text: While "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" is usually cited as one of the worse films ever made, this Mexican-made film from 1959 is so bad it makes "SCCM" look like "It's a Wonderful Life." You have to wonder what the people who made this film were thinking; perhaps they meant it as a third-world allegory about capitalist greed and conspicuous consumption. Nah . . . They just weren't very good. The same production company made an even more disturbing version of "Little Red Riding Hood" in which the wolf's obsession with our heroine has unmistakable hints of pedophilia. (Perhaps this was the inspiration for "Freeway.") Back to "Santa Claus": instead of the North Pole, Jolly Old Saint Nicholas resides in a satellite in geosynchronous earth orbit (shades of "MST3K"); instead of elves his toys are made by children chosen from around the world; and he had sophisticated spy equipment to check just which kids are naughty and nice. The result is like an Orwellian outer space sweat shop. It's enough to turn you off Christmas forever. This and other low-rent Mexican children's' films were dubbed in English and widely distributed in the U.S. in the early 1960s; no wonder the sixties became such a turbulent period in American history. The baby boomers who were forced to endure these "family" films as children would be all too eager to turn revolutionary.