Earlier in the week, I blogged about the movie Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, a venerable and, in my opinion, overly-maligned Christmas film that’s gotten a rep for being one of the worst holiday movies of all time.
Later on, I was putting together a Christmas Video Playlist for Spike the Wonder Chihuahua, and wanted to put the theme song from the movie, “Hooray for Santa Claus”, from Al Hirt’s single 45 (45rpm, a single-song vinyl record, for you kids out there … 
It’s what they did in the ’60s, before iPods and such.) The song is a classic. It’s got a surf-rock feel, and Al Hirt just wails on the trumpet parts…It’s my favorite Christmas song of all time.
I was kind of bummed when the only video version I could find on YouTube was set to a Powerpuff Girls video ripped from Cartoon Network…Heresy. So I did what any good video editor/content producer would do: I cut my own version of a music video for posterity.
Well, sort of.
Since I decided that ‘doing it right’ meant cutting a music video to footage from the original movie, I watched it again and … well, things got a bit out of hand. The result is a video mashup that I call ‘Hooray for Santy Claus Conquering the Martians in Under 4 Minutes‘.
Still with me? Good.
It involves a bit of a pre-amble, wherein we meet Kimar, Martian Planetary Leader, and “Chochem”, an 800 year-old Martian mystic who lives in a rocky swamp, dresses in a sack, and looks way to much like something that was George Lucas’ inspiration for Yoda to be a mere coincidence. I mean, sure, it could be a coincidence, just like the establishing shot of the Martian spaceship flying to Earth that doesn’t look anything like the opening shot from ‘Star Wars: Episode IV, A New Hope’, much.
Remember, “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” came out in ’62, so who knows?
Anyway, this was a fun project, and now there is something on YouTube that honor’s both the movie, and the great Al Hirt. My work is finished here.
Merry Christmas, all!
Record cover for the 45 single version of 'Hooray for Santa Claus'