Yahoo Movies Santa Claus: The Movie producer was 'baffled' that the 1985 film flopped on release
Superman producer Pierre Spengler looks back at the ill-fated Christmas movie that survived being a box office flop
1985's Santa Claus: The Movie is a true festive favourite. It's one of the BBC's most repeated movies of the season, and recently enjoyed a 4K remaster and cinema re-release. However, there was a distinct whiff of turkey when it first hit cinemas nearly 40 years ago.
“The career of that film is baffling,” Santa Claus: The Movie producer Pierre Spengler tells Yahoo in a new interview. “It was a huge hit in England. We were actually number two in America, behind James Bond. Then came Christmas Day and from 25 December onwards, it was finished. No-one was going to see the movie.
“In England, you have the tradition of pantomimes, people were okay after Christmas. In America, nothing. In France, it was a complete flop, painful, while in Japan it was a big hit, even though in Japan they don’t believe in Santa Claus.”
In true Eighties film showman style, Santa Claus: The Movie was an eight-page advert before it was close to existing in even script form.
“[Executive producer] Ilya Salkind’s forte was to have these inspirations,” the producer says about the huge Variety splash that appeared in the trade paper in 1983. “Along with his father, he wanted me to be surprised. We had an office in Pinewood and he came into my office and said, ‘I want to show you something’. They had prepared an eight-page ad in [the trade press]. I had no idea and I was like, ‘Wow, this is really good’. Then we had to find a writer, a director...”
The Salkind/Spengler team had already had big hits with The Three Musketeers and then at least three Superman movies with Christopher Reeve and was working on 1984's Jeannot Szwarc-directed Supergirl. Internet lore says John Carpenter was originally a choice to direct Santa Claus, as well as Gene Kelly, but Spengler doesn’t remember either coming into the conversation.
“We had various thoughts about directors,” he says. “One of them was [West Side Story’s] Robert Wise, who we met in New York. We probably thought of Richard Lester. [But] we were making Supergirl and it was why not Jeannot [Szwarc]?”
They again turned to their collaborators David and Leslie Newman, who had done the early scripts of Superman to write it and started looking at stars.
“We had the same lawyer [as Dudley Moore],” laughs the producer. “It started as a joke — Dudley Moore as an elf – and then it developed into something.”
He continues, “I remember at one point they wanted to call him Scratch, but we said absolutely not, because Scratch is one of the names of the Devil. We felt very superstitious of it, so we called him Patch.”
John Lithgow was hired as the moustache-twirling villain, but the big search was for Father Christmas himself. Early on, the filmmakers had a crazy idea – what if the part of Santa Claus was played by... Santa Claus? That is, use someone in the role who would only ever be credited as St Nick. In the end though, that was too much even for little-known character actor David Huddleston.
“Huddleston was not a big star, but he had his dignity!” says Spengler. “The only time he agreed to [appear in his costume] was for charity when we had the premiere in London and he agreed to greet Prince Charles.”
Of course, one of the things people remember about the film is the music by Henry Mancini (The Pink Panther) and Leslie Bricusse (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory), including the Aled Jones-sung Every Christmas Eve.
They also looked for someone to perform a song more orientated towards chart success. 1980s popster Sheena Easton (who'd enjoyed movie tie-in success with her 1981 Bond theme For Your Eyes Only) ended up singing Christmas All Over The World, but it could have been very different.
“Bryan Adams did a demo,” recalls Spengler. “We actually showed Paul McCartney the movie, I was at that screening with him.”
“When we did the various versions [of the film around the world], we decided to try and get a local singer to do the lyrics in the local language. In France they said, ‘We may have someone, she’s a new 16-year-old girl, she’s got a fantastic voice. She’s called Celine Dion.’ I was not too enthused – I was an idiot!”
There was another way in which the producers were ahead of their time. Back in 1984, the Universal Studios tour existed in Hollywood, but it wasn’t really a thing in the UK. Spengler thought Santa Claus: The Movie could have changed that.
“We had the fantastic set, the North Pole, the elf factory,” he says. “I wanted to keep it standing. I talked to Cyril Howard, who was running Pinewood Studios in those days and said, ‘Look, why don’t you keep that set and make it like Disneyland?’ But he said his business was to rent stages, not do tours, so very sadly we saw the set destroyed.”
Of course, the real stars of the movie are the reindeer and the entire shoot was scheduled around them.
“We had to time our shooting very, very precisely so we’d have them trained, with antlers,” remembers Spengler. “We first sent someone to Lapland to try and find reindeer. Then we brought the animal trainer to Lapland, who selected the reindeer who would respond to training. We needed to have two sets of eight and then we needed some reserve ones. We then had to build a quarantine in Lapland before we could import them to England. Then they were in quarantine in Pinewood.”
And that was just the start. “One thing you should know,” he continues. “The legend of Santa Claus is a team of eight, but what you don’t know is they don’t work in teams. When you put two reindeer together, they start fighting. We had to train them to work together. It was an extraordinary thing. But the rehearsals were fun, on the Pinewood roads, the reindeer pulling the sledge.”
These trained animals were augmented with miniature animated reindeer built by the legendary Derek Meddings (James Bond series), as well as puppets for winking, talking and grunting.“The main puppet was Brian Henson, Jim’s son,” says Spengler. “He was Donner.”
The film was released at the end of November 1985, and it is remembered as being a box office flop taking much less than its reported $50m budget.
Still, we’re talking about it almost 40 years on. Keep an eye out for another eight-page trade advert. You never know, maybe Father Christmas is finally ready to become a multi-hyphenate.
Santa Claus: The Movie is now available to own on 4K UHD for the first time, and on Blu-Ray, DVD and Digital. It is also streaming on Prime Video.
