On the 12th Day of Christmas…
Santa with Muscles (1996)
Director: John Murlowski
Writers: Jonathan Bond, Fred Mata, Dorrie Krum Raymond
Stars: Hulk Hogan, Don Stark, Robin Curtis, Mila Kunis,
A heartless millionaire believes he is Santa Claus after an accident renders him amnesiac.
-IMDB
Oh yes! You read that right. Hulk Hogan stars as a millionaire who made his fortune from bodybuilding supplements. One day he gets into a bit of trouble and is chased by the police where he puts on a Santa costume as a disguise. As he flees, he suffers a head injury that gives him amnesia so, of course, he wakes up believing that he is actually Santa Claus.
This isn’t the first movie where the main character has amnesia and it’s not the first time Hulk Hogan has been in a ridiculous movie either, but not every movie can put those two things together in such spectacular fashion.
None of Hogan’s movie outings are really any good but he certainly was a larger-than-life figure and people tried to cash in on that over and over again. Under the right circumstances, he’s watchable, and this might be his most watchable performance because of how ludicrous it is.
This movie is peak 90s and it’s likely the kind of movie that Arnold Schwarzenegger passed on but Hogan was a big enough personality with big enough muscles to fit the bill, without completely reworking the movie.
This one also has a surprisingly good cast with a young Mila Kunis before she got famous, Ed Begley Jr. Clint Howard, Garret Morris, Robin Curtis, Don Stark, and one of my friends from ‘Magic Bar’, Steve Valentine.
Recommendation: If you exhausted all of your Christmas movie options and want to see the kind of crazy ideas that were greenlit in the 1990s, this is your new Christmas classic.
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