Santa Clause Conquers The Martians Poster

To start the process we went to a number of rehersals to meet the cast and get to know the story, and also as there was quite a bit of puppetry and object manupulation involved we went were involed in object manipulation workshops. We were making different elements and scenes from the piece in teams using objects from a box of junk. We then had to animate these objects to give them character. This was a fun day and really loosened us up and gave us some inspiration for the props that we were going to make.

The scene I had to create was the martians leaving Mars in their space ship and coming to earth. In our object manipulation session we came up with the idea of having two planets that move and a space ship that flys between them encoutering bits of space on its journey.

One of the constraints of these props was that they had to be carried on looking like a pile of christmas presents, or fit into a christmas present box, So i have had to use classic ‘present’ shapes, and have everything be able to fit into a box.

Planets

Using tea trays I made two planets and painted them in very bright 60′s colours

Planets back – looking like presents

Earth

Mars

Rocket

After initial development I made the rocket in a number of pieces for greater object manipulation possibilities. The top, fins and flames are all sperate and can be moved seperatley.

Rocket

Rocket

On the journey the rocket came into contact with planets, clouds and meteors. I made these and they were all contained within a christmas present box.

Santa Clause Conquers the Martians, Catfoot Theatre, was on at the Bonnington Theatre, Nottingham in December 2012.

Since it’s the Christmas season, everyone talking about some of their favorite holiday movies like A Christmas Story, It’s A Wonderful Life, and Elf (Die Hard is not a Christmas movie).  But my question today will be the opposite: what’s your least favorite Christmas movie.

I’ll start off by saying the one that I think is the worst: Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny.  Last year I declared that Santa Clause Conquers The Martians was, but that was before I saw this enormous mess.  I don’t think any of you have heard of it before, but basically Santa is accidentally stranded in Florida and is saved by a guy in a giant rabbit suit.  You can buy the RiffTrax version of their website or Amazon (the commentary is the best way to watch it).  See a bit of it below:

But since Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny is enjoyably bad, I would have to say How The Grinch Stole Christmas is my least favorite (there’s a difference in my least favorite and what I consider to be the worst).  I like the original story by Dr. Seuss, I like the animated short, I like director Ron Howard, and I like Jim Carrey.  That makes me a perfect candidate, right?  Wrong.  Watching this was a painful experience and was oddly very creepy.  It still is a lot better than the adaptation of The Cat in the Hat.

But what would you pick?

In preparation for The Dark Knight Rises, I review the final chapter to the previous franchise

In my title, I said that Batman and Robin was “a dreadful, yet watchable mess.”  I’m not saying the film is good in any way (far from it actually), but it’s a fun movie to watch because how awful it is.  It reminds me of flicks like Plan 9 From Outer Space, Troll 2, or Santa Clause Conquers the Martians.  All of these movies are terrible, but they’re fun to see them fall apart.

Batman and Robin really can’t be taken seriously on any level.  It makes more mistakes than imaginable (and seeing the previous installment, Batman Forever, that’s saying something).  The film has a high profile cast, with names like George Clooney, Arnold  Schwarzenegger, Uma Thurman, and Alicia Silverstone.  But the actors mainly serve under Joel Schumaker’s dreadful direction, and just about everything in the movie is laughable.

The villain in this movie is Mr. Freeze (Schwarzenegger), who was distorted after trying to save the life of his wife.  Freeze has to fight against our hero Batman (Clooney) and his beloved sidekick Robin (Chris O’Donnell).

Later two new villains come in: Poison Ivy (Thurman) and Bane (Robert Swenson), both of which help Mr. Freeze fight the superhero duo.  Meanwhile Robin fights with Batman, Alfred’s (Michael Gough) niece (SIlverstone) come to Wayan’s mansion, and Alfred is dying of a disease.

None of these story-lines work as intended, which is one of the movie’s greatest weaknesses.  Robin becomes smitten between Silverstone’s and Thurman’s character so much so that it’s impossible to tell which one he actually cares about.  Batman is so two dimensional in the movie that it doesn’t matter who played him, the performance still would be terrible.  The only real drama of the movie comes from Alfred, but the movie still fails on every level.

Another notable thing about the movie is Mr. Freeze.  Schwarzenegger is a good action star, and he’s been great in the first two Terminator movies, which require him to shoot bad guys and hardly say anything at all.  But when it comes to speaking roles, Schwarzenegger’s awful and unbelievable.  Freeze is given multiple puns that are so bad they’re good (here’s a video below).  How can you not laugh at bad quotes like “let’s kick some ice,” “the Ice Man cometh,” and “do you know what killed the dinosaurs?  The ice age!” (that last one makes no sense whatsoever in any context).

But perhaps the most absurd thing about the film is Schumaker’s obsession with the bat suits.  He takes a lot of shots of the enlarged codpieces, and gives many shots of (errr…) Batman’s private area.

It’s a shame really.  Both Clooney and Thurman are talented actors.  But the movie is killed by its giddiness.  Batman and Robin isn’t an action film.  It’s a lame family comedy that feels like a live action cartoon.  I’d call it the worst superhero movie if it weren’t for Catwoman.

Fortunately Christopher Nolan saved the series with his much darker reboot.  Batman and Robin is worth watching for some laughs as an incredibly bad film.  That’s the best I can say of it.  Easily one of the worst films ever made.

I name my least favorite films I have seen, and of course Manos makes the list

By the end of the summer, I will debut my 10 best films ever made, meaning I will revisit and watch more great pictures.  But I want to dedicate a list to ten really awful movies that I feel are the worst of all time.  Now let me state a few details on the list:

1. All of these films are some of the most critically thrashed in history, so I’m not expecting any complaints.  Unless you consider a film like Monster A Go-Go a masterpiece, then this list will make you pleased.  And I’m not trying to make this post mean-spirited, so if it appears that way I apologize.

2. With the exception of Battlefield Earth, North,and Troll 2, all of these movies are have been shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000.  I don’t want to watch bad films unless they’re being ribbed.

3.  If you think I forgot any bad films, you could give me a name that I might have forgot to put on or never have seen.  I always like to hear others’ opinions.

And here we go:

10. Battlefield Earth

After Pulp Fiction, John Travolta became a star again.  But then Battlefield Earth happened, and destroyed his career once again.  The movie suffers from its unbearable direction (every shot seems to slanted), poor acting, and just ultimately feels like an advertisement for Scientology.  Travolta, you deserve better.

9. North (1994)

Rob Reiner was once at the top of Hollywood.  He directed some of the best comedies of the 80s, like This Is Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally, and The Princess Bride.  But then North happened, and similarly to Travolta above had ruined Reiner’s reputation.  The film paints stereotypes of every single culture imaginable and has tons of unfunny scenarios (Bruce Willis as an Easter Bunny? Really?).  To quote Roger Ebert, “I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.”

8. Gamera vs. Guiron (1969)

All of the Gamera films are quite bad, but Gamera vs. Guiron surely takes the cake.  In this installment, there’s a kid obsessed with traffic accidents, a goofy policeman who the children affectionately call “Cornjob”, and a monster who (I’m not kidding) is a giant knife.  It’s one of the most hilariously bad films ever made and made one of my favorite MST3K episodes.

7. Robot Monster

One of the most abysmal films ever made, Robot Monster is beyond terrible.  Pretty much, aliens who look like a cross between gorillas and divers have killed everyone on Earth except for a single family.  A terrible idea to start with, and the plot gets worst every passing minute.  And the film makes no sense whatsoever.  In one scene, the editor’s repeat the same take of the alien walking out of a cave in a row.

6. The Creeping Terror

A giant alien who looks exactly like a distorted carpet terrorizes a town and devours many people, which looks like the people are actually climbing in.  But besides the terrible production, the film is mixes its dialogue narration and with the characters actually talking.  Little films have been this hilariously bad.

5. Moster A Go-Go

This is one of the hardest films to sit through.  Pretty much an astronaut returns to Earth as a radiated being who kills any surrounding beings.  The cast is repeatedly changed throughout the film, the climax rips off The Third Man, and the ending clearly shows that the filmmakers ran out of a budget and just tried to make a movie out of this mess.

4. The Beast of Yucca Flats

In casting the character of the brilliant scientist who becomes a mutated monster, director Coleman Francis picked Tor Johnson.  Wow.  Not only is the film poorly dubbed (the sound was destroyed in the shooting, so Francis had to record all of it later), but dreadfully written, horribly edited, and terribly acted.  Francis has directed many stinkers, such as Red Zone Cuba and The Skydivers, but The Beast of Yucca Flats is by far the worst.

3. Plan 9 From Outer Space

Often described as the Citizen Kane of bad movies, Plan 9 From Outer Space ranks as Ed Wood’s worst movie, and he’s made plenty of those.  It has some of the worst special effects I have ever seen (the UFOs are clearly on string), a horrible premise (aliens come to Earth to bring back the dead), and Wood even reused old footage of Bela Lugosi to put him in the film, even though they’re obviously out of order (shots turn from night to day, plus Lugosi’s stand-in clearly doesn’t look like him).  I thought it was too entertaining to be called the worst film of all time, but this comes very close.

2. Troll 2

The movie just screams out terrible more than any other film I’ve seen.  First, the movie is actually about goblins.  And the goblins in the movie turn (I’m completely serious) people into vegetables so they can eat them  The film has atrocious acting (here’s a scene to prove my point), a terrible script, a repetitive soundtrack, and the fakest production ever in a film.  And if you thought this was bad, just look at my first place winner…

1. Manos: The Hands of Fate

No film is as awful, as horrible as Manos: The Hands of Fate.  It’s horribly edited (every jump cut if off), terribly acted, and awfully directed.  The movie contains scenes scenes that have no  relevance to the story, such as a pair of teenagers kissing in a car or a fight between a group of women.  And of course there’s Torgo, a character so awful he makes Jar Jar Binks look like Michael Corleone.  In my review, I said “Manos: The Hands of Fate was intended to be a horror movie.  But the fact is nothing in the movie is remotely scary, but just stupid.”  Manos was riffed by MST3K, which made one of the show’s best episodes, and RiffTrax will take on Manos this August.  So at least something could came from this mess.

And now a quick list of dishonorable mentions:

Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny, Santa Clause Conquers the Martians, The Incredible Melting Man, Bride of the Monster

Torgo, the strangest (and unintentionally funniest) character of the film, stares into space.

More dreadful than Plan 9 From Outer Space, stupider than Santa Clause Conquers the Martians, and even a worse production than Troll 2, Manos: The Hands of Fate is the ultimate bad movie and undoubtedly the worst of all time.

Now you may not have heard of this film and its notoriety.  That’s probably what gave Manos it’s legacy.  The film is really obscure and wasn’t well known to the public until Mystery Science Theater 3000 did an episode on it.

You know how you and friends always joke that one particularly bad movie must have been the result of a bet?  Manos: The Hands of Fate was.  Harold Warren, the film’s director, made a bet with Oscar-winning screenwriter Stirling Silliphant that anyone could make a horror film.  Silliphant accepted the bet, and Warren made the film under a budget of $19,000 (about $136,098 today).  Warren filmed the movie in the local town El Paso, where most of the actors were so excited about the film that they worked for free.  But Warren still couldn’t afford good equipment or a steady crew, and the acting is terrible.

Manos: The Hands of Fate is about a family going on vacation.  The family consists of Michael (Warren), Margaret (Diane Mahree), and Debbie (Jackey Neyman).  They lose their way in the desert and stop at a lodge run by a guy named Torgo (Jon Reynolds).

I could easily call Torgo the worst movie character of all time (in your face Jar Jar Binks!).  Is Torgo supposed to be a monster?  He has oversized knees and speaks in a stutter, plus he has the weirdest theme music ever.  From the Wikipedia page, Torgo is supposed to be a satyr, a fact never mentioned or even brought up in the film.

Michael and his family notice that strange things are happening at the lodge, which they express with little or no emotion at all.  Soon they discover the Master of the lodge (who Torgo blabbers about the entire movie, saying things like “the Master will not approve”), who runs a cult with his many wives.

I mentioned before Manos: The Hands of Fate was intended to be a horror movie.  But the fact is nothing in the movie is remotely scary, but just stupid.  Manos is the Spanish word for hands, meaning that the title is actually Hands: The Hands of Fate.  When Warren screened the movie to El Paso, the audience laughed at the film and threw their shoes at the screen during the credits.  The next day, the local paper wrote a review, criticizing the film for its redundant dialogue and poor audio.

After that, Manos was forgotten, until Mystery Science Theater 3000, the TV series which featured a man mock movies with his robot friends, found the episode, and were shocked by its awfulness.  Joel, Crow, and Tom Servo riff on the movie’s uneven editing and continuity errors (almost every single shot is off-cut), the Master and his dog, the really long sequence that just showed the family driving around in the car, a couple smooching in a car (apparently for the entire movie) that has nothing to do with the plot, the fact that the police, who discovered about the missing family, only looked for a few seconds for them, and most off all Torgo (who is parodied in the episode by MST3K writer and future host Mike Nelson).  Plus throughout the episode, the show’s villains Dr. Forrester and TV’s Frank apologize for playing the film, saying it was even way beyond their limits.

Though Manos: The Hands of Fate may be the worst movie of all time, it made perhaps MST3K‘s finest episode.  Warren later stated he was proud of Manos, even though he admitted it was probably the worst film of all time.  He might of liked MST3K‘s riff on the film, but he died in 1985.

For those of you interested in seeing Manos, you can go on youtube and search for MST3K‘s version (the film may be unbearable without it).  And more exciting news comes as former MST3K cast members Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett said they will re-riff Manos in August for RiffTrax.  So Warren, you have something to be proud of.

But Hollywood always tries to push commercialism into the Holidays.  And that brings us to the classically bad movie Santa Clause Conquers the Martians.

Santa Clause Conquers the Martians is about aliens abducting Santa Clause and a few earth kiddies to show their alien children, who have been watching him on TV from outer space.

Stop me right there.  That’s the worse log line you can have for a movie.

The movie grows worse and worse.  Turns out some some aliens feel Santa Clause is corrupting their children and they try to kill him.  The film keeps taking bad and wrong turns into it eventually landed as one of the worst films of all time.

Is there anything good about the film?  Well, there’s the MST3K episode on it, which you could see part 1 below (find the rest on youtube).

It’s a message the world needs to hear.


But those of you who have already agreed not to sing the song in public deserve the reward of something new. So here is my list of the DVDs I will NOT be adding to my Netflix queue in December:

Black Christmas: “In this remake of the 1974 slasher classic, a bloodthirsty psychopath breaks free from a mental institution and returns to the house where he killed his family on Christmas Eve many years earlier — which happens to now be a sorority house.”

Ernest Saves Christmas: Enough said.

Jingle All the Way: “Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in this hilarious holiday romp as a harried dad charged with procuring the toy of the year. Anyone who’s ever gone through hell and high water for a Tickle Me Elmo doll will find much to love here.” I haven’t and I won’t.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians: “The Martians kidnap Santa because there is nobody on Mars to give their children presents.”

A Christmas Family Tragedy: “Filmmakers Matt Hodges and Eric Calhoun use re-creations, interviews and historic photos to chronicle the events of Christmas Day 1929, when farmer Charlie Lawson killed his wife, six children and himself in one of the South’s most legendary crimes.”

Santa with Muscles: Stars Hulk Hogan as Santa. That’s not a typo.

Fred Claus: “The joy and happiness of the holiday season is ruined for the saintly Santa Claus when his cranky older brother, Fred  — a repo man with a sizable rap sheet — comes to stay with him at the North Pole.”

To Grandmother’s House We Go: “Those adorable Olsen twins try to run off to Grandma’s for Christmas, but are stymied along the way when they inadvertently get involved with some bumbling kidnappers.”


The Star Wars Holiday Special: “Introducing Chewbacca’s family…..His father, Itchy….His son, Lumpy….”

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People who should be allowed to sing “O Holy Night” in public:
–Placido Domingo
–Renee Fleming
–Sandi Patty
–The Vienna Boys Choir

People who should not:
–Jessica Simpson
–The Muppets
–Bob Seger
–Boy bands
–Aaron Neville
–Anyone who’s competed on American Idol
–You
–Me
–Everyone else in the universe