Month: December 2019

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)

SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS

SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS (1964) One star

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. SCROOGE. A CHRISTMAS STORY. DIE HARD. CHRISTMAS VACATION. HOME ALONE.

There’s one movie title sure not to be heard in the discussion for “Best Christmas Movie”: SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS, which can be found instead on the IMDb’s Bottom 100. At last perusal, it’s No. 39 between STEEL (below) and THE EMOJI MOVIE (above).

SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS and I go a long way back.

I first watched this 1964 low-budget production during my last year of college, checking it out from the Leonard H. Axe Library alongside Ingmar Bergman’s PERSONA and Lucio Fulci’s DON’T TORTURE A DUCKLING. I wrote a review long ago and I apparently buried it within a time capsule deep inside Middle Earth.

Over time, I have acquired three VHS copies and I’ve already broken it out this holiday season, just like the Chipmunks and Star Wars.

I first read about SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS in John Wilson’s “The Official Razzie Movie Guide,” which honors the so-called best of Hollywood’s worst. The book’s front cover includes a still of that infamous man-in-a-suit ape with his middle finger uplifted from the Korean KING KONG rip-off A*P*E.

I suppose that I’ll start with the plot.

The children of Mars are not happy. Be warned that you could end up just like the children of Mars as you watch SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS.

The Martians all have dopey names: Kimar, Voldar, Dropo, Bomar, Girmar, Momar, and Rigna. Dropo is the laziest man on Mars and Voldar is the vulgar voice of doomy discontent in this cinematic confection. He’s an unrepentant Grinch, a real Scrooge, equipped with a ridiculous looking contraption on top of his head, just like all his fellow Martians. Voldar believes the Martians have gone soft. Mars was, you know, the god of war.

Fearless leader Rigna says to Voldar, “Chochem is 800 years old, you can’t dismiss the wisdom of centuries.”

Voldar mouths back, “I can.”

Chochem tells the Martian leaders the children are sullen and have trouble sleeping because there’s no joy on Mars. Martian children have become obsessed with TV, not unlike children from the Planet Earth, and they especially love this holly jolly Santa Claus fellow they see all the darn time on KID-TV. You can talk about evil liberal media bias and fake news all you want: Reporter Andy Henderson interviews Santa Claus, despite the fact that it’s 91-below zero up on the North Pole.

The Martians decide they must have this Santa Claus, who brings joy everywhere he goes, and come to Earth, but they run into a roadblock when they see a Santa Claus on virtually every street corner.

The Martians find Earth children Billy and Betty Foster and kidnap them, who lead the space invaders to Santa Claus.

Santa Claus eventually wins over the Martians, and that’s what they mean by the conquer part of the title rather than Santa Claus building an army to defeat the Martians in battle.

All’s well that ends well on both Mars and Earth, as well as KID-TV.

Pia Zadora made her screen debut as Girmar, one of the two main Martian children.

Vincent Beck’s IMDb biography starts, “Tall, deep-voiced character actor who started on screen in the lamentable SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS [as Voldar], which may have taken him some time to live down.” Beck, who passed away in 1984, made appearances on several famous sitcoms from the 1960s and 1970s: “Gilligan’s Island,” “Gunsmoke,” “Bonanza,” “The Monkees,” and “Mannix.”

Kentucky native Bill McCutcheon (1924-2002) did not let playing Dropo, the laziest man on Mars, stop him from roles in HOT STUFF and STEEL MAGNOLIAS.

SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS includes the infamous song “Hooray for Santa Claus,” which has been covered by Sloppy Seconds and the Fleshtones. I would not be surprised if one day we find out that “Hooray for Santa Claus” was used at Guantanamo Bay.

The Cannonball Run (1981)

CANNONBALL RUN

THE CANNONBALL RUN (1981) Two stars

THE CANNONBALL RUN is not a very good movie, but nonetheless it contains a certain undeniable value in the time capsule department.

That’s right, THE CANNONBALL RUN shows us a society that once highly valued Burt Reynolds, James Bond, crude foreign stereotypes, cameos, cleavage, NFL, TV, and stuntman turned director Hal Needham, not in that exact order. THE CANNONBALL RUN finished sixth in the 1981 box office sweepstakes.

However, it came a few years late in the cinematic car chase-and-crash department, not so hot on the wheels of such illustrious precursors as GONE IN 60 SECONDS, DEATH RACE 2000, CANNONBALL,THE GUMBALL RALLY, EAT MY DUST, GRAND THEFT AUTO, and SMOKEY THE BANDIT, by far the best of the six Needham and Reynolds productions that saw the light of multiplex from 1977 through 1984. Never mind John Landis’ THE BLUES BROTHERS, which should have been the final word on car chases and crashes.

Needham (1931-2013) made his directorial debut with SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT and that film contains just about everything you need to know about the director and his films: chases, races, curves, stunts, pile-ups, punch-ups, slapstick, Southern humor, and Reynolds. The great success of SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT, only behind STAR WARS at the box office in 1977, paved the road for the TV show “The Dukes of Hazzard” (1979-85).

On the Needham scale, THE CANNONBALL RUN finds itself halfway between the high point of SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT and the dual low points of STROKER ACE and CANNONBALL RUN II.

SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT had the benefit of the great performance of Jackie Gleason, a performance not matched in any of the other Needham and Reynolds productions, including Gleason again in SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT II. Gleason walked (or drove) away with the first movie.

Reynolds (1936-2018) more or less squandered his career on Needham films.

For example, he chose STROKER ACE over TERMS OF ENDEARMENT. Jack Nicholson won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing former astronaut Garrett Breedlove, the role turned down by Reynolds. The $16.5 million STROKER ACE bombed at the box office as it earned $5 million less than its budget. TERMS OF ENDEARMENT won Best Picture and took in over $100 million, succeeding both commercially and critically.

Reynolds’ career was never quite the same after STROKER ACE.

It would not be until BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997) the name “Burt Reynolds” was spoken with respect again. Reynolds earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination (part of a tally of 12 awards and three more nominations) for his performance as porn director Jack Horner in Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling epic. BOOGIE NIGHTS showed us a glimpse of what could have been for Reynolds had the actor not chosen his friend Needham in cynical productions.

They are cynical because they believed that Reynolds’ trademark grin and laugh could get us through a series of tossed off stunts, gags, and in-jokes.

This cynicism hit its absolute worst in CANNONBALL RUN II, which ironically found Reynolds playing alongside TERMS OF ENDEARMENT star Shirley MacLaine.

Frank Sinatra phoned in his cameo appearance and animator-for-hire Ralph Bakshi worked harder on the race than any of the big-name performers.

Roger Ebert called THE CANNONBALL RUN “Hollywood Squares on Wheels.”

“I’ll take James Bond for the block, please.”

“I’ll take Adrienne Barbeau’s cleavage for the win, please.”

When Roger Moore passed on the sequel, they brought in Bond villain Richard Kiel. The 7-foot-2 actor played Jaws in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and MOONRAKER.

Barbeau and her busty blonde counterpart Tara Buckman were replaced by Catherine Bach and Susan Anton for the sequel.

The best thing to come from the CANNONBALL RUN films was that Jackie Chan borrowed the closing credit gag reel for his productions. Chan showcased not only bloopers and cast members cracking up like the CANNONBALL RUN films, but also stunts like the one in ARMOUR OF GOD that nearly killed him.

“I try to grab every tree,” Chan said in a 2017 interview. “They just keep breaking. Breaking, breaking, breaking, breaking. Then, boom, I just hit on the rock. I get up, I thought, ‘It’s nothing.’ I just feel my back’s hurt. Then I get up, but everybody pushes me down because my whole body was numb. By the time the numb passed, then I feel my air and I see the blood. We go to the hospital … I almost died.”

Even in his worst films, Chan gives it everything he got, certainly more than what the vast majority of the cast members did in CANNONBALL RUN, CANNONBALL RUN II, and SPEED ZONE. Chan’s presence helped CANNONBALL RUN II make a killing in Japan.

All we need to know about the CANNONBALL RUN series is that Jamie Farr’s Sheik Abdul ben Falafel is the only character to appear in all three films.