Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (not rated)
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This came out in 1964 (eleven years before I was born). I first saw it on Christmas 2019, on a DVD I received as a gift. (The movie is public domain in the U.S., and there are a few presumably public domain shorts included on the disc, which I probably won't ever bother watching.) It's considered to be one of the worst movies ever made, but you might still enjoy it for precisely that reason. (I mean, I've seen some bad movies that I found just painful to watch, some I even couldn't finish, but this one I thought was kind of fun in a "so bad it's good" way. But that is a realm that is incredibly subjective.) It's also been used in episodes of "Mystery Science Theater 3000", "Elvira's Movie Macabre", and other such things.

Over the opening credits, there's a song by a group of children which is just terrible. The thing I found particularly noteworthy about this is that part of the lyrics include spelling out S-A-N-T-A C-L-A-U-S, but whenever his actual name is sung, it's pronounced "Santy Claus." This becomes even more conspicuous at the end of the movie, when the song is repeated with the lyrics printed on screen.

Anyway, at the start of the movie, there's a news broadcast with a reporter visiting the North Pole and interviewing Santa Claus. Honestly, at first I wasn't sure if this was meant to be real or just something a local TV station was staging for any kids who might be watching. But apparently he was interviewing the real Santa Claus, along with real elves and the real Mrs. Claus. And it's not just kids on Earth who watched the broadcast, but also kids on Mars. The only Martian children we see are a 10-year-old boy named Bomar and his 8-year-old sister Girmar (the latter played by Pia Zadora, a name I was vaguely aware of in the 1980s, though I don't think I ever actually saw her in anything, nor do I recall ever hearing any of her songs). Their father is Kimar, the ruler of Mars. Both he and his wife, Momar, are worried about the children, because recently they haven't wanted to eat or sleep or do anything except watch Earth programs. And apparently this is happening with children all over Mars, so Kimar calls together the council of Martian chiefs or whatever, and they seek advice from an 800-year-old Martian named Chochem. He tells them that Mars needs a Santa Claus, like Earth has, because Martian children these days don't really have childhoods. They're taught electronically starting as infants, so they basically grow up with the minds of adults, at least intellectually.

So, Kimar and the council go to Earth to kidnap Santa Claus. Also, there's a really goofy Martian named Dropo who stows away on their spaceship. (I think he worked for Kimar and Momar as a domestic, or something.) Anyway, the Martians find that there are Santa Clauses everywhere, so they ask a couple of Earth children, Billy and Betty, where to find the real one. Then they abduct the children so that they won't be able to alert the authorities to the Martians' plan. They go to the North Pole, and while most of the Martians are off kidnapping Santa Claus, the kids escape from the ship. However, they get chased by the most unconvincing polar bear ever. Also, the Martians have the most unconvincing robot ever, named Torg, who is supposed to kidnap Santa, but Torg turns out to be not only unconvincing, but utterly ineffective. (I wish either that more would have been done with the robot, or that it wouldn't have been included in the movie at all.) So, the Martians kidnap Santa himself, though he doesn't really seem to mind. Also, Billy and Betty are recaptured, and get taken to Mars along with Santa. Meanwhile, throughout the movie, one member of the council, Voldar, is opposed to everything Kimar does, and eventually tries to kill Santa and the children. I feel like there could be an interesting bit of Martian history to explore; Voldar wants Mars to return to its old warlike ways, and is upset by the whole idea of bringing Santa to Mars to teach children to have fun, and stuff.

I don't want to reveal any more of the things that happen, though there is a happy ending, one element of which I found completely predictable, though I still liked it. One thing I didn't like about the movie is that the actors playing Martians all wore makeup to make them look green, but the video quality of the movie wasn't good enough for the makeup to look quite green, to me. Instead, I thought it kind of looked as if they were wearing blackface. I know they weren't, but it still couldn't help but feel problematic. Also... there's no actual conquering in the movie, so the whole plot is very different from anything I might have imagined based on the title. (I would have imagined something far less family-friendly.) But whatever. It's a campy classic, and I'm glad to have finally seen it.