Los Angeles, CA

I don’t know about you, but I am a HUGE Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan — MST3K, for those of you in the know. And if you’re a fan too, then you already know what the title of this post refers to. If you don’t, then I’ll clarify for you: a man is trapped on a bone-shaped satellite orbiting earth, forced to watch god-awful films with two robots he built for company. The point of these bizarre exercises is to try and drive him insane, because the mad scientist hidden deep underground that’s controlling this experiment seems to think bad movies are the key to world domination. At first it was the hapless Joel Robinson who was stuck in space with Crow, the snarky robot who looks vaguely like a giant gold spider, and Tom Servo, the pint-sized converted gumball machine with a voice like butter. Joel finally manages to escape the Satellite of Love (har har), and is quickly replaced by an unlucky temp named Mike Nelson. Mike is a little more with it than Joel, but still suffers through his fair share of awful films.

One of these hideous experiments happens to be Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. It’s about, yes, Martians, who are trying to figure out why their children are so lifeless and glued to their TV sets. Maybe it’s because the Martians have forgotten about love and basic affection? Pft, no! It’s because they don’t have Santa Claus to give them toys, as they see from an Earth broadcast. So the clueless Martians come to earth and kidnap Santa and force him to make their children happy. Also on board the Martian spaceship is an all-American brother and sister duo, and, together with Santa and a seriously stupid Martian outcast named Dropo, they show Mars what Christmas is really all about: toys and acting as stupidly childish as possible. It’s worth noting that this film also marked Pia Zadora’s debut as the little Martian girl Girmar.

What does this have to do with L.A., you may ask? Well, besides being a great film to watch during the holidays (please, only watch it under the guidance of Mike and the ‘bots through MST3K, do not attempt to watch it seriously), you can also see it live! The Maverick Theater in Fullerton is doing a live stage production of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, I kid you not. I can’t wait to see how they handle it, especially after the friend who told me about this production said he’d just seen the Maverick’s stage version of Night of the Living Dead and it involved a real truck smashing through the set and a real zombie attack. You know it’s going to be good. So if you can at any time between November 23 and December 30, try to catch this show. I’m sure you won’t regret it.

More information and tickets available here.