Santa Claus: The Movie

Santa Claus: The Movie (1985) is a family fantasy you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Jeannot Szwarc and starring David Huddleston, Dudley Moore, and John Lithgow. A British-American co-production running 107 minutes, it was built as a definitive big-budget telling of Santa's origin story.

The film splits in two. The first half follows Claus — a kindly woodcutter — and his wife Anya on the night a snowstorm brings them to the elves' workshop at the North Pole, where he begins his centuries-long mission. Then the story jumps to the modern day. Patch, an ambitious elf played by Dudley Moore, grows disillusioned and decamps to New York, where he falls in with B.Z., a scheming toy tycoon played by Lithgow with obvious relish. B.Z.'s plan turns Christmas itself into a business threat, and Santa has no idea.

Shot on location with practical sets and no digital shortcuts, the film has the physical weight that gives 1980s fantasy its particular texture. Lithgow plays the villain so happily that he reads as comic rather than menacing — the right call for this kind of picture. Stream Santa Claus: The Movie (1985) online on iFILM.