Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

benjaminweber Where to begin with this one? Others have already brought up so many points, so I'll stick with the nightmare imagery. For instance, early on we see Santa's observatory, that he uses to watch children while they sleep. This would not be so bad, Santa is noted for watching all the children of the world, if it wasn't for the huge bizarre-looking face sticking out of the wall, or the ear stuck to a colander to listen to people on Earth.Next, there are Santa's reindeer. At first, this looks like it will be a slightly more modern take on the reindeer, especially given the release date of 1959, by having them as mechanical reindeer powering his sleigh. Then he starts them up, and their eyes open and start to move around. I was expecting them to all start screaming, having been awoken once more to the clockwork nightmare of their existence, trapped in nearly immobile metal bodies perpetually bound to a sleigh. Arguably what actually happens is worse, when one of them stares directly into the camera for several seconds emitting a terrifying laughing sound.There are other moments as well, such as Santa using a dangerous weapon he was delivering to a 'good' little boy to fight Pitch, but there isn't sufficient time to go into them all. This film has to be seen to be believed. You may have heard about Santa living with Merlin in outer space, or the racially insensitive multi-cultural slave children Santa has instead of elves, but nothing can quite prepare you for this film.

utgard14 Well this is unlike any other Christmas movie you're likely to see. It's a Mexican movie (dubbed in English) about Santa Claus fighting a demon called Pitch. The demon was sent by Lucifer to corrupt kids before Christmas. Anyway, Santa lives in outer space where he plays organ music to celebrate the different kids of all the different nations. If you make it through this opening ten minutes or so of Santa playing the organ, you're made of tough stuff. While Pitch is busy trying to get little kids to do bad stuff to tick Santa off, Merlin (yes, that Merlin) gives Santa some magic dreaming powder and a flower (!) to help him complete his Christmas rounds. This is pretty crazy stuff and I have barely scratched the surface. Wait until you see all the gadgets Santa uses to spy on us or the scene where a dog chases Santa up a tree.It's all very cheesy and stupid but also weird fun. Yes, most of that fun comes from laughing at it, but the movie was made for a few pesos so I'm sure it will take what it can get. Plus, it was clearly made for little kids so I try to cut it some slack. It was featured on a popular episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, which is where I first saw it many years ago. I saw it in its entirety later and again just this past week on TCM. I would encourage you to see the movie itself and not just watch the MST3K version. The movie is so weird and funny, even without the MST3K commentary. There's nothing else quite like it.

Anders Twetman I want to say, right from the start, that this film is boring, the pacing is unbelievably slow, every single scene takes a really long time. The film is also pretty poorly made, with bad set design, and poor acting but those are minor details compared to the all pervading slow pacing. You cannot fathom how boring a film could be until you have seen this, trust me, watching paint dry is more exciting.The lack of action aside, I consider it a pretty good film, not as the children's movie it is supposed to be, because this is not for children. What I like about it is how messed up this stuff is; let me give you a few examples.The film starts with an introduction of Santa's workshop which is not run by elves, but by children, Santa seems to think child labor is a good thing. To make it even more offensive, the children are all a bunch of racial stereotypes. Further more, Santa spies on all the children of the world with his high tech surveillance equipment built by the clearly deranged wizard Merlin. After watching a few of the children's rather creepy dreams, Santa goes down to earth to deliver presents but ends up fighting Satan instead. I tell you, this stuff is bizarre, I just wonder how they were able to make it so boring.

Pencho15 This film is a Mexican Christmas classic, each December 24th it is aired on television in my country for the joy of small children, and many Mexicans like me watched it and have fond memories of it. When I looked for it at IMDb I got an enormous surprise finding out it was listed as one of the worst 100 movies in history, but my surprise turned to disappointment when I saw the reasons for its bad reputation. It turns out the rights for this movie were bought by an American producer to exhibit it on his country, for what I read this man, K. Gordon Murray, was not particularly good with the way he treated those films, he created badly done dubbed versions, edited them as he pleased without respect for the original film and took no notice about the quality of the process. This U.S. version has been seen by many persons in that country and it has a big responsibility in the bad reputation of the film, which is unfairly judged based on a different version of the original. Also and worst of all is that for everything that I've read It seems this movie has been judged based on the United States Folklore, and not on the Mexican culture in which it was born. Many reviews criticize this based on the fact that it is a version that does not conform to the U.S. version of the character, like if that version was unique and inalterable, well here is a surprise for You, it's not, and if you are watching this film first you have to understand that, the traditions it shows are from another culture and therefore, while they have similarities they also have differences. The creators of the movie made it only for Mexican children and they never thought it could be distributed to another place. Please consider this before making harsh judgments of the film. With this points clarified here's a quick summary of the film, the original Mexican film which is the one that should be reviewed as it is not fair that this is trashed on the grounds of a crappy edition made by an irresponsible distributor. The plot is rather simple, it is Christmas Eve and Santa Claus is getting ready to fulfill his yearly mission of delivering presents to the good kids in the world. But at the same time in Hell, Satan himself sends a devil called "Precio" to stop him. Once in earth the story focuses on five Mexican children: a poor girl that wishes to have a rag doll, a rich boy that wishes to have his parents alongside him because he is lonely and a group of three spoiled boys that think they can get away with having presents despite being bad all year; while the stories of these children develop we see Santa struggling to overcome the attempts of Precio to stop him and, while for a moment it seems that the envoy of hell will beat Santa, like in every Christmas film we have a happy ending. Now allow me to explain a few important things that have been said about this film based on the misguided ideas I mentioned above. The Devil against Santa Claus? Yes, this comes from a Mexican tradition called Pastorela which has its origins on the colonial epoch and it still exists today; pastorelas are simple plays whose ultimate end is evangelization, they show Satan trying to stop small groups of shepherds that are on their way to worship the newborn Jesus at Betlehem. In modern times different cultural elements like Santa himself have been added to the original tradition, but the root of the pastorela is religious and hence the important part of the devil. Christmas is a religious celebration and that is still very important in catholic latinoamerican countries. Santa is a friend of Jesus? Why,of course. I thought this to be common knowledge but apparently it isn't so You just have to watch a documentary, read a book Or simply visit Wikipedia and you'll learn that the origin of Santa Claus is in Christianity and in the figure of Saint Nicholas. It wasn't útil the XIX century when the world famous version of the character started to take form and it didn't do it in a massive way until Coca-Cola used the character as part of an advertising campaign when it became the marketing figure it is today. In the United States you may have a very defined idea of how this character must be, but can't you accept that in other places it evolved in a different way closer to it's religious roots? Well that's what happened in Mexico and the film itself says in the introduction that Santa is no other than Saint Nicholas, that means a Christian saint. Now in catholic countries saints are very important figures, they serve as intermediaries between God and men, in this case rewarding kids that are good and punishing those that aren't. So as a Christian saint it makes perfect sense that Santa prays to Jesus and it makes much more sense that the devil is trying to stop him; he does this not just because he can, but because making Santa fail will prevent that he spreads his Christian message. Anyway these are the most important points I wanted to write about, because it is completely unfair that you trash this film because you don't understand its context or its message: judge it in base of its cinematographic merits and considering the audience it is aimed for, those are small children.Considering this I can say Santa Claus is not a specially good film, it has bad acting, bad costumes, bad scenarios and it is very naive. But it achieves its goal to entertain kids and give them a nice moral message. Is it a bad film? Yes. Does it deserve to be at the bottom 100? Absolutely no.