Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972)

Runtime: 96 minutes

Directed by: Barry Mahon, R. Winer

“Starring”: Jay Ripley, Shay Garner, Pat Morrell, Bob O’Connell

From: R&S Film Enterprises, Inc.

Here is something that I know sounds extremely bizarre and something that I must have made up when I was on drugs or something, but it’s true. In fact, I have proof the movie actually exists. I realize that the plot of “Santa gets his sleigh stuck in the Florida sand and despite the best efforts of random kids he can’t escape. So, to pass the time he tells the Thumbelina story. Then, a guy in a bunny costume comes to save the day” DOES sound like the product of a fever dream, but this movie was actually filmed. In fact, someone uploaded it to YouTube.

It’s from Barry Mahon, a director not only famous in some circles for directing some “nudie pictures” (i.e. plotless flicks where you see a bunch of women naked; hey, times were different back in the 60’s) and suddenly turning to children’s films, but (no kidding) he fought in World War II and was part of the escape made famous in the movie The Great Escape, with lead Steve McQueen loosely playing Mahon. Bizarre but true. Also, this movie is actually a combo effort. The majority of it is from a 1970 movie called Thumbelina (directed by Mahon) and the Santa and Ice Cream Bunny stuff is the beginning and end, filmed by the mysterious R. Winer. Why they did this, I don’t know, but then again I don’t know why a movie called Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny exists.

If you want a detailed recap of it-and I do mean detailed-you can go here and read The Agony Booth’s take on it. It’s a site where I used to read its recaps way back when and even post on their messageboard for quite a few years, but stuff happened and now I don’t. It was a small insular community for a long time but then some rude and ignorant people joined and ruined things. Plus, I got behind on trying to keep up with the board and I decided one day to give up on it. What a shame.

Anyway, to try and be brief, Santa is in Florida and his sleigh is stuck in the sand. He magically calls some children to help him out with that. For some bizarre reason, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn look on but otherwise do nothing. They end up bringing various animals to try and help out, including a sheep, cow, and guy in gorilla suit (!), but it doesn’t work. Santa kills time by telling the story of Thumbelina, where we get the Mahon footage from. After that, Santa asks for help from the Ice Cream Bunny, so that guy in the crappy suit comes, and things end up being fine in the end.

Total amateur hour is the best way to describe this. It’s incompetent and yet despite its bloated length, it’s still wildly entertaining in a “laughing at it” manner. The Thumbelina footage is quite the trip, almost literally. It’s psychedelic and the lead girl looks to be stoned most of the time, and apparently doesn’t like to wear a bra either.

I’m not quite sure what else to say about this one of a kid slice of cinema from way back when, so I’ll mention that I’ll post something real brief on Friday and then Christmas night I’ll post a review of a holiday movie that may be even wackier than the movie I talked about in this review, if you can believe it.