.
THREE HOURS OF
CHRISTMAS MADDNESS!!

Santa Claus and his Helpers REVIEWED!
By Andrew - December 15, 2003
 
 

I don't know why I do it. It probably goes back to the days when Nathan and I rented crappy movies each Friday and watched them. The Fridays known as Crappah Moovah Fridah. I can't explain the "ah" at the end of each word, and I won't try. Let's just blame it on my terrible fictional speech impediment and leave it at that. What I'm trying to get to here is that I don't know why I watch utterly bad movies, but I do. And I do so with such disregard to my own safety and the safety of those around me, I may very well be endangering our very existence; the very fabric of time and space itself, or at least some wildlife.

To get through these 12 days I watched something try so hard to be full of the Christmas spirit, try so damn hard. And then to see it fail, not over a course of half an hour or some other Earthly time length, but over the course of three full hours, It really made me stop and think about how many children’s Christmases were ruined as a result of watching this one video cassette.


It killed his family, and now he's out for revenge.

The tape is simply called "Christmas Cartoons" and was distributed by K5 International. It contains about 15 short holiday themed animations, although some aren't animated or holiday themed at all. The package it claims to have "3 Full Hours" of "Family Entertainment" but that is also debatable.

My initial plans was to review each and every single cartoon on this tape, but after watching that I know that task would be near impossible and would probably lead to the deaths of several economies. So what I'm gonna do here is review one and see if I can get an article out of it.

Santa Claus and his Helpers is one of the non-animated shorts. It starts off with about five minutes of miscellaneous children. This where I began having a problem. I dislike small children kids. Granted, I'm stuck in my childhood, but I don't like these new kids they're coming out with these days. Most of them either think that Optimus Prime is a damn fire truck, haven't even heard of the guy, or think that the Ninja Turtles were always pupil-less. I can see one kid, or maybe even two, knowing some back-story to their rehashed versions of our classics. The kids in this short are classics themselves and immensely uncool.


From left to monster: I make cheese for Santa!; Monster says blarghh!

These kids are probably old enough by now to be my grandparents, if they survived the horrific bloodshed that was Santa's toys in the early part of time. Sharp, jagged, metal edges were in store for kids. It's probably for the best though that these childbeasts need not survive, for the good of the species.

Making fun of children is great and all, but I've already lost focus in the first few paragraphs of this article. This short is really about Santa, Merlin the Magician, and the 5th Dimension! A dimension too fantastic to be called the 4th Dimension.

Our story starts out in Santa's village. Actually it's more of a sweatshop of sorts and is presumably the residence of the ugly kids pictured above. Santa then enters and decrees that it's almost Christmas eve and that the children need to work harder. I'm no Santa-ologist, but isn't Santa supposed give presents to the children of the world and not make them sweat in a slave labor camp at the North Pole? I guess these must be the bad kids of Earth, and mean really bad. Not only did these kids get coal in their stockings, Santa has abducted them and forced them to work for pennies per hour, if that.

I'm beginning to like this Santa guy.


INTERESTING FACT! Did you know that Santa has a laboratory high above the North Pole, far out in space? NOW YOU KNOW!

After a few more shots of the children, we head out into space where Santa has set up a laboratory. What kind of things does Santa have in his space fortress you ask? After I tell you, you'll wish you didn't.

The Behavior Computer
The Behavior Computer, or BC, registers the good and bad deeds of children of all ages. That's pretty straight forward.

The Hear All Ear
Presumably this device listens into each and every child's words and conversations. That's right kids. Each time you've said poopy-head, Santa's heard it.

The Magic Teletalker
It is never explained what this device is used for, and it is never used. Does it speak magic or give incredible head? We may never know the truth.

The See it All Telescope connected to the Magic Eye
This device let's Santa peer into children's beds to see if Michael Jackson has been a naughty boy.

Santa uses his telescope to peer through some expository dialogue. Through this we learn that Santa has set up shop all over the world, and can travel to any of his camps through the 5th dimension, invented by his afore mentioned magician buddy, Merlin. I'm pretty sure that this short is taking some large artistic leaps with the Santa mythos, pretty sure.

This is where the short takes a turn for the worse. Yes, worse. As Santa is peering through his telescope and into the fifth dimension, we soon realize that it is filled with big talking anthropomorphic animals. Now, I like Bugs Bunny and all, but Bugs was never as retarded as these... creatures.

Above we have a slack-jawed wolf named "Ferocious Wolf" and a skunk named "Stinky Skunk". Their alliteration needs some serious work, but so does everything else in this terrible image of Christmas. Mr. Wolf is yelling his ass off incoherently for about three minutes. The only discernable words to come out of his mouth are, "Oh! My ulcer!". Then Puss in Boots appears. Wolf fires Skunk, and I think Puss talks Wolf out of firing Skunk. To tell you the truth, I had no idea what's going on at this point and had successfully thrown down my notepad in disgust.

The voices for Stinky Skunk and Puss in Boots are comparable to Steve Urkel being run over by a huge, novelty sized air horn. If you have this tape, I'd suggest turning down the volume right about here, muting the whole damn thing entirely or throwing it out of the nearest jet plane en route to beyond the Moon.

You may notice that Wolf is toting around a huge rifle. From end to end it stands taller than he himself! We need to see more of this type of thing in Christmas themed media, big weaponry.


This is a mess.

Back at Merlin's place, Santa is worried about not being able to get to one of his villages. Merlin then reminds him of the fifth dimension. I don't know how Santa forgot about a whole dimension, especially through all that exposition. But Santa seems to be a bit loony. Merlin then gives Santa some magic dust that can make all the people of Earth disappear. You may think I'm leaving out some plot points, maybe a reason why Merlin is giving Santa this inviso-dust, but I'm just telling you what's going on. Merlin, the whole time, singing his own theme music that goes something like "da-da da-da da-da da-da...etc...". Whatever you just did in your head when you read that was the good version of his song.

Then there is some confusion about the fifth dimension. Fitting as I have no idea what the hell is going on either. I'm glad I'm not alone and the actors a clueless as to the plot is as well.

Santa smells a flower and gets sent to where ever those furries are, orders them to stop fighting and to get to work. Christmas is coming, you see, and toys need to be built. Little Andrew wants a Unicron this Christmas. So the furries and elves get to work and start making toys and guns. Christmas is saved! OR IS IT!!!???

This stuff is easily on par with 'Manos' the Hands of Fate, widely considered to be the worst movie, ever. If you ever come across this tape and have an undying love for life, don't watch it. However, if you have an undying love for ham and typing in 76pt purple tinted font, or maybe you just are Harry Knowles, watch this flick, you may write in font so big it will crush you all.


MERLIN SEZ: BACK TO NINJACULTURE!

Andrew
AIM: Terrahawk X
E-Mail: andrew@ninjacultr.com

Guess what! Buy me stuff and I'll probably write a 5000 word essay on how you're awesome.

Navigation
Previous <-












 
 
NinjaCulture 2002-03 (E-mail) : Disclaimer : All media is property of their respective copyright holders
No portion of NinjaCulture may be re-printed without prior consent