A Marxist Approach to Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)
Santa Claus: The Movie (1985) – Marxist
Merry Christmas Eve, darlings! I hope that if you are celebrating this week, you have a lovely, relaxing, warm, tender time that reminds you that smiles on others’ faces, smiles that you helped put there, are the true meaning of life.
For this festive week, I watched a cuckoo fucking bananas movie, naturally from the 1980s with a title as definitive and action-adjacent as the decade itself: Santa Claus: The Movie (1985). This movie is bananas and the Review Roulette wheel landed on Marxist for our lens, which I definitely have thoughts on, but we need to discuss. There’s so much to discuss.
First, as a reminder, these December reviews are even more informal and rapidly written because December is my busiest time of year. For proof, please see our More Public Scholarship page and my Christmas dinner menu/schedule.
SO, Santa Claus: THE MOVIE [pyrotechnics shooting out of both sides of Santa’s sleigh, reindeer neighing like Clydesdales] is a wild ride that never ends. Ben said at one point that there was a Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) vibe to it, and I think it’s because it feels like that terrifying boat scene, not because it’s particularly scary but because you want off almost immediately. But the films also share a cinematographer in Arthur Ibbetson, so it could be that.
Santa Claus: THE MOVIE starts with a woman who is not the Boooooo Lady from The Princess Bride (1987) but perhaps her sister telling children in the Middle Ages a story of how the North Pole came to be. Apparently the North Star shot down a light that broke the mountains of ice and deposited “Vendegums” which is immediately suggested to be a derogatory term for elves and then is never used again in the rest of the film. So this guy Claus, the local woodcutter, arrives and gives kids toys he made in his workshop and then abruptly leaves to go deliver more to children on the other side of the mountain with his wife Anya, and their two reindeer Donner and Blitzen.
WHO ALL DIE. It’s like maybe 5 minutes into this film, and we already kill Santa in a snow storm. And his reindeer are absurdly adorable, like precious little animatronic puppet-y puppies, so it really hits. But the Vendegums shoot down like the cover of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) to welcome them to the afterlife and correct Anya when she calls them by what must be the most offensive word in their language.
The ELVES (check yourself) transport them to the North Pole and we spend an unbelievably long time here. Like you’re thinking “it’s Santa Claus: THE MOVIE, of course we’re spending a lot of time in the North Pole” but I need you to know that the second half of this film is set in the present day, and the description of the film I read suggested that that was most of the film, and maybe it’s just that the pacing of this film is horrendous, but both the Middle Ages North Pole and the 1980s New York parts felt like two full lifetimes. I might still be watching this movie, I can’t tell what’s real anymore.
So, okay, so we’re in the North Pole, and Mickey from Rocky comes out to tell Santa he’s Santa and fulfilling a prophecy, which low-key suggests that the elves were just waiting for this man to be born and die for centuries and they were wicked relieved when he did. Time passes and we get glimpses into other centuries in what feels like real-time, and we finally get to the 80s and John Lithgow.
It’s important for you to know that John Lithgow acts in this film more than he has ever acted before. Like the amount of acting John Lithgow does in this movie is equal to all the acting he has ever done in any other role combined. Lithgow plays a toy executive whom we first meet at a hearing for the Senate Subcommittee of Toy Safety where they light one of his dolls on fire and break a panda teddy open to dump out saw dust, glass shards, and rusty nails.
Now, the throughline between these times is Dudley Moore. Dudley Moore plays an Elf named Patch who has ideas like central heating and conveyor belts and giving the reindeer magic cornflakes to fly. The vibrating coked up reindeer are still cute, though.
So, Patch is like “we can be more efficient! We can be faster! We can be disrupters of the system!” And then he just wrecks shit. His toys made on his little machine fall apart rapidly while kids (who live in the 1980s and are riding wooden bikes with wooden wheels) absolutely trash Santa. They’re like “we believe in that shoddy ass cheapskate giving us trash ass gifts” which is a fascinating intervention in the Christmas film genre in which the problem is normally “we don’t have the capacity for faith anymore” not “fuck that loser and his Dollar Store wooden bikes.”
But then simultaneously there’s ANOTHER storyline about a homeless child, Joe, and a rich girl, Cornelia. These two, as Ben pointed out, have a little Lady and the Tramp (1955) romance and adventure with Santa and kidnapping plot and both get beaten up for defending Santa when the other kids call him shoddy.
So, Patch goes to work for John Lithgow to prove to Santa that he can be a good assistant, and Patch’s brilliant idea is to make lollipops with the reindeer crack to make kids temporarily fly. John Lithgow gives them away for free for Christmas to rehab his image and also whet consumers’ palates for more flying cocaine (which, as I am writing this, it is occurring to me that this might be commentary on Reagan). But Lithgow wants it even more potent, so instructs Patch to bump it up a few notches, which makes like explosives or something, and he’s like “we sell it and move to Brazil.”
But the kids learn of the plan, so Joe gets kidnapped and tied to a pipe in a basement, and Santa comes to rescue him but Patch gets him first and decides he’s done with John Lithgow, so heads to the North Pole with Joe and the explosive candy canes. Santa and the rich girl are in hot pursuit trying to alert them to the explosives, but the “only way” they can save them is by forcing the reindeer to do a maneuver they clearly do not want to do: the Super Dooper Looper move. They catch Joe and Patch after their flying car blows up, and John Lithgow is in space.
Fin.
Like, girl, what in the 80s hairspray-induced hallucination is this shit? This movie’s KOOKY as hell.
So, Marxist. It’s all in there. Very clearly a comment on the mass production and consumption of the 20th century. The automated toy making machine that blows up is a direct reference to a very similar machine in Disney’s first feature length Christmas film, Babes in Toyland (1961), as well as the idea of “industrious children.” The idea of replacing the worker with automation is the real villain of this movie. John Lithgow’s character is also cutting corners constantly to make more money at the expense of children’s safety, so we have prominent arguments against rampant capitalism.
We also have Lithgow exploiting Patch who knows nothing of the concept of money or wages. Lithgow literally joyously bellows at one point, “No strikes! No smelly workers!” while walking through his warehouse to check on Patch’s progress before calling a guy “gay” derogatorily. He’s a whole bitch and by far The Most.
Anyway, that’s all I got for you. I needed to share that this movie happened forever and that it was every movie at once. Santa Claus: THE MOVIE is an apt title because it sure as fuck was a movie.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays, my dear ones! Thank you for supporting our work and reading our little thoughts and words so consistently!
Love,
Ben, Vaughn, and, of course, Biscuits
Also, I have a new book! Selling Out Santa: Hollywood Christmas Films in the Age of McCarthy is Open Access from the publisher and the ebook download is free from Barnes & Noble, but I would ask that if you like what you read, please consider buying a copy for yourself and/or a friend because I am unemployed and by the time royalties pay in July 2026, I will have been unemployed for over 2 years. I’m sorry to ask, but if you can swing it, please do or if you enjoy the book and you’d like to leave me a little holiday present that’s not the full price, please consider a little Venmo gift this Christmas (@Vaughn-Joy). Thank you, darlings!
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