You can't have a holiday movie without Santa Claus, especially one that's named after him. As some of you know, the concept of Saint Nicholas varies from country to country. In some places he comes down chimneys to deliver gifts, in other places he breaks into your house and beats you with a whip until you repent for your sins. This particular version of the patron saint of red and white looks a lot like the traditional North American version: fat and jolly with a long white beard and red hat and coat, traveling around via sleigh and dropping down chimneys to delivery gifts to the good kids and footwear full of hot coals for those who don't bend to his disciplinary will. That's where the similarities end though.

This Santa doesn't live at the North Pole, but in a castle made of gold and crystal finery atop a cloud in a corner of Heaven somewhere out in the deep black reaches of outer space. This Santa doesn't subsist on a diet of cookies and milk, but rather on a strict menu of ice cream and pastries made from clouds. This Santa doesn't downplay his involvement with the Christian holiday on which he works, but instead starts off the movie setting up his Nativity scene and peppering the flick with several references to his main competition for the spotlight at the end of the year. This Santa doesn't command a skilled workforce of toy making Elven artisans, but rather a small sweatshop army straight out of a Benetton ad, made up of pre-pubescent cheap labor from all major population areas of the world over, who sit around droning through children’s' songs from their native lands with all the enthusiasm of a 3rd grade class sloughing through the Pledge of Allegiance while Iron Tyrant Claus gleefully pounds away at his electric harpsichord of oppression. This Santa doesn't come about his Christmas magic on his own, but instead employs Merlin the Magician to supply him with botany-based powers to turn invisible, send children to dreamland and intoxicate neglectful parents into loving their children; the mighty Vulcano who, when not grooming his copious bushels of steel wool body hair, works his mystic forge as Santa's blacksmith/key maker/weapons master and creates for Claus an enchanted key that shorts out any lock and has thus destroyed every person's right to privacy; and to make up for his lack of super psychic "who's been naughty and who's been nice" powers, Big Brother Nicholas uses a super spy computer made of advanced Heaven technology meshed in an unholy Hellraiser-like configuration with the organic remains of his fallen enemies (eyes, ears, mouth, etc.) to watch over the unwilling denizens of his unyielding laws of imposed will and morality. This Santa also doesn't have a Mrs. Claus to keep him company and tend to his "manly needs", as issue I believe was more than addressed enough by the fact that he's got two live-in "life partners" as mentioned in the prior statement. This Santa doesn't rely on eight tiny reindeer to pull his fat carcass across the skies (and through the void of space for that matter), but rather on a small quartet of wind-up albino cyborg psycho vampire hell-beasts that laugh maniacally, spout noxious fumes from their sinuses, combust upon contact with the first rays of sunlight, and serve only Santa, likely due to some unholy pact made when the Earth was still young and bathed in the pitch darkness of impenetrable sin and evil...

As you can see, this ain't your daddy's Santa... though given the date and depending on your own age, well, I guess this could be you daddy's Santa after all... shame on your father if that's the case!

Okay, now that we've been introduced to the life and times of this new, drug-induced, slave driving, black magic St. Nick, it's time to introduce the movie's conflict. With Super Hippy's birthday around the corner, Santa's ramping up the production schedule for his broken spirited squad of pint-sized worker beans (100 geek points to the customer who can explain that "beans" comment) and updating his ledgers on who's earned shiny new toys for the holiday and who gets beaten mercilessly before having bamboo chutes shoved under their fingernails. While the hard working immigrant Earth children are put through hours of finger-blistering overtime to make quota, another entity of red-suited sinisterism is also preparing to exploit this, the time of year when mankind's greed, anger and depression are at their apex. Looking to finally ruin Christmas (right after his demons and Hell druids finish up their daily song and dance number) and bring forth the second age of hell and suffering on Earth, Satan himself conjures a plan to besmirch the good name of Kris Cringle and take away mankind's last vestige of holiday cheer. Honestly I don't understand why Satan and Santa can't get along. I mean, given their mutual taste in attire, slave labor, and the art of tempting others to do their bidding via the reward system (Satan for their eternal souls and Santa for their continued obedience to his moral code), the only major difference between the two is a rearranging of the letter 'N' in their names! Come to think of it, the gears are slowly turning and I'm getting an idea for a holiday classick of my own here...

Anyway, Satan's determined to make this the year that Santa and the Christmas holiday go down in a blaze of hellfire (though bad PR seems to be the best the lord of the flies can seem to come up with), so he sets the task to one of his less capable minions, a red pajama wearing, shiny shorts garbed, rubber horns and pointy ears wearing vision of unadulterated Hellocity known as Pitch... though "Bitch" is more appropriate. You know, I wonder why it's taken Satan a few thousand years to attempt overthrowing the birthday of his greatest nemesis, but given his less-than-stellar effort the supposed dark lord puts into his campaign, it's no wonder his plans have gone nothing but tits up after all this time! It's the most important time of the year for the opposing team, the time that will make or break Beelzebub's annual soul numbers, the time when he should be putting all his resources into one big Damn Mary play and littering the world with his most vile minions. The silly old fuck has an endless legion of murderers, rapists, thieves, lawyers, savages and pirates at his disposal and he puts all of his chips into one prancing little mince of a demon to bring down the cornerstone of the Christian faith!? No wonder Old Scratch has spent the last few millennia roasting his chestnuts on hellfire and brimstone, he doesn't know how to make use of what he's got! For fuck's sake, I'm sorry I wasted all those centuries sacrificing newborns and drinking the blood of livestock in this shithead's "sacred" names...

Bitch's full arsenal of unholy sorcery is put to work in his crusade against Christmas as he tries turning the people against Santa by, well, gives a little Mexican girl nightmares and supplying three already ne'er-do-well boys with rocks so they can break a toy store's display window... sure, Rome wasn't built in a day, but at least the Romans made an effort!... even if that consisted of whipping their enslaved enemies, but at least it was something more than giving people bad dreams and rocks to throw! Okay, okay, so maybe hassling a couple of Mexican youths doesn't exactly seem like the best way to begin your conquest of the entire planet, but apparently Bitch has the right idea, since all of Santa's attention seems to be on these select kiddies and nowhere else on the entire spinning turdball of a planet. Also, the further along we go, the more it looks like Bitch was just killing some time while waiting to harass the genuine article as Santa, finally arriving on Earth, heads straight for Mexico City to get his one-night work year underway. Sure, it's later stated that Big Red hits south of the Border only after taking care of all of Australia, Asia and Europe first, but when the movie conflicts itself, I go with the concept that I can complain about most rather than giving the crappy non-union script writers the benefit of the doubt. I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO GIVE MOVIES "THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT", THEY SHOULDN'T SUCK TO BEGIN WITH!!!!

And so, the epic battle of the red men is underway. Well, it's far from epic, but it plays out like this: Bitch moves a chimney (which somehow prevents Santa from going down the big hole it leaves behind...), so Santa goes in through the front door. Bitch lights a fireplace and heats up a doorknob, so Santa plays prowler and comes in through an open window, then sodomizes the red menace with a toy howitzer. Bitch steals Claus's bag of magic tricks and uses a guard dog to run the old man up a tree while he riles up the locals to come and imprison Santa for being a prowler/assassin, so Santa uses a wind-up cat to lure the dog away while he escapes back to his palace of precious metals and ores. Yes, Santa wins. The little rich kid who wanted nothing more than his parents' love gets just that (thanks to Santa and his bubbling drug cocktails), the little poverty stricken girl whose parents have no means to support the family gets her precious dolly (though I doubt it would've hurt Santa to crack a few gold bricks off that castle of his to help the parents buy some food and clean water) and the trio of evil little bastard children who planned to kidnap Santa and force him to grant their wishes all wind up scared shitless and beating the crap out of each other when we last see them. Obviously Santa's gotten slow at his age, as he blew his entire night making wishes come true for two Mexican kids and reigning terror and punishment on three others. Fuck the rest of the world! Hell, fuck the rest of the kids in Mexico City for that matter! Apparently the hundreds of thousands of greedy letters that Big Claus gets each year are thrown to the wayside in favor of a handful of deserving minors any more and the parents are expected to pick up Fat Boy's ever growing slack! Thanks dick bag, it's always nice to know that my future children will have nothing to look forward to in life but disappointment.

Stand out moments for this would-be holiday extravaganza? Well, the weird shit Santa surrounds himself with is interesting to say the least. I don't know if the kids in Mexico actually think that Santa lives in Heaven and shacks up with Merlin and a small army of cheap foreign laborers or if this was all some drug induced mania by our friends the writers, but either way it's all very very strange. The big issue with the madness though comes from the horrible pacing of the movie itself. Certain scenes felt out of sequence and would've worked better had they appeared elsewhere in the movie. At the same time, other scenes ran WAY too long and almost had me passing out on my keyboard before anything else even had a chance to get started. The worst offender of this? The dragging introduction of Santa's international cadre of child prisoners, as each group is given way too much time to sing their stupid little songs. Why was it so important that they each get to sing a song?! Why couldn't we just look at each child in their native costumes and their sad little eyes that denote their broken spirits without all the damn singing!? Finally, the movie's most unintentionally hilarious/offensive moment? When introducing Santa's enslaved African children, the kids are little more than Mexican kids in black face, jumping around, grunting and banging drums, complete with bones in their hair and noses... I guess they don't get "National Geographic", huh?

When it all comes down to it, is Santa Claus worth adding to the annual rotation between Ernest Saves Christmas and Santa Claus is Coming to Town? Not really, no. Hell, it took a good 2 1/2 hours to watch the movie and type this review and afterwards my greatest regret is that I didn't use the time to watch A Christmas Story again... and they play that for 24 straight hours on TBS! What kind of person will this movie appeal to? Well, I know a few people who are dedicated followers of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and I think they'll be the ones I introduce this to. Otherwise, the rest of the people in the world will either hate it or not know what to think of it. I don't necessarily hate it myself, it's got enough freaky crap going on to make it interesting, but the movie as a whole could've benefited from some trimming, a little re-editing and couple more script revisions... or at least ONE.