25 Days of Christmas - The Naughty List: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (+MST3K)

Now I must confess, I had never seen a Mystery Science Theater 3000 take on a movie.  But thankfully I've fixed that oversight.  Santa Claus Conquers the Martians was the perfect opportunity as it regularly appears in lists of the worst movies ever made.  The 1964 science-fiction film with terrible acting, really, really terrible effects, and a story that's filled with details that are ridiculous.  This provides our MST3K people with tons of opportunity to mock the movie.  Rachel actually reviewed this episode 4 years ago when she was doing a regular feature on MST3K episode.  Here's her summary:

The children on Mars all act like they're on a bottle of Valium, so a plan is hatched by a concerned Mars father to go down to Earth and kidnap Santa Claus, so he will bring his infectious laugh to Mars and cheer up the Martian children with materialistic toys. In the process, two human children are kidnapped too, and try to help Santa in anyway possible.  

I'm kind of surprised how much I liked listening to them mock the movie.  The pop culture references, though dated, were really funny.  I was pretty surprised of how many nerdy references there were - from a "Tardis" reference to "Jungian" philosophy to NPR's Science Friday's Ira Flato. The breaks they took were hysterical - A Patrick Swayze Christmas by Crow.  One of the minions was named 'Argo' which cracked me up. It definitely did begin to drag with slower comments between the Bots toward the middle.  And sadly, the movie itself can't maintain the accidental humor very well.  It was still a terrific experience.  

"Wow, their ship is run by a Simon game" - most of you will be too young to get this reference.