A recording of The Mads: Santa Claus vs. The Devil livestream on December 15, 2020. Features the entire film and post-show Q&A with Frank and Trace, plus special guests Andy Kindler & J. Elvis Weinstein.

SANTA CLAUS VS. THE DEVIL (1959) (taken from Wikipedia)

Santa Claus (sometimes also known as Santa Claus vs. the Devil) is a 1959 Mexican fantasy film directed by Rene Cardona and co-written with Adolfo Torres Portillo. In the film, Santa works in outer space and does battle with a demon named Pitch, sent to Earth by Lucifer to ruin Christmas by killing Santa and "making all the children of the Earth do evil".

A dubbed and slightly edited English-language version was produced for U.S. release in 1960 under the direction of Ken Smith. It was lampooned on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

The film was considered to be a financial success over several holiday season theatrical releases in the 1960s and 1970s. Broadcast of the film also became a holiday tradition at several U.S. television stations. The film garnered at least one award, winning the Golden Gate Award for Best International Family Film at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1959.

The film was also featured in the fifth season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (episode #521), which first aired on Christmas Eve 1993. The devil Pitch became a recurring character on MST3K, played by writer Paul Chaplin. Chaplin said, "It's kind of a fun movie, and we all enjoyed it", noting that he made "quite an attractive demon".[4] The episode may be the origin of the phrase "nightmare fuel"; during the movie, Crow T. Robot calls an animatronic Santa "some good old-fashioned nightmare fuel", and the phrase spread through MST3K message boards.[5]

Frank Conniff is a comedy writer and performer who began his TV career writing for the Peabody award-winning series Mystery Science Theater 3000, where he also played “TV’s Frank,” the bumbling yet lovable mad scientist sidekick. He then went on to be a writer, producer and actor on the ABC TV series Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and he was a writer and producer on The Drew Carey Show on ABC, The New Tom Green Show on MTV, and the satirical series O2BE on the Oxygen Network, where he was also a cast member. He was head writer of the animated Nickelodeon series, Invader Zim, and also was a writer and producer for the Air America Radio network, where he provided material for on-air personalities Rachel Maddow, Marc Maron, Lizz Winstead, Al Franken, Janeane Garofalo, and Randi Rhodes. He was a writer and performer on Viewpoint with John Fugelsang on Current TV, and on Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell on the FXX network, and he also writes and performs on The Jimmy Dore Show on Pacifica Radio.

Trace Beaulieu is a comic actor, writer, performer. He was a founding member of the Emmy- nominated, Peabody Award-winning, cult hit show Mystery Science Theater 3000. In addition to writing, occasionally directing, designing and building sets and props, Trace performed the puppet character Crow T. Robot, and mad scientist Dr. Clayton Forrester. He repeated these roles in the 1996 film version of the show, MST3K: The Movie. Trace wrote for ABC’s America’s Funniest Videos for nine seasons. He played a recurring character on Freaks and Geeks, and has had cameo appearances on The West Wing and Arrested Development. For six years, he toured with the original cast of MST3K in a live movie riffing show called CINEMATIC TITANIC.

Original Language: English

Produced by Chris Gersbeck

Written & Performed by Trace Beaulieu & Frank Conniff

Release Date: December 15, 2020

Quality: 720p