The Santa Effect

There are a lot of movies with “Claus” in the title. I did a quick search on the word on IMDB, and found over a hundred.  There’s Candy Claus, Satan Claus and Capture Claus. Meet the Other Claus, Pause for Claus and Santa Claus’ Mistake (presumably not Mrs Claus’ favorite).  One of my favorites is a 1980 TV series called Ulf Og Claus Show. I don’t have the foggiest what it means — “Elf and Claus Show,” perhaps? — but it’s up 32% in popularity on IMDB this week.

What got me thinking about all of this is that Fred Claus has been playing almost non-stop on HBO lately.  Why they choose to show it in the middle of May, when 90-degree weather has descended upon much of the Southern U.S.,  only the wire-rimmed programmers at the network know for sure.  Is it part of some “Christmas in May” celebration that I haven’t heard about?  Is the premium network involved in some dastardly plot to fry all our brain-cells, or turn them to mush like Alec Baldwin wants to in those Hulu commercials?

Why Fred Claus and why now?  It used to be that you got sappy, formulaic Christmas movies only Christmas-time, when you’re too blitzed out on a sugar high to notice, but now the programming cycle seems to be so kabuki-esque that they’re gonna play a movie when they contractually can no matter what time of year it is.  Or maybe it’s deeper than that: maybe they’ll play in now, in May, and then again at Christmas time, thus getting tw0 saturation-programming cycles from one crappy film.  We’ll forgive anything at Christmas!

Anyway, as one who’s always up for a brain-numbing trash ride, I watched Fred Claus. It was in bits and pieces, but I watched it nevertheless, and I never saw so many first rate actors slumming in one movie in my entire life.  There’s  Paul Giamatti as Santa, with rubbery-looking fake hands; Kevin Spacey as the big, bad effiiciancy expert threatening to shut poor old Santa down;  Kathy Bates as Mother Claus;  Miranda Richardson as Mrs. Claus; and Rachel Weisz, who will do absolutely anything for money, as somebody named Wanda.  All this fire-power in support of Vince Vaughn in the title role of Fred Claus, Nick’s ne’er-do-well brother who, and I hate to spoil things, Saves Christmas.

I remember another Claus movie, 1964’s Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. I’m proud to say that as an eleven-year-old, I was discerning enough to see it on the big screen, somewhere in the greater unwashed Seattle area.  I’m not sure how I came to go see it, but I remember it being a big deal.   Doubtless, there was a breakfast cereal tie-in, or maybe Mr. Green Jeans was shilling for it, or something.

It didn’t have any big stars in it, or at least any big movie stars.  Santa was played by John Call, who appeared in 19 Broadway productions, but who was not known for his film work.  Leonard Hicks, who appeared in only one other film role as “uncredited,” played someone named Kimar, but the biggest name was Pia Zadora.  That’s right: she of naked-in-the-fountain at Cannes fame.  Only in 1964, she was only ten, a year younger than me (she’s still a year younger than me).  It was also before, I presume, she married that Turkish millionaire, what’s-his-name,  Mishulam Riklis who got her a much better part in Butterfly.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians has become something of  a cult classic thanks to the ever-smarmy Mystery Science Theater. Looking at the stills I dredged up off the internet, it does look impossibly cheesy; as an eleven-year-old, especially in 1964, it was pretty cool.