Merry Deathmas!

Merry Christmas, everybody! I firmly adhere to the philosophy that you should never give a gift that you wouldn't want to receive yourself, so here is the second film from this year's Christmas Slasher Marathon!

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday. And if you don't celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a wonderful Wednesday and thank you for reading my blog.

Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman

Year: 2000
Director: Michael Cooney
Cast: Christopher Allport, Eileen Seeley, Chip Heller
Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Right off the bat, Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman does something most horror sequels don't have the smarts to do: show a survivor who has been psychologically affected by the events of the prior film.

After Jack Frost(Scott MacDonald)'s attack on the sleepy mountain town of Snowmonton, Sheriff Sam Tiler (Christopher Allport) is severely shaken and seeing a psychiatrist who mostly just giggles at his story of a killer snowman. Christmas is approaching, and with it comes the anniversary of the dreadful attacks.

His wife Anne (Eileen Seeley) decides it's best to get away for the holidays so she and Sam decide to accompany their friends Joe (Chip Heller) and Marla (Marsha Clark) to their Christmas wedding in the Bahamas and that's exactly how I want my future marriage to begin.

Jack Frost can be my best man.

Another thing Jack Frost 2 does right in terms of horror sequels is to bring back most of the original surviving cast. Not that this is a Scream level accomplishment, but it is worth noting that at least on paper, this is a great sequel.

Due to some sort of Rogue Science Brigade, Jack Frost is accidentally revived and stronger than ever. He can melt and freeze himself at will and follows the happy couples to their island resort.

And before I get into this, let me explain. This is in no way a well made film. It looks like crap filmed in somebody's backyard for twelve cents. But on the script level, this is quite an impressive film - on the heavily curved scale of holiday slasher films based around bad puns, at least.

But the fact remains that this is a campy slasher films with genuine moments of intentional comedy that is actually quite funny. There are a couple truly sweet, tender moments and a couple of big guffaws mixed in with all the gory holiday mayhem.

Of which there is plenty. Merry Christmas to me.

Of which there is an ample supply. Although they may be low on functioning telephone lines, the Meat Supply on the island is at an all time high. There's Rose (Jennifer Lyons), Ashlea (Shonda Farr - best known as Warren's girlfriend robot in the Buffy episode "I Was Made To Love You"), and Paisley (Granger Green), three college-aged girls on vacation; Dean (Brian Gross) and Ben (Jason Hall - another minor character from Buffy), two dumb but hot Cali surfer boys who have their eyes on the trio;  Charlie (Stefan Marchand), a fashion photographer, and his models Sarah (Melanie Good) and Cindy (Stephanie Chao).

There's also the staff: Bobby (Tai Bennett), the genre savvy Jamaican bartender who nearly survives the entire movie; Colonel Hickering (Ray Cooney), the British owner of the resort who we suspect has been alive since the British occupation of India in the 1800's based on his stories; Agent Manners (David Allen Brooks), the FBI agent from the first film who is now Head of Island Security; and Captain Fun (Sean Patrick Murphy), the party master and somehow not odious comic relief character.

With such a heaping helping of potential victims, Jack has a field day. Either the producers gave more money or less f*cks because the gore is wonderfully done and utterly bananas (sometimes literally). People are killed with icicles and snowballs and ice cubes and iced coffee and banana arrows and it's all just a wonderful explosion of the absurd.

Combine this with the actually genuinely good subplot elements the film carries along with it and you have yourself one of the best B-movie sequels I've ever seen. It's campy, hilarious, fun, and has cute little snowballs.

Exhibit A.

It's one of those hidden gems of the horror genre that I have dedicated my life to finding.

Killer: Jack Frost (Scott MacDonald)
Final Girl: Sheriff Sam Tiler (Christopher Allport)
Best Kill: One of the surfers gets his tongue stuck to a pole in traditional Christmas fashion. Jack Frost rips it off in traditional slasher fashion. One of the best combinations of two very campy genres I've seen yet.
Scariest Moment: A mini snowball dies in Jack's arms. It's terrifying how emotional this scene makes me. I shouldn't be having feelings in the middle of a slasher film.
Weirdest Moment: One of the models ices her nipples with a little piece of Jack.
Champion Dialogue: "You brought caulking on our vacation?"
Body Count: 22; Not including Jack Frost because come on.

TL;DR: With a bigger budget, Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman could have been a pretty good movie, but for what it is it's a classic of the form.
Rating: 7/10 - the highest grade I can give to a film this poorly made.
Word Count: 890
Reviews In This Series
Jack Frost (Cooney, 1997)
Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman (Cooney, 2000)

Archive: December 24, 2012

And To All A Good Night

Well, the Christmas season has arrived and holiday cheer is getting all up in our grills. Soon it’ll be 2013, and thus begins the delicious week of 2012 wrap-ups. I really, truly, unabashedly love end-of-year wrap up lists. Always have, always will.

Anyway, my contribution to the lot isn’t due til next week, so in the meantime, let us celebrate Christmas Eve with a sort of meandering Christmas topic tonight.

First item on the agenda: Christmas releases.

As with every year, December 25th finds itself inundated with holiday releases and this year’s fare exemplifies the holiday spirit like no other. There’s Django Unchained, the bloody Tarantino slave drama, Les Misérables, the musical epic about the French Revolution, and… well, let’s not talk about the other one. That makes for some stirring Christmas cinema if I’m not mistaken.

All kidding aside, I am beyond excited for the Les Mis release. The reviews I’ve looked at so far seem to be across the board, but these musical movies tend not to do very well in the critical eye. My beloved Mamma Mia! was reviled, Rent was universally panned, and while these might not technically be considered good movies, that’s not really the point, is it?

Glitter. Glitter is the point.

The thing about Les Mis though, is that instead of pre-recording the vocals in a studio and lip-syncing on set, all the actors actually sang in camera, which is quite unprecedented and in theory leaves much more options open in terms of emoting and expression.

It’s a grand experiment, much along the vein of The Hobbit’s 48 fps frame rate, and it’s more about trying the technique than the actual movie itself. Regardless, Anne Hathaway is going to kill, and try as you might to convince me otherwise, I absolutely adore Amanda Seyfried and am thoroughly prepared for this movie to wow me, even if, cinema-wise, it really isn’t that great.

And to be brutally honest, I don’t give a hoot about Tarantino’s new film, but I appreciate the fact that it exists and I’m sure fans of his will find much to delight in.

Nothing says Christmas like a blood-soaked camera lens, and I say that with absolutely zero trace of irony. I have recently begun my second annual winter season Christmas Slasher Festival, and it is going swimmingly.

Below you will find mini-reviews of the two most recent offerings. And for the rest of you, have yourself some very happy holidays (or some joyful non-denominational protests)!

Satan Claus

Year: 1996
Director: Massimiliano Cerchi
Cast: Robert Cummins, Jodie Rafty, Robert Hector
Run Time: 59 minutes
MPAA Rating: Unrated

This film isn’t so much a movie as it is an hour-long experiment in seeing just exactly how dark the lighting can be in a scene without actually just being a black screen. All but one or two of the scenes in the movie are shot in such complete, utter blackness that it is nearly impossible to tell if the scenes are taking place indoors, outdoors, or even on this mortal plane.

This absurdly short film follows the NYPD (which is comprised of three employees - the police chief and two officers) as they investigate a string of murders by a crazed man in a Santa suit who is rampaging on Christmas Eve.

The effects are laughable, the plot is incomprehensible, the shots are muddy and the characters virtually indistinguishable from one another. In fact for the longest time, I wasn’t even sure if the protagonist was white, black, or Hispanic. His face was kept under a cloak of perpetual darkness.

Luckily the movie is short, sweet, absurd to the point of hilarity, and heavily features a random picture of Bill Clinton haphazardly taped to the wall in the police station.

Actual dialogue from the film: (as Santa is brandishing an axe at a shocked victim) “Merry Christmas!”

Body Count: Who even knows? I know I wasn’t paying attention. And the information isn’t readily available on the internet because, for all intents and purposes, this movie does not exist.

Rating: 2/10

Jack Frost

Year: 1997
Director: Michael Cooney
Cast: Scott MacDonald, Christopher Allport, Stephen Mendel
Run Time: 1 hour, 29 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Not to be confused with the heartwarming 1998 Michael Keaton film of the same name, Jack Frost follows the exploits of one Jack Frost, a killer whose execution delivery vehicle collides with a truck containing “genetic material,” transforming him into a snowman with a thirst for blood.

He returns to hunt down his old nemesis, the sheriff of the tiny town of Snowmonton (seriously). This movie is actually a pretty delightful slasher flick featuring some truly awful Christmas puns, a creative murder utilizing every part of a Christmas tree, a pre-American Pie Shannon Elizabeth being violated by a carrot, and not a flake of actual snow.

Seriously. For all its importance to the plot, the sleepy town of Snowmonton (which is right in the middle of their annual snowman building competition) looks for all the world like it could be smack dab in the middle of Arizona for all the snow it displays. A few strategically placed white blankets and some carefully iced windshields serve to move the plot along, but it’s hard not to notice that the town clearly hasn’t felt the tender caress of snow in quite a few months.

Sidebar: The Internet has just informed me that there is a sequel to this film. I will not rest until it is in my hands.

Body Count: 11

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 953

Reviews In This Series
Jack Frost (Cooney, 1997)
Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman (Cooney, 2000)