The famous terrible author Ed Bois has never lent its distinctive talents to a Christmas movie, but with its truly baffling sci-fi narrative, its accidental sense of high campand special effects that look like they were concocted by the nearest kindergarten class, Santa Claus conquers the Martians is the best thing to do.

The regular on the “worst films of all time” list, now celebrating its 60th anniversary, has an unusually strong pedigree. Three years earlier, director Nicholas Webster earned an Emmy nomination for his ABC documentary. Walk in my shoes. Meanwhile, the cast was filled with respected actors from the theater world: John Call, who played Santa Claus, came straight from the original Broadway production of Olivewhile Bill McCutcheon, here the film’s groan-worthy comic character Dropo, would later win a Tony. It even provided the on-screen debut of future Golden Globe winner Pia Zadora, seen here as a 10-year-old Martian addicted to Earth-created television.

It’s the latter that sets the film’s disjointed cogs in motion. Disturbed by his children turning into couch potatoes, Kimar (Leonard Hicks) consults Chochem (Carl Don), an 800-year-old sage who theorizes that their society’s joyless lifestyle could be the cause. Mars does not allow autonomous thought (machines transmit information directly to citizens’ brains), while food (even hamburgers and chocolate cakes) is consumed in the form of miserly pills.

What young people need, according to Yoda-like a presence, is a figure that shakes its belly like a bowl of jelly. Of course, the Red Planet, which seems to consist only of the Martian family’s flimsy home and a giant cave, doesn’t have anyone who fits that mold. So, along with various henchmen, including the villainous Voldar (Vincent Beck), Kimar decides the only solution is to kidnap the real thing.

In one of the film’s few intentional laughs, the Martians are embarrassed when they descend to Earth and discover that Santa has countless doppelgangers. In addition to their criminal records, the motley crew kidnaps human children Billy (Victor Stiles) and Betty (Donna Conforti) to help find the real Santa. If that wasn’t traumatic enough, the poor mites are also nearly mauled by the most unconvincing polar bear ever committed to celluloid. “We weren’t about to have a real bear”, later Webster argued about what is obviously a man in a suit.

The costume designer (or “costume designer,” as the opening credits indicate, foreshadowing the carelessness to come) was not the only amateur on board. You can clearly see one of the elves moving even though he’s supposed to have been magically frozen by the nefarious Voldar. The spaceship that transports the kidnappers to Earth and back appears to have been built from recycled cardboard. And to complement their cheap helmets and aluminum antennas, the Martians’ mottled green makeup was surely applied in the dark.

Always, Santa Claus conquers the Martians is nothing if not ingenious. The cutaway shots of the U.S. military, which mistakes the alien visitors for a Soviet plane, borrow from the same stock footage used in Stanley Kubrick’s somewhat more acclaimed film. Dr Strangelove. And after playing an 800-year-old philosopher, Don shows his full range by playing the scientist who bizarrely describes aliens as “Martian apes”.

Like Ed Wood’s best, the cult favorite also has so-bad-it’s-good charm. There is something almost subversive about the way Call chooses to depict Santa Claus; one minute he’s playing the bewildered old man (“Prancer and Dancer and Donder and Blixen and Vixen and Nixon and, uh… Oh consarnit, I’m confusing those names”), the next he’s making jokes about his husband with a hen pic at the expense of Mrs. Claus (Doris Rich, remarkably, in the character’s first cinematic portrayal), then he laughs like a maniacal villain during a literal and surprisingly trippy toy fight. He also seems remarkably nonchalant about being put on a spaceship, transported to an alien planet, and sent to forced labor.

Plus, Beck is clearly having fun as the Martians’ inner saboteur, and for those who find all the comedic antics tiring, he’s also the voice of reason; see her visible disdain for the Santa joke (“What’s slimy, green, and you roast it on the end of a stick? A Martian mallow!”) and the fit of hysteria with which she is welcomed. And it’s hard to disagree with the Grinch’s concerns upon first meeting gormless Billy and Betty (“Is this what you want to do to our children? Turn them into simpletons like that ? “).

Of course, like any great pantomime villain, his master plan is woefully ineffective. While he repeatedly expresses his wish to murder Santa (and the two humans brought along for the ride), Voldar does little more than alter the settings of the toy factory, resulting in a bear hybrid plush/doll. By the end of the short 81-minute runtime, he’s in the Martian prison, the three abductees are on their way home, and village idiot Dropo has been named the new savior of Mars.

The film’s classic legacy has since been enhanced by several stage adaptations and affectionate mockery from sources like Mystery Science Theater 3000. We even talked about a Jim Carrey-remake directed in the 90s. Santa Claus conquers the Martians is objectively terrible, to be clear. But in an age saturated with classic Hallmark schmaltzfests, there’s something strangely endearing about a Christmas movie so desperately homemade.