The famous terrible author Ed Wood It never lent its distinctive talents to a Christmas film, but with its genuinely baffling sci-fi narrative, the accidental sense of high campand special effects that look like they were rustled up by the nearest kindergarten class, Santa conquers the Martians it’s the next best thing.

The Worst Movies Ever list, celebrating its 60th anniversary, has an unusually solid pedigree. Just three years earlier, director Nicholas Webster received an Emmy Award for his ABC documentary. He walks in my shoes. Meanwhile, the cast was filled with respected actors from the theater world: John Call, who played Santa Claus, came directly from the original Broadway production. Oliverwhile Bill McCutcheon, here the comic character of the groan-worthy Dropo, would later win a Tony. It even made a screen debut for future Golden Globe winner Pia Zadora, seen here as a 10-year-old Martian addicted to Earth-made television.

It is the latter that sets the disjointed wheels of the film in motion. Disturbed by his children turning into couch potatoes, Kimar (Leonard Hicks) consults Chochem (Carl Don), an 800-year-old sage who theorizes that their society’s joyless way of life may be to blame. Mars does not allow for autonomous thinking (machines feed information directly into citizens’ brains), while food (even burgers and chocolate chip cookies) is consumed in the form of miserly pills.

What do young people need, according to Yoda-like the presence, it is a figure that shakes its belly like a bowl of jelly. Of course, the Red Planet, which seems to only consist of the Martian family’s flimsy house and a giant cave, has no one to match this guy. So with various companions, including the evil Voldar (Vincent Beck), Kimar decides the only course of action is to kidnap the real thing.

In one of the film’s few intentional laughs, the Martians are left bewildered when they descend on Earth and discover that Santa Claus has countless doppelgangers. Adding to their rap sheet, the motley crew kidnap human children Billy (Victor Stiles) and Betty (Donna Conforti) to help track down the real Santa. If that wasn’t traumatizing enough, the poor mites are also nearly afflicted by the most unconvincing polar bear ever put to celluloid. “We weren’t about to get a real bear,” Webster later said argument about what is obviously a man in a suit.

The costume designer (or “custom designer,” as the opening credits suggest in a foreshadowing of the sloppiness to come) wasn’t the only amateur on board. You can clearly see one of the elves moving when he was magically frozen by the nefarious Voldar. The spaceship that transports the kidnappers to Earth and back appears to have been constructed from recycled cardboard. And complementing their cheap headsets and tin foil antennae, the Martians’ mottled green makeup was definitely applied in the dark.

Still, Santa conquers the Martians it’s nothing if not resourceful. Sections of the US military mistaking alien visitors for a Soviet aircraft borrow the same stock footage used in Stanley Kubrick’s slightly more acclaimed film. Dr. Strangelove. And after playing an 800-year-old philosopher, Don gets to show his range by doubling as a scientist who bizarrely refers to the aliens as “Martian apes.”

Like the best of Ed Wood, the cult favorite also has a so-bad-it’s-good charm. There is something almost subversive about the way Call chooses to portray Santa Claus; one minute she’s playing the befuddled old man (“Princer and Dancer and Donder and Blixen and Vixen and Nixon and, uh… Oh well, I got those names mixed up”), the next she’s making fun of the crazy husband at the expense. of Mrs. Claus (Doris Rich in, remarkably, the character’s first film portrayal), then laughs like a maniacal villain during a literal, and surprisingly trippy, toy fight. He also seems remarkably nonchalant about being packed into a spaceship, transported to an alien planet, and sentenced to hard labor.

What’s more, Beck is clearly having fun as the Martians’ inner saboteur, and for those who find all the comic antics tiresome, he’s also the voice of reason; see his visible disdain for Santa’s joke, (“What’s glue, green, and you fry it on the end of a stick? A Martian mallow!”) and the fit of hysterics with which he is greeted. And it’s hard to disagree with the Grinch’s concerns upon first meeting Billy and Betty without weakness (“Is that what you want to do to our kids? Turn them into nincompoops like these?”).

Of course, like any great pantomime villain, his master plan is horribly ineffective. While repeatedly expressing his desire to kill Santa Claus (and the two people brought along for the ride), Voldar does nothing but change the settings of the toy factory, resulting in a teddy bear/doll hybrid. By the end of the shortened 81-minute running time, he’s in Martian prison, the three abductees are on their way home, and village idiot Dropo has been named the new joy-spreading savior of Mars.

The film’s classic legacy has been bolstered by several stage adaptations and affectionate mocking from sources such as Mystery Science Theater 3000. There was even talk of a Jim Carrey-remake led in the 90s. Santa conquers the Martians it’s objectively terrible, to be clear. But in an age saturated with Hallmark schmaltzfests, there’s something strangely endearing about a Christmas movie so hopelessly down-home.