A Visit to Santa (Rifftrax Shorts)

Rifftrax Year:  2007
Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

In Rifftrax's very first short, Santa Claus takes a pair of kids to his workshop suburban household at the North Pole.  He then tells them of all the wonder and excitement of Christmas around the world United States, and gives them a look but don't touch tour of his toys.  They also get an special ride in his sleigh rocketship, though the last time Santa gave children a "special ride" he wound up in a year long, scandalous trial.  But of course he's not guilty, because he's a celebrity!

HO HO HO!  MERRY CHRISTMAS!

This was Riffrax's Christmas special of 2007, of which shorts were not yet the norm for their site.  They had done the 25 minute special Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey the previous year, though it's technically a television special and not a short film.  Shorts were a very popular commodity during Mystery Science Theater, though they were mostly just used to fill time.  Here they're just for fun.  And fun they wound up being, for Rifftrax would eventually riff over three hundred shorts over the next decade.

A Visit for Santa is a cheap Christmas short that makes Santa Claus Conquers the Martians look like it was made for top dollar.  Obviously filmed in and around some dude's house and the local mall, this short is quite the oddity.  I'm not sure why it was filmed and how it was distributed, but it's strange and creepy.  The audio is inaudible and dubbed, almost Manos style, and the premise of Santa stealing children from their beds proves to be less whimsical than it is somewhat scary.

Though I like how they promote the capitalism aspect of Christmas throughout the short then tack on a line at the end about not forgetting that this holiday is devoted to the birth of Jesus Christ.  Kudos for remembering?

The riffing of this short is quite good.  The poor production values take a hard knocking from our riffers, who also love to point out the changes made to Santa lore due to budgetary constraints (that rocket that Santa flies is something else).  The highlight of the short is probably the elves though, which Mike, Kevin, and Bill zero in on with some all-in-good-fun gay subtext.  My personal favorite riff from the short comes from the elves in the parade:

"Good for the elves!  Not letting the protesters get them down!"

But for the most part the short is good but not great.  I felt the motorized dolls sequence could have inspired better riffs than what they give them.  Each one has an awkward movement that could have inspired a personality riff or two, while a kid's toy depicting a girl on hands and knees scrubbing the floor goes without notice.  The short also feels a tad wearisome even at 13 minutes.  It's technically short, but man is this a slog.  But this is a definite holiday season winner.

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