Jack Frost: The MUCH Better Version

Hello once again confections! Alliteration aside, I AM reviewing my second Christmas film for the season (one or two more may still be around the corner...).

Two years before Michael Keaton completely ruined his career (or at least my ability to respect him at all) by appearing in the family film, Jack Frost, this little gem took the world by storm. You don't remember it? Come on! It's a niche film with low budget effects, no name actors, and horrid dialogue, how could you NOT remember it?!?

Well, basically, it's a bad movie, the kind that most likely inspired the makers of ThanksKilling to aim low. The difference: while the makers of ThanksKilling created a truly magical film with likable (if idiotic) characters and the product showed us how much the film makers cared, Jack Frost has only a few moments of brilliance and the lack of care ultimately begins to seep through.

We begin with a little girl begging her Uncle Henry to tell her a story while the credits play themselves out in the ornaments of a Christmas tree. Henry asks his niece (who’s voice sounds much more like a 40 year old man trying to be a 7 year old girl than it does like any small child I’ve ever heard in my life; Uncle Henry incidentally sounds a little bit like John Hurt) if she’d like a scary story or a happy story. She asks for a ‘happy scary story’ whatever that means, so Henry spins this yarn.

Evidently, there is a serial killer named Jack Frost. Jack likes to kill people; whether it's  because his parents didn’t love him enough, or ‘loved’ him too much, or he just likes the color red, it doesn’t really matter because Jack ultimately did what all serial killers ultimately do, he got caught. In fact, according to Henry, Jack’s life is scheduled to end at midnight tonight.

Then we fade in on a State Executional Vehicle (it says that on the side, I’m not making up words myself) that is transporting Jack (and we see that Jack is played by Scott MacDonal from Fire in the Sky and Jarhead). Jack is in the back with a guard, whom he proceeds to kill while two other guards attempt to navigate the truck through a blizzard. Unfortunately for them, a sleepy truck driver for GCC Genetic Research is out on the roads too and the two vehicles get into an accident. Everyone but one of the guards and Jack (and the guard that Jack already killed) is killed in the crash, as a fire breaks out.

Jack threatens the remaining guard, but he’s in for a surprise as the fire heats up the contents of the GCC truck, which then burst from their container onto Jack, dissolving him. Liqui-Jack’s DNA combines with the snow and well…

We don’t see the results, but we do get a little animation of Jack’s blood cells becoming icy before we are sent into the car of the sheriff (whose name is Sam) that apprehended the killer. We get a flashback of the day Jack was caught (taking a piss in the woods) and (presumably) the day Jack was sentenced as he vows revenge on the sheriff.

Did I mention yet that Sam lives in (and Jack was caught in) Snowmonton County? HA! Also, even though there’s no body, for some reason, the next day, the news reports that Jack is dead. Rather than assume the remaining guard’s story about a lump of snow running away is just a dream, they figure Jack really did get liquefied, but just didn’t get back up. Why wouldn't they think that Jack just escaped? Seriously, you have to wonder how people can be so stupid. I mean, I’m not saying they should be on the looking for killer snowmen just yet, but at least be on guard…but I digress.

There’s evidently a snowman building competition in town, and more fake snow than you can shake a finger at. Everyone seems to be getting in the Christmas spirit though (even SHANNON ELIZABETH, of American Pie and Cursed who plays a local slut named Jill) and as the sheriff pulls into the station (and he evidently leaves his windows rolled down in the middle of December) the secretary gives him an attitude. When he asks if somebody died, he finds out that’s exactly what happened.

The murder was of some old man, and the police are baffled. There’s no vehicle tracks, no footprints, no sign of a struggle and no blood, and the old man is a popsicle to boot (in a movie like this, I must add that he is not LITERALLY a popsicle, he’s just frozen stiff). The sheriff puts in a call to the FBI to confirm that Frost really is dead, and Agent Manners assures him that Jack most definitely died in the accident. After they are done talking, the sheriff sighs, “it’s over,” while Agent Manners looks across his desk to some sort of scientist and says, “it’s started.” The scientist is alarmed but Agent Manners tells him to relax, at least they know the genetic acid works, now it’s just a matter of collecting Frost for study.

Back at the sheriff’s house, Ryan (the sheriff’s son) is being a totally annoying douche, so his mom sends him outside to put the finishing touches on a snowman (neither one of them admits to building this snowman though, which doesn’t seem in the least bit interesting to either of them). Outside, Ryan busts out his model of a snowman so he can base his snowman’s look off of it. That’s right; Ryan is too much of a dumbass to know that the carrot is typically the NOSE of the snowman without using a tutorial. When the other kids pick on him for being the world’s biggest idiot, one of them has an unfortunate accident. The bully (whose name is Billy, evidently and is Shannon Elizabeth’s brother) falls down after he knocks off the snowman’s head and his toboggan runs over his neck and cuts it off sending his head flying through the air (laws of physics be damned!). Nobody notices that one of the snowman’s arms seems to have moved…

That night, as Billy’s dad mourns his death, and his mom knits, his sister Jill (Shannon Elizabeth remember) goes out to see her boyfriend Tommy. I can sympathize. I mean, I know when someone in my family dies I’m going to honor their memory by getting laid by the school jock. Billy’s dad is upset, so he goes outside to have a smoke. He doesn’t notice that the snowman from the sheriff’s house is two feet in front of him (in ThanksKilling, people didn’t notice turkeys wearing human faces and now we have people not noticing mysterious snowmen a foot in front of them…in movie-land people are evidently BLIND). He also doesn’t notice that the snowman is talking to him (people are also apparently DEAF in Hollywood, ERRR Snowmonton). It’s not too long until the snowman kills Billy’s dad with an axe (by shoving the handle down his throat! I was totally floored by this) then kills his mom too and turns her into a Christmas corpse.

Back at the sheriff’s office, Agent Manners is there (and we learn that the random scientists name is Stone).  Manners  asks to be taken to the recent crime scene and while he and Stone investigate a watery footprint (and we learn that Jack can freeze and unfreeze at will in order to get into and out of small spaces), the sheriff looks over the dead bodies.

Agent Manners places the town under 24 hour curfew, while he assembles a task force to deal with the situation. As everyone gathers in the local church, Paul, one of the locals starts destroying all the snowmen from the snowman building competition (he saw Billy’s mom get murdered earlier and it kind of tweaked his brain). The sheriff has one of his deputies take Paul somewhere quiet to calm down and get the full story and sends the other out to Billy’s house to see what could have spooked Paul so badly (even though they were all just there a few minutes prior). The sheriff then recalls the deputy who was to take Paul somewhere as he finds out that his wife has gone home. One of the deputies runs into trouble along the way to Billy’s house though as there seems to be a snowman in the road…

Back at the sheriff’s house, Sam's wife hears a police car approach, but something (the fact that just a moment ago we saw the snowman drive off in a police car) tells me that it’s not her husband. Then water starts leaking into her house…ALL OF A SUDDEN…the other deputy shows up. It was just an ice leak. As they leave the house, Jill and her boyfriend Tommy are seen in the trees. They break into the sheriff’s house and Jill asks Tommy to get her a bottle of wine and he can ‘have’ her. Tommy doesn’t know the difference between wine and champagne and when he pops the cork, and tastes the ‘wine’ he thinks it needs ice. I thought we were in for another “accidentally eat the enemy” scene like the one so brilliantly done in ThanksKilling (oh, and a little diddy called Alien), but the snowman just attacks from outside. We do learn that he can shoot icicles, however, and he proceeds to kill Tommy with an icicle to the face and a series of bad puns

Jill meanwhile has been blow-drying her hair and when she finally stops (and she’s been blow-drying for like ten minutes…) she sees the bathtub is full of water. She thinks Tommy has drawn her a bath so she hops in DESPITE THE FACT THAT MOMENTS AGO SHE WAS BLOW DRYING HER HAIR! Anyway, a carrot pops up inside the tub and suddenly Jill complains that the water is too cold (thank God, I was hoping this was coming). It turns out she’s been bathing inside the snowman and when he resolidifies he humps her to death (then makes an awesome crack about how Christmas has ‘come’ early!).

Outside the police station, Jack attacks the sheriff, Manners, Stone and the receptionist and after they run inside, Stone and Manners explain what is going on (sort of). They also explain that Jack can only be hurt when he’s in his solid state so they decide that when he eventually gets in (which he inevitably does), they will blow the place up by shooting a couple of cans of bug spray…

The plan ultimately fails, as Jack is able to pull himself together after the explosion (and makes a crack about how he looks like a Picasso masterpiece now) and vows to finish everyone off when he’s able to pull himself together. Inside the church now, the sheriff convinces Stone to spill all the beans. Evidently, Stone has been working on creating an acid that could bond human DNA to an inanimate object in the event that some sort of global holocaust was to occur. The problem (in the case of Jack Frost, especially) is that apparently, the acid doesn’t just store human DNA, it stores personalities also. Stone is pumped, he thinks he’s found the human soul but the sheriff couldn’t care less. He just wants to stop Frost.

They devise a plan to drive Jack into the furnace in the church’s basement in order to evaporate him and possibly destroy his molecules. Somebody didn’t take beginner chemistry, however, and they don’t realize that Jack won’t be KILLED by being heated, and he condenses and then solidifies.

He attacks the sheriff and his son while they are trapped in the sheriff’s car and as they try to escape, the sheriff smashes a bag of oatmeal that Ryan had made for him into Jack’s face. It seems to really hurt Jack, so the sheriff asks Ryan what was in that oatmeal. Ryan tells the sheriff that he didn’t want his dad to get cold, so he put antifreeze in the oatmeal. The sheriff asks for someone to go get a ton of antifreeze and fill up the bed of a pickup truck with it. The plan is to get Frost to fall into the pool of antifreeze and take him out for good; but will it work?

My biggest issue with this movie is in the 'special' effects. THey were like Special-Ed effects. It's actually quite disappointing. I know there wasn't a whole lot of money flying around this film, but the immobility and utter lack of personality of the snowman costume would be atrocious for a movie from the mid-80s let alone 1996.

The writing is also pretty bad. Not that one would expect anything stellar from a movie with a killer mutant snowman whose biggest actor's biggest film was American Pie, but it's like the people writing the dialogue and the people writing the screenplay weren't even in the same room together. Puns get thrown out without any call for them at all, while other puns (like using a brainfreeze pun on the icicle to the head) go unused. At one point (I think it's after Jack molests Shannon Elizabeth, but I don't remember), Frost makes a don't you eat that yellow snow joke, despite the fact that there is no urine in the entire movie.

As in every movie, there are some invaluable lessons to be learned here. Firstly, that Executional is a hilarious word. Second, we learned that you can get away with serial murder as long as you never have to pee. We've also learned that you WILL get picked on if you don't know what a snowman looks like, but snowmen will feel your pain (they are never put in front of mirrors after all), and go on a killing spree to defend your honor. Frost himself teaches us that you should ALWAYS carry an extra carrot around, just in case. Finally, we've learned that bug spray, in addition to not actually being poisonous to humans even in massive doses, is an explosive ten times more powerful than C4.

So, basically, it's a fun film. It's REALLY bad. The effects are pretty much terrible throughout, the writing is uneven, and it actually has less to do with Christmas itself than you'd think with a name and a theme that so blatantly lends itself to Christmas parody (and I've heard people blast GREMLINS for not being Christmas-y enough...PUH-LEASE!).

In the end, I'd say it's a solid BAD movie to watch to get yourself in the holidy spirit. It's not the best bad movie ever, but it certainly is far more enjoyable than ThanXgiving. If you consider yourself a bad movie fan, you owe it to yourself to see this at LEAST once.

Final rating below, as usual, and as ALWAYS you can read my explanation of my review system and my full index of reviews. JUST CLICK HERE!