Weird little Christmas movies

Not everything is “It’s A Wonderful Life,” or has to be

When I was campus film chairman in college in the early 1980s, long before “Mystery Science Theater 3000” began making fun of bad movies, we had a “World’s Worst Film Festival.” I believe — although I’m not 100 percent certain — that one of the films we screened was “Santa Claus Conquers The Martians” (1964).

This was actually my Christmas card last year.

Since then, that film has become a staple of MST3K and its spinoffs. It’s so bad, and in such a fun way, that some of the same people have riffed it over and over again. It was an episode of MST3K, but it has also been riffed by the two biggest MST3K spinoffs, RiffTrax and the no-longer-active Cinematic Titanic.

MST3K fans watching the recent “Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special” were thrilled at the Easter egg that Kevin Bacon is watching the original, unriffed “Santa Claus Conquers The Martians” when Drax and Mantis show up to kidnap him.

Similarly, both MST3K and RiffTrax have lampooned “Santa Claus” (1959), a strange little Mexican movie which has…