Santa
Claus (Santa Claus vs. the Devil)
1959
Director- René Cardona
Cast- José Elías Moreno, Cesáreo Quezadas, José Luis
Aguirre, Armando Arriola, Lupita Quezadas, Antonio Díaz Conde, Ángel Di Stefani
From Mexico
Santa
Claus, rather than living in the North Pole, lives is a floating castle in
space. From there, with an international
cadre of children from around the world, he makes toys. The children are all
dressed in their culturally appropriate (some might stereotypical) attire with
the Japanese kids wearing kimonos, the Mexican kids wearing sombreros etc.
Satan,
meanwhile, wants to show the world that he is its master and wants to use
Christmas time to do it. He orders one of his minions, a lesser devil named
Pitch, to ascend to Earth and tempt all of the children into Evil. His
punishment for failure is that he has to eat ice cold chocolate ice cream, and
this scares Pitch pretty bad as he seems to have some kind of digestive
disorder. Pitch begs for mercy “by the
horns of everything Satanic”. With the command “Demons of Hades, transport me
to Earth,” he teleports from Hell to begin his mission.
Pitch initially
doesn’t have a hard time as the Christmas season naturally brings out avarice.
He immediately turns 3 rude brothers against Santa. Through some kind of
sympathetic magic, by throwing rocks at a fake Santa they actually hurt the
real Santa. Old St. Nick says that he could make short work of the Devil, but
he can only descend to Earth one night a year. Santa plans to use the good children
as his proxys in the war against Evil and uses his sophisticated intelligence
gathering machines to locate good children. One machine has a prehensile eyeball
on the end of a wire; another is a large ear on a satellite dish; one has a
large red mouth like a sex doll.
He locates the virtuous Lupita, who really wants a doll, any doll, for
Christmas, but is very poor. Pitch tempts her to steal the doll, but to no
avail. Santa uses his “Dreamscope” to peer into the unconscious mind of Billy,
a rich boy, who only dreams of having the love of his parents. Ever the voyeur, Santa decides to peep into
Lupita’s dreams as well. Pitch is influencing her by making her dream of creepy
life size rag dolls that dance around and tell her to steal. Santa’s voyeurism
backfires when he spies on the 3 rude boys as they are talking about how old
Santa is. Santa declares that he is much younger than the Devil, only that he
has been sick lately.
Of
course even with the War on Evil underway, Santa still has a job to do and is
inundated with letters from kids (which come via an airway that blows them up
from Earth). One kid is after my own heart and asks for “a toy automobile, a
submarine, a football, a bat, roller skates, a scooter, a cannon, a bicycle, an
atomic laboratory, a machine gun.” The kid’s got some wild holiday plans!
Santa is
aided in his work by Merlin the Magician who has a lab in Santa’s palace. He concocts
the magic potions that allow Santa to disappear and make children sleep. I
guess today they would just use Ambien. Merlin seems a bit absent minded and it’s
a wonder that he can concoct anything. He is also aided by the Roman god
Vulcan, who constructs a key for Santa that will open any door. You know, when
you think about it, the ability to get into any house and make children sleep
is the kind of thing that would get you placed on a watch list today, one of
those lists where you have a sign in your front yard and you can’t be within
100 yards of a school.
Well,
Christmas Eve arrives and Santa’s international coalition of children loads up
his interstellar sleigh. Despite the fact that his mechanical reindeer can
traverse the vacuum of space, they have to return by dawn because sunlight
turns them into dust, because, sure, why not.
Back on
Earth, the three hooligans are still plotting against Santa. They plan to
ambush him, take the toys, and make Santa their slave! These are some bad kids.
Lupita is starting to think that Santa doesn’t like her as she always asks for
the doll but never gets it.
Pitch tries
to prevent Santa from entering a house by moving the chimney (???) but it doesn’t
faze Santa as he has a magic parasol to help him drop safely off the roof where
he can enter the house in a more conventional way. Foiled, Pitch shifts fire to
the next house where he tries different tactics but Santa outsmarts him again
and humiliates Pitch by shooting him in the butt with a toy cannon.
Santa
stops at little Billy’s house. Billy is all alone because his parents are out
at a fancy restaurant. But no worries, Santa shows up dressed as a waiter and
gives his parents special drinks that make them remember that their child is at
home (which is kind of depressing).
Pitch
and the 3 hooligans are still hoping to thwart Santa and they camp out on a
roof top. They are having no luck with Santa so Pitch makes the children turn
on each other and fight, much to his delight. He keeps a look out, and while
Santa is in a home, Pitch tries to steal Santa’s sleigh! The robot reindeer won’t
answer to his command so Pitch satisfies himself by sabotaging Santa’s magical
gear.
Pitch
sics a vicious dog on Santa, and without his magical gear, Santa has no choice
but to escape up a tree. Pitch then visits the locals in their sleep, telling
them that Santa is a murderer and that they should arm themselves and kill him!
Stuck up a tree with armed villagers, the police and fire department all converging
on his location. Surely Santa is doomed.
Thankfully,
Merlin pulls his fat out of the fire by advising Santa to use a toy cat from
his bag to distract the dog. Santa escapes just before the cops arrive, but
with the dawn quickly approaching, he still has one more stop. Lupita has just about given up hope, but she gets
her doll and Santa returns to his space castle!
This
movie is just as bizarre as it sounds. To its credit, despite all of the
disparate elements crammed together into 94 minutes, it doesn’t come across
like some disjointed hallucinatory William Burroughs novel. Christmas is a
rather strange holiday. Christian mythology, pagan imagery, folk lore and
greedy commercialism combine with messages of morality and spiritualism to
create this bizarre annual amalgamation of traditions and religion. This movie
does the same thing in a very fun, unself-conscious way. The plot is less like
a movie script and more like a story being told by a child that is making it up
as they go.
Despite
the bright lights and shiny wrapping paper, Christmas always has a dark side,
at least for children. Guilt and shame over being naughty, combined the with
the fear of being caught lend a somber morality to the holiday that only
children can understand. What better way to portray that than with an actual
devil walking among the children, tempting them toward their doom.
This was directed by the same man that gave us
Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy so that should tell you something. Highly recommended
for anyone wanting a unique experience.
