Santa Claus: Creepy Children's Classic

[silent_rob]

I was recently digging through my video collection and came across an old copy of Rene Cardona's "Children's Classic" Santa Claus. I vaguely remember it from when I was younger and, having rewatched it, have come to the conclusion that it is one of the creepiest films in existence.
For those not fortunate enough to have seen this 1959 classic, it takes you through Santa's workshop: a floating castle near the north pole. There, Santa has children from all over the world working for him, making his toys. There is a long scene with him going through all of the nations and each of them singing a stereotypical song (or in the case of Africa, beating drums). He also has Merlin working for him, making dust to put children to sleep and a flower that will turn Santa invisible. Santa also has a key smith, who makes him a key to open any door in the world.
Now, while Santa and his sweat-shop practices are somewhat creepy, the demon is very creepy. Yes, there is a demon named Pitch, who is sent to the earth by the devil to make children do naughty things and make Santa angry. This includes trying to make a good girl steal a doll. Pitch blows in her ear and she has this surreal dream with dolls dancing around her in a haze. The dolls have two faces and very creepy voices. We see the dream because...Santa has a machine that can see into dream.
Just wondering if anyone else has seen this. It does have some funny moments, though, because it's pretty corny.

Lucifer: You shall be punished, and instead of red-hot coals, you will eat chocolate ice cream.
Pitch: No! No, Lucifer, King of all Evil Spirits! Not that! By the horns of everything satanic, I beg you! To live I must have heat. Frozen meals are bad for me, especially chocolate! It's very bad for my digestion, which is so delicate.

[Cabbage]

Yeah, I've seen that! I saw it back in the 70's, when I was 5 or 10 years old. I don't remember it very well at all, but tiny bits of scenes of the demon trying to screw with Santa pop into my head from time to time. I remember liking it; I've always wanted to see it again to relive some of my youth, but never have ran across it. Seems like it would be good campy fun.

[silent_rob]

Yeah, Cabbage, I remember liking it as a kid, too. And it is actually a lot of fun. Though at times, when rewatching it, my friend and I would look at each other in amazement. But most of the time we just laughed ourselves silly.

[Fenris]

Originally posted by silent_rob
I was recently digging through my video collection and came across an old copy of Rene Cardona's "Children's Classic" Santa Claus. I vaguely remember it from when I was younger and, having rewatched it, have come to the conclusion that it is one of the creepiest films in existence. [/QUOTE]

MST3K did this movie. Aa Joe-Don Santa looks through his eyeball telescope, one of the robots comments "Santa's increaseing paranoia begins to hamper operations at the Klaüs Organization"

It is a weird movie, though.

Fenris

[Lamia]

I saw the "MST3K" version of this movie at a party this past holiday season.

There was a lot of screaming that night, and I don't mean that in a good way.

One guest said that she was afraid to go to sleep after seeing that freakish eyeball telescope Santa used to spy on kids.

And we all thought Santa was probably up to no good with those poor multi-ethnic "It's a Small World" sweatshop laborers.

[silent_rob]

Originally posted by Fenris
MST3K did this movie.

Thanks, Fenris. My friend and I thought it would make a good MST3K, but neither of us knew if they had done it (we don't get a channel that the re-runs are played on, and have only seen the Rhino tapes).

I'll have to keep an eye out for it.