#117 – Dial Code Santa Claus

Movie Homeless Santas,

We have watched a lot of movies and we have watched a lot of weird movies and we have watched a lot of bad movies and we have watched a handful of foreign movies. Last night we watched a movie that feels like it got away from us for too long. Maybe because it was French and came out in 1989… but we tracked it down and watched it. FORMIDABLE. 

Recap!

The movie starts with our hero child Thomas waking up in his crazy toy room and then STRAIGHT TO A MONTAGE. A montage my friends, featuring a greased up child working out and putting on plastic weapons and face paint. I’m pretty sure this was a Rambo homage, but was it a joke? so serious! so French! We learn that he’s a genius with electronics and mechanical things and he has set up surveillance and trap doors all over his house, you know…for funzies! He also has a half blind diabetic grandpa who lives in the house. 

So then we are introduced to our villain, who seems like a homeless French Zach Galifianakis. Children are teasing him, he generally seems like a crazy mime. He does not talk very much, but has great crazy eyes. 

Thomas’s mom is head of the department store Printemps (real store) and she’s kind of a workaholic, so she’s working on Christmas eve. Her store hires the villain because they are desperate for last minute Santas. But he is fired in about 12 minutes because he gets all creepy with a little girl and ends up slapping her right in the face. He is fired by Thomas’s mom on the spot. But when he overhears her amour talking about a truck full of toys going to her house, he vows revenge. 

So there are a ton of details and scenes in here (liaison with cohort, hacking into ATM system, corporate tax returns) but it feels like nothing has happened yet. Besides that moist boy, which we were all still thinking about. We checked the time, less than halfway through!

Faux Santa arrives at the house, kills the delivery driver, kills the caretakers of the mansion, then luckily finds some white hair spray paint. Then we get a long crazy eyes scene, where he paints all his hair white. Does the carpet match the drapes, crazy eyes say yes. 

so, then he comes down the chimney. Yes, somehow he actually comes down the chimney. Thomas is hiding under the table and watches his dog attack Santa and then the dog is killed right in front of him with a pie server in a way so brutal it’s really shocking. You get lulled into a coma earlier in the movie, but damn THIS DOG GETS IT.

So in my memory Santa shows up in the last 1/4 of the movie. But NO, it’s 34 minutes in. There’s a full hour of Santa hunting the boy and his grandfather in the house. But there are large sections where Santa seems to take a nap for a while and let other things happen. I guess it’s tiring being a maniac. 

The end sequence is kind of like Home Alone, if you didn’t care about any of the characters before the Wet Bandits start coming in the house. I don’t want to summarize it all because that would be tedious and I feel like it’s better watched. 

There are some pretty legitimate great bad movie parts here

• The kid’s epic mullet, #1 on the list,  there could be a whole article on this hair. it’s magnifique. 
• The clothes, 80s and French… get out of here!
• Any use of 1989 technology, faxes, dot matrix printers, green text monitors, love it all. 
• santa menacingly smashing the car
• santa in general crazy eyes mode
• The kids proto-powerglove arm thing having linked to the surveillance cameras
• The Santa being Sauna’d to death
• the kid having to escape out on the roof with no shoes, what is this, DIE HARD?
• the ‘bury the dog sequence’, so emotional, this means WAR!
• The way the burned santa face make up changes from scene to scene
• nobody could figure out if the kids weapons were real for way to long. 
• hiding grampa in the suit of armour
• how excited santa was that a little toy train was coming to him. 

Random Thoughts!

• The size of the hidden room is cavernous, like an airplane hanger. but nobody knows that it’s in the house.
• The kid says that his hidden room is filled with all his toys, and all his dad’s toys, and all his dad’s toys… so this is 3 generations of kids’ secret room? That no one knows about? can you imagine the smell?
• Every scene that doesn’t matter takes FOREVER. 
• Why is there a maze room in his house… and why doesn’t he know his way out of it. 
• WHY DOES SANTA KEEP LETTING HIM SET UP TRAPS

Conclusion!

This is one of those great bad movies that is WAY more fun to explain to other people than it is to watch. But I get the feeling that with repeat viewings you might notice more crazy things and be able to actually piece together the plot, but on the other hand you would have to watch the very boring parts again. It’s a real impasse. I could see this being a GREAT episode of HDTGM. Looking back through the screenshots I cannot believe some of this stuff happened. Also, out of context, some of the subtitles are amazing. 

I’m up for a movie tonight, Still Christmas season, I’m up for any suggestions. 

Baguette, 

-Mark