This is another Dollar Store find. It needs to be seen to experience the horror of it all. Compared to this, Mariah Carry’s GLITTER was Fabulous.
I bought this movie about a year ago. As I was unpacking and sorting through my DVD’s I thought maybe I’d give this movie another try before I toss it out. Who knows, it might be a holiday classic.
Well, Tim Allen’s SANTA CLAUSE this is not. It’s not even as fun and campy as an “Addam’s Family Christmas” could possibly be. This Santa version is more like “Santa vs. the Devil- meets It’s a Small World” with some Music-Dance- Theater’s interpretive dance numbers and a whole lot of bad dubbing.
The first time I saw this movie was last year with the nieces and nephew, and we only lasted thru 10 minutes of it.
Here we were expecting a cheesy, feel-good Christmas movie, something along the lines of “miracle on 34th St” and instead what do we get? A long boring musical into where we meet kids from around the world, which somehow transitions into dancing demons in Hell. My response: What the, Oh, it is Hell. We were all horrified, and turned it off. I’m sure the kids had nightmares. I know I felt dirty.
So this time, armed with Gatorade and muscle relaxers, and the beginnings of a cold, it wasn’t as terrifying as I remembered. (Please note: sick =lacking in mental judgment. For example; I watched Cat Woman the last time I was sick, and kinda liked it) [see CATWOMAN]
The dancing and singing devils weren’t that bad, but their outfits were. They had shakespereare-esque poofy shorts and tights. How terrifying can demons be in poofy pants? They didn’t’ have codpieces, thank goodness (this is a children’s movie)
By the looks of things, I’d say this movie was made in the 50’s or maybe the 60’s, I really couldn’t’ tell. The sets, such as Santa’s castle had the sparse, space-age pre-MOD look to it. (Before the lovely avocado green, this was orange and white with woodwork cutouts.
The gist of the story is this; the dancing devil is sent to earth by Lucifer (after threatening him with the horrors of ice-cream if he fails, quite funny) to tempt kids to be bad and steal and to not believe in Santa. Santa finds out about this plan, and finds two kids that resist the devil’s temptations. He then gives them the gift of their dreams on Christmas.
For a while during the movie, I forgot all abut the devil, since we get to see Merlin a wizard who is locked away making magical things for Santa, such as the machine to see all the kids in the world, hear what they are saying, the crystal ball to see kid’s dreams, and much more.
There’s a dream sequence with another musical dance number, this time with a bunch of life-size dolls. These dolls come to life and dance around a little girl. The dolls have 2 faces, a happy one on the front and a sad face on the back. This would be OK, but for the big black bug eyes the size of saucers, which makes the whole thing a dark scary version of Cirque de Soleil. I was waiting for the little girl to wig out, but she never did. (That’s what I want for Christmas, a 2 faced scary life-sized doll)
Then it’s Christmas Eve, and Santa’s 4 wind-up toy reindeer pull his sleigh around to deliver toys the devil shows up again and tries to stop Santa, but his plans are foiled every time. In the end, the little girl gets a pretty doll and a little rich boy gets the love of his parents who both –after drinking a smoking cocktail – realized they have to go home and se their boy. I don’t’ know about you, but I didn’t’ know Santa handed out free drinks, but much less smoking fancy ones.
Overall, I’d give it a 3. It’s crazy. (Try it with Robotussin, it might be better.)
[for more information see : http://www.kgordonmurray.com/history.html or http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053241/ or http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2000-12-22/screens_video2.html ]
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