Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)

Director:

Nicholas Webster

Writers:

Glenville Mareth (screenplay)
Paul L. Jacobson (based on a story by)

Release Date:

14 November 1964 (USA)

Genre:

Family | Fantasy | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

Blast off for Mars... with Santa and a pair of Earth kids! Blast off for Mars... with Santa and a pair of Earth kids! Science-Fun-Fiction at its height!

Plot:

The Martians kidnap Santa because there is nobody on Mars to give their children presents.

Plot Keywords:

Martian | Children | Mars | Christmas | Santa Claus

Cast

John Call	...	Santa Claus
Leonard Hicks	...	Kimar
Vincent Beck	...	Voldar
Bill McCutcheon	...	Dropo
Victor Stiles	...	Billy
Donna Conforti	...	Betty
Chris Month	...	Bomar
Pia Zadora	...	Girmar
Leila Martin	...	Momar
Charles Renn	...	Hargo
James Cahill	...	Rigna
Ned Wertimer	...	Andy Henderson
Doris Rich	...	Mrs. Claus
Carl Don	...	Chochem / Von Green
Ivor Bodin	...	Winky

Also Known As:

Santa Claus Defeats the Aliens (video title)

Runtime:

81 min | USA:86 min (DVD)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Pathécolor)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Canada:G (Manitoba/Quebec) | Canada:PG (Nova Scotia) (2002) | Canada:PG (Ontario) | UK:U (video rating) | USA:Unrated (2005 DVD release) | Australia:PG | USA:Not Rated

Filming Locations:

Roosevelt Field, Garden City, Long Island, New York, USA

Company:

Jalor Productions

Trivia:

The Martian guns are actually painted Whammo Air Blasters.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: In the Polar Bear sequence where the costume is clearly a bear-rug draped over someone's body the back legs are the same way a man's are when crawling with his knees on the ground and shins to feet level with the floor.

Quotes:

TV News Announcer: Here's another UFO Bulletin: The Defense Department has just announced that the unidentified flying object suddenly dissapeared from our radar screen. They believe the object has either dissintegrated in space, or it may be a space ship from another planet which has the ability to nullify all radar beams.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "In the Cellar: The Abduction (#1.8)" (????)

Soundtrack:

Horray For Santa Claus

Paging Edward D. Wood

If the fabulously awful yet admirably enthusiastic director Ed Wood had ever made a kids' holiday flick, this would have been it.

This movie is not bad, if by bad you mean boring and a waste of time. It's spectacularly appalling, the way "Plan 9" is. They obviously had a budget of about fifty bucks to make this, and it shows.

But some of us love these evidences that once upon a time in America there was such a thing as real independent cinema, and all-afternoon multi-feature holiday shows at neighborhood theaters that only had one screen, and sing-along events built into kids' movies, and fun that didn't depend on multi-billion dollar special effects.

This is one of those movies that you will laugh at and make fun of, yet long for the days when local, independent television stations aired it on a Saturday afternoon before Christmas. You'll make jokes about it, but catch yourself absentmindedly humming "Hooray for Santy Claus!" for the rest of your life. And you'll amaze your friends with -- "I know what movie Pia Zadora made her debut in, and you don't!"