Tomorrow night, it’s our last chance to ruin Christmas with “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner.”
Viewers are still slack-jawed and aghast over last year’s discussion of “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” An 11-year-old Pia Zadora in green face paint, a supporting cast of down-on-their-luck Broadway actors, and a fly-by-night production valued at a dollar-ninety-eight (with every penny onscreen). Where do we go from there?
All downhill, of course. WAY downhill, as it happens. Following in the footsteps of the “Rocky” franchise, we’ll up the ante, even as we go to Hell: our focus this week will be on the Mexican underground classic “Santa Claus Versus the Devil” (1959).
What begins almost as an inversion of Goethe’s “Faust,” with Lucifer dispatching his goateed lieutenant, Pitch, to earth, to turn the children of the world against Santa, builds to a “Spy vs. Spy” type showdown of the kind Blake Edwards would have loved. If only Jack Lemmon had played Pitch.
In the interim, Santa laughs it up with Merlin, a hirsute blacksmith, a multinational consortium of half-pint singing helpers, and a team of wind-up reindeer that will turn to dust with the rising sun, all while keeping tabs on the naughty and nice from his gold-and-crystal toyshop in space, high above the North Pole.
This being Mexico, somehow the Baby Jesus is never far away from the surreal, slapstick shenanigans.
It’s a literal war on Christmas, as Roy and I get hot under the collar. We’ll exchange views – maybe even blows – over “Santa Claus Versus the Devil,” on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Leave your eerie life-sized dolls in the comments section, as we livestream on Facebook, this week at a special time, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, AT 7:30 PM EST!