SANTA AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY (1972) *

Santa’s sleigh gets stuck in the sand on a beach in Florida.  Some local kids try to help Santa by bringing him every kind of animal known to man to pull the sled out, but it’s no use.  Meanwhile, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn come floating by on their raft with their pet raccoon in tow.  At one point, it looks like it takes a bite out of Tom.  I hope Santa has a rabies shot in his bag.  Santa finally gives up trying to get out of the sand, so he tells the kids a long story about Jack and the Beanstalk to pass the time.  Finally, the Ice Cream Bunny shows up (without ice cream, I might add) to give Santa a ride back to the North Pole.

So basically, this whole movie is about someone frittering away an hour or so while they wait for a tow.

Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny is one of the worst Christmas movies I’ve ever seen, which is to say I’m sure it’ll become a yearly yuletide tradition in my home.  There are so many WTF moments here that your brain will have trouble cataloguing it all.  Take for instance the scene at the North Pole where Santa’s elves (children in pointy hats who sing badly dubbed songs) go to check on the reindeer and we see them walking around in a grassy field.  Apparently, climate change hit the North Pole.  Hard.  

There is a basic level of competence on display during the Jack and the Beanstalk sequence.  Even though the effects are crummy (like the rear screen projection to make the giant look big), the songs are terrible, and the props are laughable (the “beanstalk” is merely a rope with some greenery wrapped around it), director Barry (The Beast That Killed Women) Mahon at least can tell the story from A to B.  The Santa Claus wraparound scenes (which incredibly enough, only take up only about 15% of the actual running time) are spectacularly inept.  I mean, it appears that Santa has shit his pants in one scene and the editor STILL kept the scene in there.  Amazing.

Then there’s the Ice Cream Bunny.  Never mind that he never brings anyone any ice cream.  I can handle that.  It’s the fact that he looks so damned creepy that I can’t get over.  The scene where the Bunny slowly approaches the beach in his jalopy accompanied by the sound of air raid sirens is the stuff of nightmares, and when he slowly winks at the kids, it’s nothing short of horrifying.  

Incredibly enough, there’s ANOTHER version of this movie that substitutes Thumbelina for the Jack and the Beanstalk story.  I think I know what I’m watching come Christmas.