Santa's Christmas Circus

This is a really bad "kiddie" film. It has a TV show clown doing a Christmas special. I watched this as part of a Rifftrax parody where they comment on the film as it plays. It's on Amazon Prime as of Christmas 2019. The short ahead of this, called The Christmas Tree, is much better in that it is really unintentionally funny and a "what were they thinking" type of film depicting Christmas trees as having human personalities all the way up to the trash day where they go to heaven, think about showing that to a little kid, lol. This Wizzo film is really lame but what it has going for it is some shots of mid 1960s America and some really nice Christmas store displays. The film quality is very very clean especially for being a "lost" film before. I grew up in NYC so I was a big Bozo the Clown fan and I'm biased but a clown named Wizzo with big bare feet shoes is pretty creepy even compared to Bozo. 4 out of 10, 8 out of 10 as shown on Rifftrax with The Christmas Tree short.

After seeing this special on RiffTrax, I had to check out the actual movie without the funny commentary. So basically, Santa's Christmas Parade is an old Christmas movie starring Whizzo the Clown, a TV personality people would not know about unless they lived in the Kansas-Missouri area at the time, similar to the more popular Bozo the Clown. In this movie (which feels more like it should be a TV special), Whizzo basically shows the kids Christmas window displays and even takes them on a magic carpet ride to meet Santa.

Yeah, it's easy to see why it's hated nowadays. The film looks like it was made with a budget low enough to not justify a theatrical release, hence why the main stage where most of the special take place in looks less like a circus and more like a movie studio they loaded with circus props. Also, the film takes way too much time to get to the Santa visit, as most of the film is basically Whizzo's antics and watching window displays, which while nice, fails to add some excitement to the film. Just do me a favor and stick to RiffTrax's version, as their commentary and quips make the film somewhat more tolerable and funny.

I was aware of Bozo the Clown growing up, but I couldn't tell you anything about him; having not grown up in the American Midwest, I certainly never heard of Whizzo the Clown until - hold on, let me look at the clock - about sixty-five minutes ago. Children's television is definitely a creature all its own, and live-action children's television even more so; take a trip back in time to a few decades ago in the medium, and we may as well be talking about hoop rolling. It can be often be hard enough as an adult in the twenty-first century to get on board with fare made for kids, and it's safe to say that Frank Wiziarde's signature creation is extra light, silly, simple, and unsophisticated, geared toward the very, very youngest of possible viewers. It's questionable at best what lasting value anyone might find in this almost sixty years later, but then, for something frivolous and uninvolved, I'd be lying if I said 'Santa's Christmas Circus' weren't occasionally mildly amusing in its own right.

The least that can possibly be said is that Wiziarde gives a highly animated, committed performance as Whizzo; I'm given to understand he had a background in the Big Tent before starting his TV show, and one can see how he would fit right in when dressed in his colorful suit and makeup. As these sixty minutes are filled with nothing but lighthearted bits and bobs intended for a very specific, very youthful audience, I'm sure that even such an audience in 2023 would get something out of the frivolity. Of course, on the other hand, there is no substance whatsoever to be found here: it's the cinematic equivalent of a clown being hired to perform at a child's birthday party, with doodads, tricks, pratfalls, and imagination galore. If you want anything more out of a picture beyond that random assortment of minimal merriment, well, you're going to be sorely disappointed, especially as no small part of Whizzo's Wonderland involves merely showing the attending children a television, or battery-operated toys. Still, it's not as if this is pretending to be anything it's not.

Yes, 'Santa's Christmas Circus' is unremittingly kitschy, and low-budget; in the same way that children might play with the power of imagination, any discerning viewer (adult or otherwise) must actively engage their imagination to pretend that the bare-faced contrivance and meagerness of the presentation isn't gauche to the point of being painful. Smidgens of cleverness at a few points don't really do much to distract us from how distinctly low-grade this is, surely obliterating the nadir of any assumptions we might carry about productions of this nature. For all that, though, there are still far worse ways to spend one's time; I've seen the bottom of the barrel, and this isn't anywhere near it. The feature is not good, but it's not abjectly bad, either - only unbelievably modest, weak, and downright humble, in every regard. Unless one has some special attachment to Wiziarde and Whizzo I can't conceive of any reason why one would seek this out to watch, though if you do happen to come across it, AND if you don't mind the style of entertainment it involves, AND if you're looking for something uncomplicated to pass the time, it's passable as a curious diversion, albeit very thin. Ultimately, for better and for worse, 'Santa's Christmas Circus' is exactly what we'd think it would be. Take that as you will.

People who rate this thing super low must be rather young, living in a time where clowns are feared because kids are complete and utter pansies. Shows like this used to be on all the time back when there were local channels as this was a way to fill some airtime cheaply. Create a host and then have him entertain children, showing them movies and such...or in the case of this Christmas feature, show the kids those animatronics that used to be everywhere at Christmas time, but now are a rarity. I used to see them at the mall and they would usually consist of elves in Santa's workshop.

The story to this, a clown is hosting a Christmas party for several children. He does some tricks for them and they do some tricks for him. Then he shows them some shop window displays before they embark on a magical journey to Santa's place where Santa tells them the meaning of the season, but neglects to give them any toys so the only thing they have to remember this magical journey are some streamers.

Whizzo acts insane and is incoherent, but the kids in this thing seem to be enjoying it so, no, they are not terrified by this clown as most people were not terrified of clowns back during this period in time. Not sure when this irrational fear came about, perhaps Stephen King's It or the real life killer John Wayne Gacey caused this trend of someone dressed all goofy being now somehow scary?

So, it is nothing I really enjoyed, but I could tell the kids enjoyed their time on the show and that Whizzo was actually very good with kids as he greeted each one and said farewell to each one. This thing was just a local special which was never supposed to see the light of day again after it aired, but somehow made it to the public's eye where now it gets low marks for doing what nearly every hosted kid's show back in the day did.

Whizzo the Clown was a children's TV host from the 1950s to 1987. His show went off the air a month before the actor died of cancer and that shows what a trooper he was. An old Vaudeville performer, Frank Wizarde became of staple of Kansas City and Topeka area television stations. I grew up watching and loving Whizzo; I can understand how someone might look at it and say, "What were they thinking?" Every generation has something of the same, insane, nature. Spongbob might be one of the more recent as most parents hate it and Barney served the generation before. Back when there were only 3, or 4, networks (Dumont was an early network that died in the 1950s) a lot of programming was local and almost every station had a local show featuring a character who did live segments and interspersed them with cartoons. In Wichita, KS it was Major Astro, in the Kansas City area it was Whizzo and another show that featured Old Gus.

The movie is, mostly, a typical Whizzo episode, but with news footage from the stores in the Country Club Plaza. The props were mostly those from the how, but augmented for the North Pole scene. The "changing curtain" doubles as the tablecloth at the North Pole. The film was considered lost and some people doubted it existed (despite there being a trailer.) I actually saw it in the theater and it was a typical movie for parents to dump the kids off and go Christmas shipping. What with the previews, cartoons, newsreels, etc. it gave parents time to shop without the kids knowing what was happening.

As for the quality of the movie, for those of us who grew up and watched local TV shows, the movie represents a look back at something lacking in modern entertainment. The local news is about the only local shows these days. Is it an epic movie of Shakespearean dynamics? Well, no. No it isn't, but it is a great way to get a taste for what local TV presented. It is corny, silly, full of dumb jokes, completely barking mad, and I love every minute of it. What can I say, if Rifftrax can do an episode for Christmas featuring the movie, it has earned a place of honor.