Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972)
Runtime: 96 LONG minutes
Directed by: Some dude named R. Winer... and also Barry Mahon
Starring: A bunch of non-actors you've never heard of
From: R&S Film Enterprises Inc.
Another bizarre oddity I've actually seen more than once now.
As people start celebrating Christmas even before Thanksgiving arrives (which isn't something I do myself), it gave me the impetus to finally revisit something I had watched years ago. Once again this was a movie I first discovered via a website doing a detailed review and being blown away by how strange it all sounded. Yes, it was long before Rifftrax did their review.
Despite the title, not only do the Santa and Ice Cream Bunny segments only serve as bookends to another story, but Bunny does not appear until the final 10 or so minutes. Instead, a full hour of this is something previously filmed by the “legendary” Barry Mahon*. I realize I shouldn't dog too hard on someone who served in World War II and actually was in the camp where the real life events that inspired The Great Escape happened, but he was not the best filmmaker. Mahon's segment (complete w/ its own credits!) was filmed at Pirates World, a low-rent theme park in Dania, Florida that went out of business in '75 and amazingly had plenty of rock concerts from the likes of Bowie, Santana, The Grateful Dead (!) and... Led Zeppelin!! What Barry filmed in the park was much less exciting: a version of Thumbelina that was accurate to Hans Christian Andersen's story-at least according to Wikipedia-but the budget was zero dollars so the set looks cheap and the youths they have in the story all appear to be various stages of being stoned the entire time.
That occurs as a story Santa tells to a group of random kids in Florida; you see, he gets his sled stuck in sand (although “stuck” is being generous, as it's only like two inches of sand) and somehow he has the magical powers to call all the children in the neighborhood so they all scamper on over to him... this includes a young boy who just JUMPED OFF HIS ROOF while holding only a lawn furniture umbrella! They also somehow get random animals and a guy in a gorilla suit to try and pull the suit out, to no avail. Oh, and Santa keeps on his trademark outfit, despite developing obvious “swamp ass”! I mean, he had massive sweat stains on the back of his pants.
I'll be real here: this time I did not watch the movie on its own; rather, it was a YouTube video where some random guys did their own commentary and only one of them had seen this before. The rest were in disbelief over how wacky this was and they were howling when the Ice Cream Bunny finally shows up... in a fire truck that appeared to be from the 1930's... overloaded w/ all the kids that were not restrained in any way while on such a huge vehicle (this was even worse than the boy jumping off the roof) and the vehicle has to drive slow as the guy in the costume can barely see and yet he still operates it as if he is highly intoxicated... and the outfit itself looks so cheap and ghetto it becomes frightening. Of course, this bunny has no ice cream in the truck or anywhere else, so I do not know what an Ice Cream Bunny is even supposed to be. I'll stick with Blue Bunny Ice Cream, thank you very much.
The hilarity of the finale meant that this does not receive the lowest possible rating. Most of this is a slog to get through (w/ shots that go on for about twice as long as they should, to steal a line) but at least there is some tremendous unintentional humor which makes it worthwhile. Honestly, most people should only see this if there is commentary from Rifftrax or someone else.
* To clarify, not all the prints of this movie have the Thumbelina segment. Some (including the version used for Rifftrax) instead substitute Mahon's Jack and the Beanstalk, which is of similar length. I've never seen that print, although I understand it is the one available on Amazon Prime.
Runtime: 96 LONG minutes
Directed by: Some dude named R. Winer... and also Barry Mahon
Starring: A bunch of non-actors you've never heard of
From: R&S Film Enterprises Inc.
Another bizarre oddity I've actually seen more than once now.
As people start celebrating Christmas even before Thanksgiving arrives (which isn't something I do myself), it gave me the impetus to finally revisit something I had watched years ago. Once again this was a movie I first discovered via a website doing a detailed review and being blown away by how strange it all sounded. Yes, it was long before Rifftrax did their review.
Despite the title, not only do the Santa and Ice Cream Bunny segments only serve as bookends to another story, but Bunny does not appear until the final 10 or so minutes. Instead, a full hour of this is something previously filmed by the “legendary” Barry Mahon*. I realize I shouldn't dog too hard on someone who served in World War II and actually was in the camp where the real life events that inspired The Great Escape happened, but he was not the best filmmaker. Mahon's segment (complete w/ its own credits!) was filmed at Pirates World, a low-rent theme park in Dania, Florida that went out of business in '75 and amazingly had plenty of rock concerts from the likes of Bowie, Santana, The Grateful Dead (!) and... Led Zeppelin!! What Barry filmed in the park was much less exciting: a version of Thumbelina that was accurate to Hans Christian Andersen's story-at least according to Wikipedia-but the budget was zero dollars so the set looks cheap and the youths they have in the story all appear to be various stages of being stoned the entire time.
That occurs as a story Santa tells to a group of random kids in Florida; you see, he gets his sled stuck in sand (although “stuck” is being generous, as it's only like two inches of sand) and somehow he has the magical powers to call all the children in the neighborhood so they all scamper on over to him... this includes a young boy who just JUMPED OFF HIS ROOF while holding only a lawn furniture umbrella! They also somehow get random animals and a guy in a gorilla suit to try and pull the suit out, to no avail. Oh, and Santa keeps on his trademark outfit, despite developing obvious “swamp ass”! I mean, he had massive sweat stains on the back of his pants.
I'll be real here: this time I did not watch the movie on its own; rather, it was a YouTube video where some random guys did their own commentary and only one of them had seen this before. The rest were in disbelief over how wacky this was and they were howling when the Ice Cream Bunny finally shows up... in a fire truck that appeared to be from the 1930's... overloaded w/ all the kids that were not restrained in any way while on such a huge vehicle (this was even worse than the boy jumping off the roof) and the vehicle has to drive slow as the guy in the costume can barely see and yet he still operates it as if he is highly intoxicated... and the outfit itself looks so cheap and ghetto it becomes frightening. Of course, this bunny has no ice cream in the truck or anywhere else, so I do not know what an Ice Cream Bunny is even supposed to be. I'll stick with Blue Bunny Ice Cream, thank you very much.
The hilarity of the finale meant that this does not receive the lowest possible rating. Most of this is a slog to get through (w/ shots that go on for about twice as long as they should, to steal a line) but at least there is some tremendous unintentional humor which makes it worthwhile. Honestly, most people should only see this if there is commentary from Rifftrax or someone else.
* To clarify, not all the prints of this movie have the Thumbelina segment. Some (including the version used for Rifftrax) instead substitute Mahon's Jack and the Beanstalk, which is of similar length. I've never seen that print, although I understand it is the one available on Amazon Prime.
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