Opens In Theaters Nationwide Beginning December 2, 2011. Check the Official Website at www.SantaMartiansMovie.com for theater listing..
Ah, what's more emotional than a great Christmas movie? Who hasn't choked back a sob at the end of It's a Wonderful Life or laughed with delight at a holiday themed comedy like Babes in Toyland? Whether they're about Santa Claus or Ebenezer Scrooge or Clark Griswald's disaster-prone family, Christmas movies are all about warmth, magic and inspiration.
And some holiday movies are just plain fun. Happily, a bunch of the very rarest (and sometimes weird) Christmas filmic moments have been gathered together in Santa's Cool Holiday Film Festival for what has to be the funkiest, silliest and least emotional movie experience you'll have this holiday season. Well, unless you count hysterical laughter as an emotion.
This cinematic Christmas stocking is loaded with retro-cool presents of all kinds. There are two cartoons from the brilliant Fleischer Brothers, Max and Dave -- Christmas Comes But Once a Year (1936), in which that whimsical inventor Grampy creates a whole Santa's workshop worth of toys for some poor orphans; and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1948), the first animated version of this classic tale about the outcast little deer who saves Christmas. The Fleischers were known for their sly, slightly deranged sense of humor as seen in the Popeye and Betty Boop cartoons of the early Thirties. The two featured cartoons are beautifully animated and full of vintage Technicolor fun. I couldn't believe how gorgeous they looked on the big screen.
But there's more! The rest of the films producer, Thomas W. Holland, has dug up are time warps from the 1950's and 1960's. They range from a Christmas adventure starring that sensation of Fifties TV Howdy Doody to a couple of visits with Ozzie and Harriet to a holiday salute from ventriloquist Shari Lewis and her hand puppet Lambchop. These -- as well as a bunch of "Greetings From The Theater Management" trailers made for movie theaters (they are actually dated by year and its fun to see color ones introduced in the Sixties) -- will inspire a kind of unsettling nostalgia among Baby Boomers who'll surely remember this when they were kids. For their kids and grandkids these mind-boggling artifacts will seem either surreal or cheesy -- or both. But that's the real fun of this show.
Even though your first response to these nostalgic movies might be slack-jawed disbelief of their ultra-family-friendly naivete, the laughing will soon take over. And once it starts, you're in for a solid two hours of titters and guffaws.
The biggest, most brightly-wrapped gift under this gaudy and colorful Christmas tree is the unforgettable (even if you try) 1964 feature film, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Kids will love it. Of course, connoisseurs of bad B-movies consider this one of the worst, which means it's one of the funniest. Best known as the screen debut of famously inadequate actress/singer Pia Zadora, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is a baffling mixture of sci-fi, Christmas cheer and childish slapstick, all filmed in garish (or as the poster says, "Space-Blazing") color. And you'll see how important that color is when you find out that Pia plays the entire role with a bright green face.
Actually, her face hasn't looked this green in years. Thanks to a new digital restoration, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians looks brighter and cleaner than it has looked since it was first foisted on unsuspecting children back in '64. In fact, everything in Santa's Cool Holiday Film Festival was mastered from the best surviving prints. These films haven't been seen on the big screen in decades and the pictorial and sound quality are first rate.
Back when many of the movies in this amazing program were new, films were often advertised as "Fun For the Whole Family" -- a perfect description for Santa's Cool Holiday Film Festival. Want to find out how much fun that is? Instead of watching the same old Christmas movies on TV, hustle the whole clan down to your local theater for a delightful afternoon or evening of new Christmas memories.
Copyright 2011 Holland Releasing
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