ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nate B. is the man who loved Cat Dancing and the boy with green hair. He has seen too many bad movies and not nearly enough good ones. He is the last active member of the Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kids Fanclub, and he is currently working on writing a better bio.

Here we go…a jewel in the crown that is postwar Americana kitsch – Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Released in 1964 at the height of the space race, this film captures that time period in all the right ways. Not only were we gonna beat the Russians to Mars, not only would we come into contact with alien life, but we would win them over to our side! Not with guns or diplomacy, but with a jolly fat man in a red suit who epitomizes consumerism and capitalism!  It’s the kind of naive innocence from a bygone era that’s charming in its sincerity, especially because it’s a children’s movie. Unlike countless other children’s movies, this one is watchable for the older crowd, too. For a different reason, of course.

The children of Mars are sad. So a daring group of Martians take it upon themselves to abduct Old Saint Nick and have him start up his toy building and distribution enterprise for them. They pick up two Earth children in the process, and after everyone gets back to Mars they have to contend with a disgruntled jerk Martian who wants to destroy Santa because he believes he’ll make the Martian children soft (of course).

Now, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians may not be quite as technically woeful as Ed Wood films, as the filmmakers had a budget that was higher than $20 (dig that retro-futuristic Martian home!). But it shares the same genuine earnestness to thrill and entertain, which I think is what helped keep it “in circulation” in cult film circles all these years, so to speak. It has a dismally low rating on both IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, but what do they know? I can’t find it in me to dislike a movie with a line about how the UN plans to save Santa as “the lights burn until dawn.” Not to mention Torg the robot. Or the amazing Polar Bear. Or the stock footage sourced from some Air Force training film. Or the stupidly infectious theme song that opens and closes the movie. Hooray for Santy Claus!

The acting in this movie is surprisingly decent. John Call is as good as you can expect a Santa to be, smoking a pipe (!) and ho-ho-hoing all the way. The guy who plays Kimar is stoic and wooden, which ends up working for an alien character devoid of emotions. Voldar, the anti-Santa Martian mentioned earlier, is great too when he drips with contempt for human concepts like ‘fun’ and’ happiness’, plus he has a terrific mustache. And Droppo, is well, Droppo. Of course, one of the reasons this movie is known is that Pia Zadora is in it.  It was her debut, and for a long while, her swan song until she resurfaced in Butterfly, a movie not as infamous as this one but still reviled in its own right. Oh well, at least she has her cameo in Naked Gun 3 to fall back on. Actually, looking up Pia Zadora on IMDB, apparently she did a movie with Telly Savalas called Fakeout. Now there’s a film that’s going straight to the top of my watch list.

Some people have made it a tradition to watch Die Hard as part of their holiday season. If you’re one of those, why not go old school this year? Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is as low on budget as it is on logic but it’s a great example of why sometimes, despite all reasons not to, a movie just strikes a chord with you through sheer audacity. Plus, it’s in the public domain! There’s a lovely Blu Ray available, but I personally prefer the lower quality prints in this case. Maybe it’s because that’s how I first saw it, and maybe because it adds to the overall vintage vibe and fits the movie’s low budget roots.

Asparia (Anna-Maria Polani) is the Queen of the Hellenes, and has been captured by the Babylonians. Somehow, she has hidden her royalty and is living as a common slave in Babylon. Hercules (Rock Stevens, who is really Peter Lupus, who played Flex Martian in Muscle Beach Party, Goliath in Goliath at the Conquest of Damascus and Superman in a series of Air Force commercials, a job he lost when he posed fully nude in Playgirl) is on his way to save her.

King Phaleg of Assyria (Mario Petri) comes to Babylon hoping to marry Asparia and unite their kingdoms. That’s stopped by the rulers of the country, Taneal (Helga Line), Salmanassar (Livio Lorenzon) and Azzur (Tullio Altamura). Hercules saves him and continues to Babylon.

When he gets there, the brothers are fighting over who gets to marry Asparia while Taneal destroys her own nation to get its riches. Brother kills brother, King Phaleg shows his true colors and Hercules does what he does best.

This was directed by Domenico Paolella, who directed his first movie,  Gli ultimi della strada, in 1940 and wrote his last, Power and Lovers, in 1994. He also wrote the story with Luciano Martino.

The problem I have with this is that Helga Line, as a murderous maniac, is so much more attractive than Polani. If I had the power of Hercules, I know that my decisions would not be as godly.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.

Ercole l’invincibile came to American audiences as Son of Hercules in the Land of Darkness. Of these thirteen movies in the Embassy Pictures package offered to TV channels, two had Hercules, none had his children Alexiares, Anicetus, Telephus, Hyllus and Tlepolemus, and four were Maciste movies.

Ercole, or Hercules, is played by Dan Vadis, a former U.S. Navy sailor and bodybuilder who was a member of the Mae West “Muscleman Revue.” He had already played Hercules in The Triumphs of Hercules and after these movies, moved into Westerns, the films of Clint Eastwood and finished his career in Seven Magnificent Gladiators.

After saving Telca (Spela Rozin, Strange Girls) from a lion, her father Kabol (Ken Clark) offers her hand in marriage if he gets a dragon’s tooth for him. That tooth is impossible to pull out unless the dragon is dead, but a witch (Olga Solbelli) claims she can help make a spear. But that tooth has magic that only works once and the witch also wants the tooth. There is also a tribe of cannibals who eat hearts called the Demulus, led by Ella (Carla Calo).

Director Alvaro Mancori was also the cinematographer of the peplum horror crossover Goliath and the Vampires. He used the name Al World here and in the only other movie he made, the anthology The Double Bed, he was Al Wood.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.

I love when a film series sticks around long enough to battle aliens. Hercules is no different, as now he must battle the evil Queen Samara (Jany Clair, Planets Against Us)  and her army of Moon Men, who demand that children be sacrificed to bring back their dead leader.

Hercules is played by Sergio Ciani, who used the stage name Alan Steel. He got his start doubling for Steve Reeves in Hercules Unchained and The Giant of Marathon. His run of seven Hercules films is filled with crazy situations to keep the peblu genre alive, such as Hercules and the Masked Rider, which had a Zorro theme, and Hercules and the Treasure of the Incas, which started as a sword and sandal movie and became a western after A Fistful of Dollars became a major hit during filming.

If you’re expecting this movie to be true to its mythological origins, you should know that it borrows from Roman, Greek, Ancient Egyptian and Cretan stories, as well as even soem Edgar Rice Burroughs. In Italy, Steel really playing Maciste, who was a star of silent Italian cinema, but American distributors changed him to Hercules.

Look, it’s Hercules against moon men with giant heads. You should be so lucky.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi to download this from the Internet Archive.

A handpicked group of soldiers — by Julius Caesar, no less! — must break into the druid stronghold to locate and destroy the secret weapon that could help them win the Battle of Alesia. They are centurion Claudius Marcellus (Richard Harrison, not yet in the world of Godfrey Ho), Germanicus (Ralph Hudson, who was only in one other movie, Ape Man of the Jungle), knife thrower Varus (Goffredo Unger) and Castor (Ettore Manni, who hits all the various genre of Italian exploitation cinema from this peplum to westerns like For a Few Extra Dollars, poliziotteschi like Calling All Police Cars, giallo such as A.A.A. Massaggiatrice bella presenza offresi… and even is in Fellini’s City of Women and Bava’s Rabid Dogs). They are joined by the young Valerius (Alberto Dell’Acqua, who is in a ton of westerns as well as Zombi), who wants to be a soldier like all of them.

They are captured and placed in a cell next to noblewoman Livilla (Wandisa Guida, Miss Cinema of 1954, who is also in I Vampiri) and her bodyguard Drusus (Philippe Hersent, So Sweet, So Dead) whose spirit has been destroyed by the tortures of the terrifying druid Vercingetorix (Renato Baldini, Who Killed the Prosecutor and Why?). He tries to do the same thing to Claudius Mercellus, threatening him with heated metal, and the centurion just picks it up and burns his own chest with it. Man, these guys are tough. Anything to find that catapult, right? Even if the kid has to die.

This movie was directed by Anthony Dawson, whose name I love to say because he’s really Antonio Margheriti. This was written by the always busy Ernesto Gastaldi along with Arlette Combret and producer Luciano Martino.

As the genres go in fashion in Italy from sword and sandal to westerns, the final films of the glory days of peplum begin to give way to other films and be inspired by them. This could be a war movie other than the costumes.

You can watch this on Tubi.