Pia Zadora, the 80’s Paris Hilton, appears on screen for the first time. She plays Martian girl Girmar. Her brother is named Bomar. Her mom? Well, that would be Momar, naturally. Pia doesn’t have much to do except act listless. She may have been overqualified for the role.
The intended message was that kids need to be kids. You know, all work and no play. Unfortunately, the message delivered is that children must be showered with material goods and kidnapping is an appropriate way to go about it. This highlights the fact that it was a very slap-dash production. Some sets and props were fine, considering, but the makeup looks like it was applied in a hurry by someone who doesn’t know how to apply makeup.
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is renowned as a supremely terrible film. IMDb ranks it as 42nd worst film of all time, and if you consider only films released before 2000, it jumps to seventh place. The plot is dumb, the sets and costumes are decidedly low budget (don’t get me started on the polar bear!), and the message is questionable. But truth be told, it wasn’t that bad of a film. The plot and acting were very silly but it’s a kids movie. There is plenty to goof on and the overuse of stock footage and exposition makes it a bit tedious, but I’ve watched far worse. Make no mistake, it is a bad film. I can’t even recommend it to its target audience. There are far too many fair to good Christmas movies to waste time with this one. But it’s not at the Manos level, and isn’t even the worst Christmas special. AMRU 2.5.
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