Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: A Visit to Santa

Some fine Christmas films have been made over the years. Perhaps you have some favourites.

And then there’s A Visit to Santa.

If it were a professional film it would be pretty easy to laugh at its incredible ineptness. But it seems to me that it was made by an amateur as kind of a glorified home movie to entertain family and friends, so picking on it may be unfair.

Stiff acting, a music soundtrack of someone playing a melody with one finger on an electric organ (and some basic chords), a suburban living room masquerading as Santa’s castle, an elf’s outfit that looks like someone’s mother made it, stock footage from who knows where, shots inside a department store, the list goes on. It has to be seen to be believed.

The opening credits say “Clem Williams Films presents.” This was an actual company based in Pennsylvania and was functioning as early as 1933. A story in the Pittsburgh Press in 1948 called it “the largest distributor of Religious Films and Equipment in the state” and that it was a rental outlet for movies by Cathedral Films.

The Syracuse Post-Standard, in 1989, published a feature story about movies being shown free outside an elementary school that were rented from Clem Williams, including classics like Dumbo and Bambi, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Groups could also rent highlight films of the Pittsburgh Steelers narrated by the great John Fazenda.

Also in its catalogue was 1970’s The Watermelon Man, sent by mistake to an elementary school in Cape Coral, Florida. Its racial stereotypes and profanity were not quite appropriate for the audience.

A. Clement Williams, Sr. died in Seminole, Florida, on June 27, 2001. He had moved there from Pittsburgh in 1979 and had sold his company. His obit mentioned he was married for 67 years and had been a member of Franklin-St. John’s-Trinity Masonic Lodge No. 221 in Pittsburgh for 57 years.

With that bit of background out of the way, you can watch the film below.