Cast: Santa Claus, Ferocious Wolf, Stinky the Skunk, Puss n' Boots

SYNOPSIS:
High above the North Pole, and far out in space, is the King of Fantasy Land and delight of children everywhere: Santa Claus!

Santa has many villages and offices scattered all over the world. We visit one particular village, in which is Santa's amazing Toy Factory.

Inside the factory, Santa's helpers, called Pixies, are busy at work preparing all the toys for Christmas Eve.

Assisting Santa with his chores are Puss 'n Boots and Merlin the Magician. Stinky the Skunk is also one of Santa's helpers; he supervises the Pixies in the Toy Factory.

Unfortunately, Stinky likes to goof off more than he likes to work. While taking one of his many breaks, Stinky walks up to Santa's "North Pole" and starts to lick it. He thinks it is made of ice cream!

Puss 'n Boots runs up, and demands to know what Stinky is doing. Stinky replies that he is taking his "Ice Cream Break". Puss informs him that the "North Pole" is not made of ice cream, but of ice. Also, Stinky's break was over long ago!

Stinky reluctantly returns to the factory, where the Pixies are busy manufacturing products for Santa's big day.

Stinky peeks inside the toy factory, and, satisfied that production is progressing nicely, sneaks off again!

Meanwhile, the Ferocious Wolf works like a hound dog in Santa's woodworking shop. He curses his pal and co-worker Stinky for being such a lazy, no-good bum. The Wolf vows to beat him if he finds him. The Pixies find his rants amusing. The Wolf leaves the factory in a huff, to find his lazy partner.

The Wolf approaches Santa Claus, who is reading Christmas letters along with Puss 'n Boots. The Wolf complains to Santa about Stinky's recalcitrance, but Santa just laughs hysterically, as he knows the two are always fighting about something.

The Wolf further insists that Stinky is a bad influence on the Pixies, who "may or may not" follow his orders!

Meanwhile, Stinky has escaped to a nearby puppet theatre, where a wonderful Punch & Judy show is in progress. He pushes his way into the front row, pushing aside the happy children.

One by one, the children smell Stinky's awful stink, and exit the theatre!

The Wolf prowls the grounds of Santa's Village, looking for Stinky.

Soon, all of the children have vacated the theatre, leaving Stinky all alone. But the Pixies join Stinky, also eager to play hooky.

Finally, the Wolf enters the puppet theatre. He sneaks up behind Stinky, disguised as a bush, and starts to yell at him.

The Wolf scares everyone, including Stinky, out of the theatre, and back to their labors.

Meanwhile, Santa returns from exercising the reindeer, and looks in on the toy factory. He is pleased with how well the work is progressing.

Santa peeks into the puppet theatre, and finds the Wolf, sitting all alone, relaxing and enjoying the show!

THE END

REVIEW:
SANTA'S ENCHANTED VILLAGE is the third and final installment in Murray's quaint and bizarre "Santaland" trilogy, a most amazing and unusual work, and one might say a milestone in cinema primitivism.

Although all three featurettes have much to recommend them, all great examples of crude high art, SANTA'S ENCHANTED VILLAGE must be considered the trilogy's true masterpiece.

What makes this strange and beautiful film stand out above its already outstanding cousins is that this one shows some real attempts at ACTING, as amateur thespians try vainly but sincerely to bring to life the simplistic mini-plot. In this way, VILLAGE is even more psychotronic than SANTA'S MAGIC KINGDOM.

For instance, there are some delicious scenes with the sexy/goofy "Pixies" we grew to love and covet in SANTA CLAUS AND HIS HELPERS and KINGDOM. In VILLAGE, these tourist-trap sirens are featured quite prominently. In HELPERS, the Pixies were gossamer phantoms, seen primarily in dark relief. In KINGDOM, they were fleeting, scurrying glimpses of small-town fecundity.

In VILLAGE, the Pixies are shown in their full, gushing, giggling glory, prancing about in their horrible green uniforms and felt hats. Just imagine these theme park employees, naive little home-town girls all, being asked by a "big" movie producer to be in a real, live motion picture! They must have run home to tell their mommies: "Hey mom! I'm gonna be a movie star!"

There are some incredible insert shots here, featuring the Pixies giggling at the Wolf's angry outbursts, which showcase the worst in acting but the best in precious, overwrought amateurism caught for posterity, like local dinner theatre captured in glaring Agfa-color closeup.

Other scenes show Merlin in rare form, molesting his beard while he stares, pop-eyed, at the Pixies. An older woman, who we suppose is playing Mrs. Santa Claus, stares angrily at the laughing kids in the puppet theatre, looking like she's about to slap them. We can't tell if she's acting badly, or just pissed at being caught on camera.

Santa himself, again likely the resident icon from the Santa's Village used for location shooting, laughs so awkwardly and spookily, he looks truly demented in his several closeups. A closeup of Santa laughing at his happy Pixies is so forced and eerie, it looks like it could pass for a Christmas card from Charles Starkweather!

In fact, there are LOTS of rare, delicious close-ups in this movie, of virtually everyone.

And VILLAGE features the Ferocious Wolf and Stinky the Skunk in more scenes than in the other two films. One might even say that there is more of Murray's bizarre and expressionist US costumes for the two Mexican fairy tale icons than we ever cared to see. But for fans, this is sweet precious Wolf/Skunk heaven!

There are even several gruesome closeups of both animals, Stinky baring his grizzly teeth and Wolfie flopping around his ridiculously impotent red tongue.

The Mexican "el Zorillo"...	...and the American "Stinky the Skunk"

The Mexican "el Lobo Feroz"...	...and the American "Ferocious Wolf"

This great obscurity has the home-movie look of its cousins, and begins with the expected travelogue sequences, as we take a tedious but thorough look at all the buildings in Santa's Village. This section is padded with several shaky shots that appear to be outtakes and reel ends.

There are some primitive attempts at camera tricks, such as time-lapse photography and fast-motion scenes.

There is also a repeat of the creepy toy-making montage first used in 1964's SANTA CLAUS AND HIS HELPERS. In this strange and disturbing sequence, we see close-ups of the young Pixies' lovely hands (with nail polish!) stroking and fondling gleaming toy rifles, alternating with shots of other disembodied hands trying to put the head back onto a "Nurse doll"; it keeps popping off, a sequence that somehow insinuates violence towards women. And all of this to weird horror-movie music on the blaring soundtrack!

The final shot of the film, as Santa discovers the Wolf goofing off at the movie theatre, starts off with a close-up of the Wolf waving his paws at the puppets. We pan upwards to the back of the puppet theatre, which is shrouded in darkness. Suddenly, several floodlights come on, illuminating this portion of the building, in a transitional bit of footage that was surely intended to be discarded. Santa now opens the theatre door, peeks in, and laugh, his face washed out by the harsh lighting. This astounding shot can't even be called a first take; it's more like a captured technical rehearsal!

The soundtrack to VILLAGE is quite eclectic, stealing the opening and closing themes to Murray's great THE QUEEN'S SWORDSMAN, but adding some original "music" that consists primarily of some blush-worthy, two-note accordion riffs and sketchy, casual percussion. And of course, there is repeated use of the public domain xylophone-based "Jingle Bells" that haunts all of Murray's Santaland product.

The plot, although insular, is quite profound. The Ferocious Wolf of the Little Red Riding Hood tales, turns out to be the industrious one of the pair, whereas his life partner, Stinky the Skunk, is a friggin' bum! The Wolf even complains to Santa that he's an authority figure in name only!

Of course, in the end, the Wolf gives up, and becomes a no-good conformist consumer of pop culture like everyone else. So much for the tradition of excellence in craftsmanship! This little moral is more telling and more accurate for its period, than Murray & Company could have ever imagined.

The featured puppet show is indecipherable, and cut so choppily that it is impossible to follow, but something is clearly going on, because there is an odd closeup at one point of two kiddies doing the "Home Alone" shock-take over one of the puppet show bits. It makes us wonder what we missed!

As are the other two "Santaland" featurettes, VILLAGE is a Murray vanity piece: he gives himself credit FIVE times in these short films!

SANTA'S ENCHANTED VILLAGE is breathtaking time-capsule primitivism, an impossible curio of an innocent time, the desperate artifact of a most cynical mind.

COMMENTS:
* The grainy look of the Santa featurettes suggest that they may have been shot in 16mm, and blown up to 35mm for release. This is given credence by super-collector Jeffrey C. Hogue, who now owns the rights to this fantastic featurette, and confirms that the negative he acquired of this film is indeed 16mm. This does not mean that a 16mm internegative wasn't created at some point for television prints, but it seems feasible that this throwaway film was originally shot in this economical format.

NOTABLE DIALOGUE: