‘On The Sixth Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave To Me…Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)’
You’re kidding, right? Seriously? Well, yes; Ilya Salkind’s bewildering attempt to do to Father Christmas what he had done to Superman seven years previously is not by any reasonable definition of the word, a ‘great’ movie. In many ways, especially in the none-more-80s second half featuring Joey, one of cinema’s least convincing ‘street-kids’, Santa Claus (directed by Supergirl’s Jeannot Szwarc) is a specifically bad film.
However, no Christmas since 1988 has passed without an appearance in the TV schedules and three decades of exposure have revealed a sweet, often genuinely magical film with its heart firmly in the right place. Its pre-CGI special effects (puppet reindeers et al) now have an analogue charm about them and as the big man, David Huddleston makes a convincingly doughty, testy and suitably jolly foreman of his North Pole wooden toy factory. It will make slightly sombre watching this Christmas, since Huddleston was one of the eleven thousand beloved celebrities that passed away in 2016.
For all its retro, potentially divisive pleasures, Santa Claus has an ace up its sleeve that was outstanding in 1985 and remains so to this day: John Lithgow. As fiendish toy manufacturer BZ (he of the nail-filled, highly flammable teddy collection), Lithgow takes his panto-baddie skills up to eleven, then up another notch. The scene where he starts choking after hearing that Dudley Moore’s new toy will be given away FOR FREE! is an overacting-masterclass worth the price of admission alone.
