Why this harmless little trifle has incurred such odium is beyond me; it's vastly superior to 'Santa Claus Conquers the Martians' and even that's better than it's reputation.
Prettily staged in Eastmancolor, the high production values (Santa inhabits a truly vast Arabian Nights palace of gold & crystal up in the clouds - rather than on the North Pole - from which he spies on the world through a telescope that extends an eye resembling the Martian periscope in 'The War of the Worlds') which I suspect were standing sets from a much grander production.
Santa as depicted has a tendency to laugh maniacally and he spends the first ten minutes pounding on an organ as the master of ceremonies on some sort of Eurovision Song Contest for kiddies.
So far, so good, but when he starts his annual round on a sleigh pulled by mechanical reindeer in Mexico City it seriously bogs down when he encounters problems with an agent of Lucifer with horns and enormous ears who rubs his hands with glee as he goes about his nefarious business (at the rate Santa's going he wouldn't have completed his tasks that year).
The film would be much better had it devoted more time to charming little waif Lupita Quezandis, first seen staring wide-eyed at the window of a toy shop and later at the centre of a truly extraordinary dream sequence depicting life-size mechanical Russian dolls dancing in a cloud of dry ice to the accompaniment of saxophones.
Prettily staged in Eastmancolor, the high production values (Santa inhabits a truly vast Arabian Nights palace of gold & crystal up in the clouds - rather than on the North Pole - from which he spies on the world through a telescope that extends an eye resembling the Martian periscope in 'The War of the Worlds') which I suspect were standing sets from a much grander production.
Santa as depicted has a tendency to laugh maniacally and he spends the first ten minutes pounding on an organ as the master of ceremonies on some sort of Eurovision Song Contest for kiddies.
So far, so good, but when he starts his annual round on a sleigh pulled by mechanical reindeer in Mexico City it seriously bogs down when he encounters problems with an agent of Lucifer with horns and enormous ears who rubs his hands with glee as he goes about his nefarious business (at the rate Santa's going he wouldn't have completed his tasks that year).
The film would be much better had it devoted more time to charming little waif Lupita Quezandis, first seen staring wide-eyed at the window of a toy shop and later at the centre of a truly extraordinary dream sequence depicting life-size mechanical Russian dolls dancing in a cloud of dry ice to the accompaniment of saxophones.