirt and debris appear minimally. There was obviously not going to be much of an effort for a movie as bad as this, but Mill Creek has at least delivered a serviceable watch.

Santa with Muscles Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Santa with Muscles' DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 lossless audio presentation is paltry at best, a flat and lifeless listen that will share basics with the listener but accomplish absolutely nothing more of any sonic value. The opening car chase features squealing tires, sharp turns, and blaring police sirens, but no sense of movement, engagement, or depth through the stage. Crowd chaos and cheers amount to little more than indistinct background, even if the effect should be more prominently in the foreground. Clarity is never anywhere close to exacting, instead offering a rather crude presentation of essentials with no nuance of which to speak. The entire sound field pushes to a front-center location. There's no feel for front side engagement or spread. It's cramped and claustrophobic with no effort or concern for taking advantage of what's available to it. Dialogue delivery at least holds in that front-center location where one would expect it to be. Dialogue clarity is lacking and that the actors, including Hogan, often mumble through the film is of no help, either.

Santa with Muscles Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Santa with Muscles contains no supplemental content. The main menu screen offers only options to play the film and toggle subtitles on and off. No DVD copy is included but Mill Creek has bundled a MovieSpree digital voucher. This release does not ship with a slipcover.

Santa with Muscles Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Though at time of writing it appears to have been spared the ignominy of such a ranking, Santa with Muscles was once a fixture on IMDB's list of bottom 100 movies of all time. It's easy to applaud the movie's then-inclusion and difficult to fathom its removal since. This is a miserable watch, a true struggle to slog through straight without the aid of friends and fun to pass the time. Laborious at best and torturous at worst, Santa with Muscles sucks all the joy from the season and from any time of year one might choose to indulge in a bit of self-inflicted movie watching torture. Mill Creek's featureless (what, no featurettes on how great an experience it was to make the movie? No deleted scenes to further the fun? No gag reel for even more laughs?) Blu-ray delivers flat video and barely passable audio. Skip it, obviously.