Santa With Muscles

“I think they’re gonna do something really bad this Christmas”. This is the opening line to the 1996 movie ‘Santa with muscles,’ and probably what people said about the writers who made it. Somehow starring Hulk Hogan, this movie follows the life of an eccentric, self-absorbed millionaire who gets amnesia and becomes convinced he is Santa Claus. The movie starts with an orphaned little girl reading a letter to Santa. She explains that an evil man, Ebner Frost, is buying property all around their town, torturing people with the help of three bizarre scientists to force them into selling. Frost’s next step is buying the orphanage/church, which only has three children left in it.

While the near broke orphanage struggles not to be captured by Mr. Frost, Blake Thorne is caught in an elaborate police chase. Thorne is the face of a multi-million dollar fitness company, and is obsessed with his appearance, dieting, and working out. At the start of the movie, he claims that if he donates a few dollars to the orphanage, “they’ll just come back for more and never leave you alone.” He also has an entire committee of people working at his house, who he pays not just to be his personal chef, but to practice fighting with him too.

Before losing his memory, Thorne was caught (intentionally, for fun) in a paintball chase with the local police, and once realizing he was cornered in the mall three days before Christmas. In order to escape, he adorned a Santa costume, which didn’t fully fool the police, forcing him to hide in a garbage chute. While hanging in the chute, a ceramic Santa bust is dropped from the floor above, colliding with his head and causing amnesia. A money-crazed, greedy mall elf called Lenny who works for Mr. Frost on the side finds him and has to convince him that he really is Santa so that Blake doesn’t realize that Lenny stole his wallet.

After wrestling a robber in the mall, Thorne really does believe he is Santa, and drags Lenny with him to “save the orphans.” He battles with Frost’s team of scientists and agrees to temporarily stay at the orphanage, while each of the children teaches him more about the spirit of Christmas. In another fight with the scientists, Thorne is knocked off of the roof, but lands safely. He wakes up in his mansion with full memory of both his prior life and the past few days as Santa. He remembers the children and goes back to help them, uncovering a vault underneath the church which houses the orphanage. With the kids’ help, Blake finds the combination and discovers a cave full of magical crystals below, explaining why Mr Frost fought to buy the property.

Concluding this mess of attempted plot twists, the children, Frost, Blake, and all of the other characters fight in the crystal cave, and their vibrations cause the crystals to ignite. The church explodes, giving the police a chance to capture Frost and his gang. The orphans, now in need of a new home, move into Frost’s old castle, and it is revealed that Frost and Thorne used to be best friends living in that very same orphanage decades ago.

With the amount of plot twists thrown into this movie, you would think that there must be hours worth of foreshadowing, but absolutely nothing was hinted at throughout the movie. I won’t say that it was terrible, because it was clearly never intended to be good in any way. The movie is the kind of thing you would have loved to watch as a child or an adult, full of unbelievable circumstances and sheer ridiculousness. It isn't exactly peak humour, but if you need a laugh this christmas, it's much better than love actually.