Review #309: Santa Claus.
Cast
José Elías Moreno (Santa Claus), Cesáreo Quezadas (Pedro), José Aguirre (Pitch), Armando Arriola (Merlin), Lupita Quezadas (Lupita), Antonio Díaz Conde hijo (Billy), Ángel Di Stefani (Vulcan), and K. Gordon Murray (Narrator) Directed by René Cardona.
Review
Apparently, I'm doing more Christmas movie reviews. However this film makes me question if this even counts as a film and more like an insanity trip from way back when in 1959. Fun fact, this is actually a world cinema film (with this being from in Mexico, but this was dubbed in English later by K. Gordon Murray, who distributed the film), but if I'm comparing it to the other world cinema films reviewed here (#015 - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, #017 - A Fistful of Dollars, #019 - For a Few Dollars More, #167 - Gojira, #256 - Nosferatu, and #261 - The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), this gets crushed (heh, crushed) by a mile. Never before have I seen a film that had the first ten minutes be virtually nothing essential to the plot, ice cream as punishment, a room where Santa watches kids and read their thoughts, laughing as mail comes down a chute, robotic reindeer, a station in space where Santa lives, and more "stuff", if that's the right word. Most of the acting is non-important given that it really doesn't have any influence in a certain film like this, but the only one I'll mention is the odd and ineffective portrayal of Santa, who holds not a smudge of a candle to Edmund Gwenn's Santa.
You'd think with random bursts of craziness there'd be some laughs. But no, it's so horrifying odd that it just goes beyond a level of fun. I would give it a 0 so the lonely 0/10 ranking (#184 - Birdemic: Shock and Terror) would have a companion, but then I realize that would be generous to that film, so I'll compromise and give it a far less punishing rating. In the end, there is no real story, it is insane to the Santa's max, containing only a smudge of hope. A smudge, I say. What could be worse after this? Oh dear...
You'd think with random bursts of craziness there'd be some laughs. But no, it's so horrifying odd that it just goes beyond a level of fun. I would give it a 0 so the lonely 0/10 ranking (#184 - Birdemic: Shock and Terror) would have a companion, but then I realize that would be generous to that film, so I'll compromise and give it a far less punishing rating. In the end, there is no real story, it is insane to the Santa's max, containing only a smudge of hope. A smudge, I say. What could be worse after this? Oh dear...
Overall, I give it 3 out of 10 stars.
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