Santa Claus' Punch and Judy (1948) - (Short, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Christmas)

9min | Short, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Christmas | 1948 (USA)

Santa Claus is entertaining a roomful of children when he decides to bring out a couple puppets and perform a show. This "show" is something that makes this short not that appropriate for children so parents will certainly want to watch this before they show it to anyone. I had heard some pretty wild things about this film and it didn't disappoint as it certainly lived up to the hype. Puppet shows are weird enough on their own but for the life of me I'm not certain what was going on with this one. For starters, it's full of violence as the male puppet pretty much beats up the female on, throws her around and even cracks her with a stick a couple times. He then goes on to beat up a cat before he gets eaten by an alligator. As you can see, the violence level is rather high and this is why kids will probably be terrified of this thing. Even stranger is that it appears the male puppet is attacking the film in a sexual way. Again, I'm not sure what was going on in the director's mind and perhaps it was innocent but the end result is just really weird but highly recommended to adults who like strange and weird things.