The 1964 B-movie “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” is so terrible that it garners a 2.7-star rating on IMDB and regularly makes lists of the worst movies ever made. One IMDB reviewer described it as “something this stunningly terrible simply had to be done on purpose … I could not make a worse movie if I spent absolutely no time at all making it.”
Yet every year, people pack the cozy Maverick Theater in Fullerton during the holiday season to see a campy stage production of it. Tickets typically sell out in just a few days.
What’s the attraction?
Voldar (Nathan Makaryk) and Kimar (Jaycob Hunter) battle it out on the stage during the Maverick Theater’s 2023 production of “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” Photo by Susan Valot.
It starts with the sets and cheesy costumes, which pump up the B-movie campiness vibe. The martians wear slippers, green face paint and green body suits, while their martian heads are made of basketballs painted green, with metal rods sticking out of the top. An aluminum roaster pan, an old ironing board, and a stationary bicycle with no wheels make up the space ship.
Then there’s the silliness factor. The puns fly faster than the little UFO that swings around on a fishing pole over the audience.
All of this nuttiness started about 17 years ago, when Maverick Theater founder and co-owner Brian Newell, who had already successfully adapted The Night of the Living Dead for the stage for Halloween, needed a Christmas show and remembered seeing the ridiculous martian movie on TV as a child.
“I was maybe 5 or 6, and at that age, I knew I was watching a terrible film, but there was something about it,” Newell says. “I couldn’t keep my eyes off of it. I watched this absurd thing and it branded itself in the back of my brain.”
Newell didn’t even think audiences would stay for the second act, but he figured he’d give it a try.
Audiences stayed. And they kept coming back.
“We have families that come and see this show year after year. I have literally had audience members that are now married that were just young children in grade school when they came and saw this show, and they’ll be bringing their kids,” Newell says.
The two main martians, Voldar and Kimar, observe their robot in Santa’s workshop with Santa’s elf during the 2023 Maverick Theater production of “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” Photo by: Susan Valot
The premise of the movie and stage show is simple, but bizarre. The martians see their children are sad and depressed, so they decide they need a Santa Claus, which they’ve seen on TV. The martians come to Earth to kidnap Santa, and end up bringing two human children back to the red planet with them.
At least, that’s what’s in the script. What happens on the stage can vary.
“The framework of the show is that the script exists and that we do our best to do this kind of heartwarming play, but the martians by their nature are very easily distracted,” says Nathan Makaryk, who works for a software developer by day and plays the martian “bad guy” on stage. “We have a lot of room for improv based on anything that goes wrong on any given night, and there’s lots of things that go wrong.”
One time, the show flew so far off the rails that the children, played by grown adults, decided to stay on Mars at the end. Another time, a character got pizza delivered to the theater during the show.
Makaryk says the unexpected is what makes the show so much fun.
“I can see The Christmas Carol once every 10 years. I don’t need to see it again. There are great, heartwarming Christmas things to tug at your heart in that, but it’s not new and unique and fun each time,” Makaryk says. “In this show, we have the Christmas spirit. You do walk away feeling warm and fuzzy and happy because Santa wins and it’s all Christmasy, but also you got to be there when you were like, ‘And tonight, Voldar shot Betty in the eyeball with a Nerf gun!’”
Natalie Williams, who didn’t even watch the movie growing up, has been coming to see the show since 2008. She buys around 30 tickets each year to bring friends and co-workers.
“Once you’re in that theater, every single person is involved in this play. The actors play off of the audience. And the audience, their reactions, and what they do and say really affects the cast and what they do,” Williams says.
Hailey Hunter, who plays a human girl named Betty, says it’s a holiday tradition that lets you forget about the real world for a bit.
“There’s so much going on right now in our world and with COVID and everything since then, it’s just been big thing after big thing after tragedy after downer,” she says. “I just hope people can come and have a good time, and start their holidays off the right way, on Mars.”