Mike's Movie Matinee - Santa Claus Versus the Devil - 1959

Santa Claus vs. the Devil is a 1959 Mexican fantasy film directed by René Cardona and co-written with Adolfo Torres Portillo. In the film, Santa Claus works in outer space and battles with a demon named Pitch, sent to Earth by Lucifer to ruin Christmas by exposing Santa to the public and "making all the children of the Earth do evil".

Santa Claus was produced by Guillermo Calderón and filmed at Churubusco-Azteca Studios in Mexico. Its running time is reported as 94 minutes. This appears to be the running time of recent home video editions of the English dub. At least one brief scene was cut from the English edition, and further footage was removed from the individual prints as they aged and suffered damage. The original film was approximately three minutes longer than the version now seen in the United States. Santa Claus was filmed in Eastmancolor with a monaural soundtrack.

In 1960, a slightly edited English-language dubbing of the film was produced for release in the United States by K. Gordon Murray.