Christmas on Mars – 2008

Christmas On Mars – 2008 – Director Wayne Coyne

I’m not really fan of the Flaming Lips, although I have heard their music for years. When I read about this, though, I had to have it, because I have rather a big passion for non-traditional Christmas films (mostly horror) and this sounded very appealing.   And I found that I liked it a lot.

It’s Christmas eve on Mars at the isolated settlement where an expedition is housed, and the personnel there are suffering from cabin fever, and starting to see things, and become unbalanced. Along comes a rather strange being (Wayne Coyne, singer & songwriter of Flaming Lips) who appears out of nowhere just as a suicidal Santa runs out of Hatch Number 1 of the building, who of course meets with a horrible death, thanks to no oxygen.   What’s left of Santa is dragged back in, along with the Martian, who speaks not a word and is stoic throughout his questioning by the redneck commanding officer.   The biggest concern with the recently deceased (and now rather ghastly) Santa is getting the suit off him without ruining it.

Apparently one crew member is in charge of putting together a Christmas event for the rest of the crew, and the Martian is eventually volunteered to wear the Santa suit.  Strangely, the Martian does not respond to the commanding officer but meekly dons the Santa suit and follows the other crew member wherever he goes.

There’s a lot of strange things going on within this little colony, and there are equipment failures and crew members with degenerating mental states to deal with, but the benevolent Martian ends up wandering around by himself, and manages to repair the malfunctioning equipment which would have otherwise resulted in the demise of the entire expedition.

This is mostly filmed in black & white but some of the “psychedelic” color sequences are pretty interesting, and could be right out of some groovy 60’s or 70’s film, despite the fact that the viewer rarely knows what they’re supposed to be seeing during these scenes.

There seem to be quite a few influences for this, and I was put in mind of “Dark Star”, “Solaris” (the Russian one), “Eraserhead”, “2001″, and “Tetsuo The Iron Man”. The acting isn’t the greatest but that doesn’t really detract from the overall viewing experience. There’s quite a bit of dark humor to this too. I was quite impressed, overall, and this even manages to have a rather magical and mysterious feel to it, and even a relatively upbeat ending.   

Apparently this film took about 7 years to complete, and the actors are mostly members of The Flaming Lips, their friends, and families. If you like cheesy science fiction & non-traditional type Christmas films then check this out, I found it to be a rather fun and interesting experience & well worth seeing. Not for the kiddies though, by any means…a few gruesome scenes & plenty of language.   Overall though, well done and well worth checking out.

Sam