Marcus: Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (1964)

          Right before winter break, I was fortunate enough to get invited to a dinner for all the members of my office, where a fateful game of Yankee Swap took place. You probably all know it by different names, but it's the game where you can choose to either pick a new gift or rob your neighbor. I'll spare you the details, but at the end of the night, I emerged the undisputed loser, as I walked away with my very own copy of "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians". And like a syringe full of heroin, it ruined Christmas without me even caring.
          The movie was eventually retitled "Santa Claus Defeats the Aliens" but I'm going to use the original title because it makes Santa sound more like a warlord. Turns out the title change makes no difference because the movie does not involve Santa conquering or defeating anything except my will to embrace the holiday spirit. First of all, the front of the DVD case is guilty of false advertising. The top billed performer is Pia Zadora, but she has a total screen time of I don't give a fuck. She spends less than 5 minutes playing a young martian girl named Girmar, which is the astoundingly clever coupling of the words "girl" and "martian" (Other names include: Momar = Mom martian, Kimar = King martian, and Bomar = boy martian).
          Another example of false advertising is the portrayal of Santa as a merry and rosy-cheeked man with a thick, full beard as white as snow and a glint in his eye. This photo was obviously lifted off of a Hallmark card, as the actual Santa in the movie looks nothing like this. Instead, he's a strange, useless old fart with a scraggly, sorry excuse for facial hair, and who spouts lines to Mrs. Claus that carry ominous undertones of domestic unrest, like after she gets blasted with a freeze ray and he casually says, "You know my dear, I can't recall a time when you've been so silent for so long." There's a loving husband.
          Santa is played by an actor named John Call. Don't worry, you've never heard of him. It's actually quite sad, if you look up his acting credits, most of his roles were background or ensemble roles, and almost all of them were uncredited. His role in this movie was not only his biggest, but also his second to last. You just know as you watch that he's putting all he's got into the part, but it just falls flat and reeks of desperation. He crafts together a third rate mall Santa at best. The only redeeming feature is that I think the beard is real, but again, it looks mangy.
          Also, when you think of characteristics of Santa, one of the first three things that will come to mind is his signature laugh. Well, there's no ho-ho-hoing for this one. Instead this Santa expresses (joy?) with a maniacal cackle that lasts for minutes at a time and slowly escalates until everyone else is joining in with feverish frenzy for fear of the bearded demon becoming angry and gnawing their scalps off. I should try to emphasize how troubling this is by adding that the main conflict in the film is that the children of Mars can not enjoy their childhood because they have nothing on Mars that is equivalent to Christmas (I guess that makes Jews like Martians... but hey, I didn't write the script) and Santa cures this problem by laughing at the kids for two minutes. That's it, he cackles at them, and eventually they join in. It's borderline child abuse.
          The problem is first revealed to the Martians when Kimar (the King, remember) visits the Martian elder, Chochem, which I believe is Yiddish for genius, to find out why his children are acting so strangely. As Kimar puts it, "They appear to be troubled, they don't care to sleep. I had to use the sleep spray on them again." When you think about it, the kids might be more upset about their parents using date rape drugs on them rather than not having Santa to look forward to.
          To solve the problem, the Martians decide to kidnap Santa and bring him back to Mars to work there. The whole plan goes awry when they have to stop and ask two human children for directions, then kidnap them so they don't alert the authorities, because it would be almost cliche to have the Martian's interplanetary vessel pulled over by the cops. Eventually one of the Martians goes rogue and tries to kill the kids and Santa by blasting them out of the airlock, which would have made the movie almost worth it. Instead we get a weird scene where Santa stands by silently while the kids struggle to think of an escape plan. It's like he's judging them, as if escaping is the deciding factor on whether or not they get presents or coal, except coal in this case is a cold, silent scream-filled death in the empty abandon of space. Once they escape things get even weirder, to the point where I get uncomfortable watching the end.
          To stop the rogue alien the children devise a cunning plan to lure him into the cargo hold where they will then lock the door behind him and seal hi... oh wait, no, they attack him with toys and squirt guns while slow carnival music plays and the camera jostles around and pulls in and out in a format not unlike a snuff film. For 3 straight minutes this goes on. The Martian just spins and shields his face while the children squirt and the little mechanical toys advance ever closer, slowly but surely in a paroxysm of madness. And Santa... well, Santa just looks on and laughs that evil laugh as if the world were crumbling around him. Then the movie ends with a soft, translucent-edged still of Santa smiling with the words "Merry Christmas" underneath, but they might as well say "RIP" because not only does it look like a card you'd see next to the coffin at a wake, but by then the movie has killed your childhood.
          And that, children, is what Christmas is all about.

Diane: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007)

          The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is the most nerdtastic documentary you n00bs will ever see. Period. It begs the question: Why wasn’t my middle school science teacher as awesome as Steve Wiebe? Heck, all my seventh grade science teacher did was drop pens on the ground and ask me to pick them up in order to look at my cleavage. But that’s a different story, a much darker… repressed… different story.

          Here are the game’s main characters:

          Steve Wiebe: he’s like your Mario, who never seems to get any stars or coins and constantly gets thrown barrels in his way. Some of these barrels include getting badly injured while pitching in the high school baseball championships and getting laid off the day he signed the lease on his home. But like Mario, he starts over with a new life and tries to move on. While on the hunt for a new job, Wiebe looks up the world record for Donkey Kong and decides at that moment, he is going to beat it. But before he can do that, he needs to face a whole new set of barrels being thrown at him.

          Billy Mitchell: the record holder of Donkey Kong. He is the Donkey Kong throwing all of the barrels…if Donkey Kong looked like a more twisted brother of hair guru, Paul Mitchell. Billy earned the world record score in 1982, and has been living off of that fame ever since.

Walter Day: meet Barrel #1. Walter is the head “referee” of the FunTown tournament. Walter enters and verifies all of the new high scores for classic arcade games. Walter didn’t count Steve’s video submission of what would have been the highest Donkey Kong score because of Billy’s affiliation Roy Shildt, an enemy of Billy Mitchell. It’s funny though, Walter was so quick to add Billy’s secret new video submission even though it had many breaks and skips in the VHS tape.

          Brian Kuh: Barrel #2.  After Steve Wiebe sends in his tape, Kuh breaks into Wiebe’s garage and pulls apart his machine to see that it is not tampered with. He finds a box in the garage with the return address belonging to Roy Schildt and reports it to Walter Day. Brian quits his job as a bank comptroller so he could move closer to FunSpot and practice there everyday. He enters the tournament as a competitor against Wiebe, claiming that he has what it takes to win. But aside from losing early in the levels, he spends most of the tournament reporting to Billy Mitchell of Steve’s increasing scores.

          Despite all of the barrels and Donkey Kong metaphors, the documentary ends with a sentence saying that eventually Wiebe earns the highest score. Yay! Steve wins, you really feel for the guy. But overall, all I felt was that all of the characters were pathetic. Each of them was desperately trying to relive the past. Wiebe, having a high score in a game won’t make you win that baseball game you lost years ago. Walter, you are sooo old. Retire! No one needs a referee for these games anymore because no one plays them anymore. If you don’t believe my argument, Google Image search Billy Mitchell and that’s all the proof you need. This rivalry is still going on today. So Billy Mitchell, I hope it’s worth your Kid Rock haircut and Steve Wiebe, I hope it’s worth neglecting your kids because in the end you both lost. On January 11, the record was taken by Hank Chien, a 35 year old plastic surgeon who had only been playing the game for a year and a half.