I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Wonderful character development!

Really Surprised!

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

I first learned of this irregular movie by watching the wonderful trailer in color at my friends house. Santa's workshop in all it's glory with giant candy canes and groups of children nestled all around. It looked so magical. I wanted to go there and join in on the festivities.Being of the Jewish faith, conflict, guilt infested my thoughts. Should I take the plunge and go off to the theater? Or ignore the temptation? ANSWER: Being a student of the Torah it was only natural I go to the movies and see Santa Claus," Mexican Style." Mexican style you asked? Well this movie was produced in Mexico and dubbed in English. I had a second obstacle besides the religious conflict. In the U.S. most kids or young adults have a hard time asking their parents if they can see an R-Rated movie for the first time. Moreover, even a violent film with blood or gory scenes involved would make a parent tell their child simply "No!". The next problem was how to ask my Mother for the money to see a Christian related film which was taboo at that time. I just came straight out and and asked My Mother if I can see Santa Claus at the Movies. She gave me the $2.00 and off I went with my Catholic friends to the Laurelton theater. The movie starts out showing the workshop in full operation augmented by a smattering of children of each ethnicity. Each group of children, some in groups of five and some as little as duets sing the song of their native land in native dress. (Israel not included). This took some time off the film as some of the movie crowd found this segment racist or inappropriate for such a holiday film but I enjoyed the different songs from each country. Anything in glorious color was an improvement. The scene had taken 20 minutes in all. As I stated earlier this movie takes place in Mexico and involves 5 children and their problems involving Christmas and of course material things and personal expectations. Trying to disrupt things with temptation to do evil is our Bearded devilish skinny and very red tailed Mr. Pitch (Jose Luis Aguirre Trotsky) when meeting fans takes a long time to sign his autograph. As for the children, you have the petite adorable Lupita who wants a doll in the worst way with a dead beat Father. Then there's Billy the son of wealthy parents who for some reason leave him alone all the time. Finally three young male offenders, brothers who do Pitch's work through mind control as the incorrigible boys have no idea where the information is coming from. None of the children can see or hear the Devil Pitch but his suggestions to Lupita and the boys are the main targets of Pitch's destruction of Christmas. Santa Claus (Jose Moreno) who is preparing his journey to earth has all these gizmos invented by his main helper Merlin (Armando Arriola). The story does flow and is not very chatty. There are dancing scenes as giant rag dolls dance in Lupita's dream sketch. Throughout the Movie you hear the Narrator guide you through scenes. The Narrator even tries to suggest the parties involved not to do the wrong things. Lupita was tempted to steal a doll but she declined the temptation to the displeasure of Mr. Pitch. As for the three boys, there under the suggestion of Pitch to steal Santa's Toys, But Santa moves the chimney and the attempt was failed. Santa has a run in with a vicious dog and is stuck up a tree as dawn approaches. Will time run out on our Chubby friend? Will evil prevail? I know this will spoil the movie for you but the last scene made me ballistic. Lupita's Father comes home to their one room shanty as dawn approaches. The distraught Father who looks like he just came from an all night card game and got wiped out says to his Wife, "Nothing!" He couldn't buy his daughter a freaking doll? I had a problem with the parents of these children as neglect was the main theme here. Billy's rich Parents decide to go out to a restaurant and leave him home on Christmas eve? Where were the parents of the three evil boys? In reality this movie is sub-standard with many goofs yet I still watch it. Two more things on the issue of religious guilt. As I left the crowded theater I saw the Rabbi's sons filing out and other Jewish children leaving the theater as well. I approached the Rabbi's Sons and asked them why they or how did your parents let you go to a Christmas themed movie? They simply answered," It's just a movie, Were not converting to Christianity any time soon and besides Jesus was never mentioned. Don't forget Most Holiday movies are produced and written by Jews." When I arrived home I asked my Mother why she let me see a movie about Santa Claus and she misunderstood me earlier and thought that Santa was at the theater putting patrons on his lap asking for gifts. My Mother thought I was watching some other genre at the cinema. I also watched this movie in Spanish as an adult. The Movie had a nice flow and still one of my all time holiday favorites.

No, this is not Tim Allen's The Santa Claus, but rather a Mexican film that tells the timeless tale of the battle between Santa and Satan. Yes, Santa must contend with the Devil, or rather his not so sinister minion Pitch, who plans to corrupt the world's children into being naughty. Did I say the world's children? Well actually he focuses his efforts mainly a poor little girl named Lupita, who resists his efforts, and a trio of brothers who fall all too easily, and hatch their own plan to kidnap Santa and steal all his toys.Sound weird right? Well it only gets weirder. You see, in this story Santa doesn't live at the North Pole, he lives in a space-castle directly above the North Pole. And there are no elves. Rather he's aided by stereotypical children from around the world, who are introduced in an endless scene with no clear purpose. Come to think of it, where do they live the rest of the year? Oh and his ability to "see you when you're sleeping" and "know when you're awake," well that's because he has an array of surveillance equipment that would make Langley drool. He's got a massive telescope with an eyestalk that can see anything, anywhere, even through walls. Plus there's the ear scope, a plastic dish with an ear that can hear anything, plus a machine that looks into children's dreams. Creepy might not be strong enough of a word.You might reasonably ask where he gets all this stuff. Simple, he has Merlin running his own personal Q branch. Besides all this spy gear, Merlin also provides Santa with dream dust, which makes children fall asleep, the "flower to disappear" which makes him invisible, and his reindeer. Yes, the reindeer are oddly creepy mechanical constructs- wind-ups in fact. And if they're exposed to sunlight, they'll disintegrate, leaving him stranded on earth, where he'll die of starvation because he and his people eat food made from clouds because he can't digest our food, and… I swear I'm not making this up. I'm not that creative- or crazy.Once all this is set up -and believe me it takes a while- most of the movie consists of Santa and Pitch playing childish pranks on each other; using a blowtorch on a doorknob to make it red hot, firing toy cannons into each other's backsides, that kind of thing. The biggest moment of suspense comes when a dog trees Santa and the neighbors think he's a burglar. I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying that Santa gets home safely, or that poor little Lupita gets the doll she's been wanting for Christmas, or that the bad little boys get what they deserve.So there's no real storyline, not much in the way of excitement or laughs, and you have to wonder just how powerful the denizens of Hell are if all they can accomplish is to make a trio of brats throw rocks through a department store window. This movie also gives us the most distorted view of Christmas since the even worse Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. And yet Santa Claus is apparently considered a holiday classic in Mexico, with showings on network television every year in December. I guess there's no accounting for taste, although this is more the kind of thing I would have expected from Japan.

With the aid of Merlin, Santa Claus must defeat the evil machinations of the devil Pitch to ruin Christmas.Why is this film in the Bottom 100? I wonder these things, having seen numerous Bottom 100 films -- many simply do not deserve to be there, and although it is an honor of sorts, it is one that should be earned. This film is no great feat, but it is far from the worst. Is "Hell's Threshold" in the Bottom 100? No. But it darn well should be! The worst part of this film is the first ten minutes. I really did not need to see every country represented by talentless little toddlers. I got the point after two or three. How many groups were there? Maybe twenty? Oh my! But after that, not a bad film. Pitch is a funny villain, Santa is a good hero. And Merlin, while an odd addition to Christmas, actually makes some level of sense. (Santa has to get his magic somewhere, does he not?)

This film is a Mexican Christmas classic, each December 24th it is aired on television in my country for the joy of small children, and many Mexicans like me watched it and have fond memories of it. When I looked for it at IMDb I got an enormous surprise finding out it was listed as one of the worst 100 movies in history, but my surprise turned to disappointment when I saw the reasons for its bad reputation. It turns out the rights for this movie were bought by an American producer to exhibit it on his country, for what I read this man, K. Gordon Murray, was not particularly good with the way he treated those films, he created badly done dubbed versions, edited them as he pleased without respect for the original film and took no notice about the quality of the process. This U.S. version has been seen by many persons in that country and it has a big responsibility in the bad reputation of the film, which is unfairly judged based on a different version of the original. Also and worst of all is that for everything that I've read It seems this movie has been judged based on the United States Folklore, and not on the Mexican culture in which it was born. Many reviews criticize this based on the fact that it is a version that does not conform to the U.S. version of the character, like if that version was unique and inalterable, well here is a surprise for You, it's not, and if you are watching this film first you have to understand that, the traditions it shows are from another culture and therefore, while they have similarities they also have differences. The creators of the movie made it only for Mexican children and they never thought it could be distributed to another place. Please consider this before making harsh judgments of the film. With this points clarified here's a quick summary of the film, the original Mexican film which is the one that should be reviewed as it is not fair that this is trashed on the grounds of a crappy edition made by an irresponsible distributor. The plot is rather simple, it is Christmas Eve and Santa Claus is getting ready to fulfill his yearly mission of delivering presents to the good kids in the world. But at the same time in Hell, Satan himself sends a devil called "Precio" to stop him. Once in earth the story focuses on five Mexican children: a poor girl that wishes to have a rag doll, a rich boy that wishes to have his parents alongside him because he is lonely and a group of three spoiled boys that think they can get away with having presents despite being bad all year; while the stories of these children develop we see Santa struggling to overcome the attempts of Precio to stop him and, while for a moment it seems that the envoy of hell will beat Santa, like in every Christmas film we have a happy ending. Now allow me to explain a few important things that have been said about this film based on the misguided ideas I mentioned above. The Devil against Santa Claus? Yes, this comes from a Mexican tradition called Pastorela which has its origins on the colonial epoch and it still exists today; pastorelas are simple plays whose ultimate end is evangelization, they show Satan trying to stop small groups of shepherds that are on their way to worship the newborn Jesus at Betlehem. In modern times different cultural elements like Santa himself have been added to the original tradition, but the root of the pastorela is religious and hence the important part of the devil. Christmas is a religious celebration and that is still very important in catholic latinoamerican countries. Santa is a friend of Jesus? Why,of course. I thought this to be common knowledge but apparently it isn't so You just have to watch a documentary, read a book Or simply visit Wikipedia and you'll learn that the origin of Santa Claus is in Christianity and in the figure of Saint Nicholas. It wasn't útil the XIX century when the world famous version of the character started to take form and it didn't do it in a massive way until Coca-Cola used the character as part of an advertising campaign when it became the marketing figure it is today. In the United States you may have a very defined idea of how this character must be, but can't you accept that in other places it evolved in a different way closer to it's religious roots? Well that's what happened in Mexico and the film itself says in the introduction that Santa is no other than Saint Nicholas, that means a Christian saint. Now in catholic countries saints are very important figures, they serve as intermediaries between God and men, in this case rewarding kids that are good and punishing those that aren't. So as a Christian saint it makes perfect sense that Santa prays to Jesus and it makes much more sense that the devil is trying to stop him; he does this not just because he can, but because making Santa fail will prevent that he spreads his Christian message. Anyway these are the most important points I wanted to write about, because it is completely unfair that you trash this film because you don't understand its context or its message: judge it in base of its cinematographic merits and considering the audience it is aimed for, those are small children.Considering this I can say Santa Claus is not a specially good film, it has bad acting, bad costumes, bad scenarios and it is very naive. But it achieves its goal to entertain kids and give them a nice moral message. Is it a bad film? Yes. Does it deserve to be at the bottom 100? Absolutely no.