Stars:
A lot of mexican actors

Choice Dialogue:
* LUCIFER: You shall be punished, and instead of red-hot coals, you
* will eat chocolate ice * cream.
* PITCH: No! No, Lucifer, King of all Evil Spirits! Not that! By the
* horns of everything satanic, I beg you! To live I must have heat.
* Frozen meals are bad for me, especially chocolate! It's very bad for * my digestion, which is so delicate.

Conclusions:
* Santa has a lot of free time on his hands
* The world begins and ends at the borders of Mexico City.
* Satan is into interpretive dance.
* In a child's dreams everyone is seven feet tall.
* Absent parents should be drugged into submission.

Review:
Somewhere in the midst of the 20th century a man arose of such power and tyranny that we are still feeling the effects of what he wrought upon this earth. His name was K. Gordon Murray, a native of Bloomington Illinois, a man absent of good taste but with plenty of drive to succeed in business without really trying.

Mr. Murray wanted to succeed in the business of film distribution but his tastes and his lacadasical approach didn't earn him a shot at the big leagues. He became a distributer however in a most unusual way. He took frequent trips to Mexico, dug through the waste bins, found forgotten old Mexican B-movies, brought them back the U.S. then dubbed them into English and gave them a stateside release.

The reason you haven't heard of him is chiefly because the films he found in the trashbins of Mexico were in the trashbins for a reason. Films like The Princess and the Swinebeard, Curse of the Doll People and The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy aren't exactly Gone With the Wind and having seen the latter I can say that it's not even Biodome.

Such is the case with Santa Claus, a jaw-dropping piece of holiday flotsom from south of the border that forsakes all that we know about jolly old St. Nick in favor of a battle between Satan and Santa with a cute kid stuck in the middle.

I do, however, write this review with a smile plastered on my face . . .

This very bizarre (and at times very creepy) 1959 Mexican kid's movie takes everything you know about Santa Claus and chucks it out like last year's Christmas tree.

The movie is narrated by a rather annoying announcer (actually it's Murray himself), one of those guys who has to tell you EVERY SINGLE FREAKIN' THING AS IT HAPPENS! He informs us that Santa doesn't live at the North Pole but lives on a cloud in a castle somewhere in space and spies on the earth's children through a strange telescope with an eyeball at the other end. There is no Mrs. Claus and no elves but there are two very unusual helpers: a little Mexican moppet named Pedro and Merlin the magician (yes THAT Merlin the magician). This Santa isn't even fat!

Santa has cut costs by forsaking the care and feeding of livestock for a quartet of creepy wind up reindeer that cackle and convulse. The effect is just - *shudder*.

As the movie opens we find Santa going through his early morning ritual. For the next 10 minutes we are subjected to Santa seated before his pipe organ playing to the hundreds of children littering his factory. Each child is from a different country and all are dressed in rather stereotypical costumes. The Africans have bones in their hair, the Mexicans wear Sombreros, the Americans are dressed like cowboys (who beat to death a rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb) and the kids from Central America stand around dressed like disgraced employees from a taco stand.

The movie should come with a disclaimer that "These Children Are NOT actors", most of them are camera shy most of them just stand around waiting for their cue. All the children of the world are represented in all their stereotypical glory while none seems to even want to be there.

It's a good thing this scene only lasts a few minutes or diplomatic relations with some of these countries would drop like stones.

Then we get the story. Santa spends the rest of the movie trying to make his annual rounds while being pursued by one of Satan's minions. He is a bouncy fellow named Pitch who looks like Jamie Farr with huge red plastic Spock ears. Satan assigns this perpetual screw up to tempt the world's children to do bad things and thereby ruin Christmas. Punishment for his crime is an eternity eating ice cream (personally I would have subjected him to this movie).

He zeroes in on two tots in perticular; The first is a poor little girl named Lupita and encourages her to steal a doll - but she's too honest and returns it. My feeling is that she just wanted the narrator to shut his yap and so she simply gave up. The second is a poor little rich boy named Billy whose parents are forever away from home and give him every toy in the world so they won't have to, you know, look at him and stuff.

Frustrated, Pitch turn his attention on three rambunctious little boys and gives them rocks to throw at a store window. He is a little more successful in this venture.

The movie provides us with the information that Pitch and Santa are battling for the souls of the children of the world but oddly enough they never seem to get out of Mexico City

The rest of the movie is - to say the least - mind numbing. At one point Santa and Pitch square off in Billy and Lupita's dreams. Billy dreams that his parents have emerged from giant boxes to spend time with him while Lupita (whose dream is interruped by the forces of darkness) dreams of that stupid doll, which in her dream is six feet tall *shudder*

With that, we get this exchange:

Evil Doll: Why don't you steal us. We can all be yours!
Lupita: No, you know that stealing is bad, and I want to be good.
Evil Doll: But you must learn to steal!
Lupita: No. You know stealing is bad, and I want to be good.
Evil Doll: We dolls don't like good little girls!
Lupita: No. To steal is evil, and I don't want to be evil.
Evil Doll: You must be evil if you want a doll!
Lupita: No, you know stealing is evil, and I don't want to be evil.
Evil Doll: Steal, fight, and we will all be yours!
Lupita: No. I don't want to be evil, and stealing is evil.
Evil Doll: You want to good, eh, you don't want to be bad?
Lupita: No, you know stealing is bad, and I want to be good.
Evil Doll: Well then, you'll never have a doll! HAHAHAHAH!

Do youself a favor, don't subject your children to this movie, therapy is expensive.

While Lupita learns that Christmas isn't all about dolls, the fate of Billy's parents is decided with a "responsability drug" that Santa slips into their drinks while they sit at the club. One sip and "Gee dear, maybe we should stop being crappy parents and go talk to that money drawer we call a son". That's not what they say but you get the idea

The third act of the film involves Santa, on earth delivering toys to all the good little children of Mexico City while Pitch sneaks around behind him trying to undo his mission. One house after another, Santa delivers a toy and Pitch fails to stop him. Santa shoots Pitch in the butt with a toy rocket, Pitch retaliates by telling the owners of the house that a killer is downstairs. Yadda yadda, back and forth until Santa sends pitch back to Hell and finishes delivering the freakin' toys.

In the end, Santa celebrates, Pitch goes off to the 12th level of Hell where he is force fed by Ben and Jerry for all eternity and all is right with the world. Well, unless you concider that Santa only delivered presents to the good little children of Mexico City and completely forgot the rest of the world - D'OH!