Jack Frost & Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman

Jack Frost

Jack Frost is a captured serial killer that’s being transported on the road when they crash into an experimental genetic chemical truck.  The new substance gets all over Jack and his DNA bonds with the snow so now he’s an evil snowman on the loose.  He can melt and refreeze at will which means he can get under doors and into most places.  He can also shoot icicles from his body impaling his victims.  Frost takes his revenge on the town where he was eventually captured, Snowmonton (love that name), by killing everything in sight.

This is a pretty relentless movie that has a high body count.  All of the deaths are kinda gruesome with one of the worst being handed out to an innocent woman.  Jack smashes her face in glass ornaments with some rubbing around to make sure all the shards tear her the fuck up.  He then wraps her in lights and shoves her in the Christmas tree.  Damn.  Everyone else this thing murders is an asshole of some sort but this woman hasn’t done shit.  In fact all she was doing was grieving over her lost son (who Jack killed earlier!), so what the fuck gives movie?

But don’t get me wrong, overall there’s a fun time in here.  I saw this when it came out in 1997 and it’s goofier but also more cohesive than I remember.  The story is tight, there’s a huge effort to cram as much Christmas shit in here as possible, the kills are varied with some inventive ones (death by freeze rape?) and how the townspeople take out Jack is really clever.  The filmmakers also made sure to put a snowman somewhere in every scene, practically every shot.  It may be a decoration, a toy, an ornament, a Pez dispenser, an actual snowman, whatever, they found a way to do it.  Bravo.

One thing I didn’t remember though is that this picture is low budget as shit.  They clearly filmed this someplace not cold because you don’t see anyone’s breath and the fake snow is well, absurdly fake.  Some of the actors kick up the edge of the flap of the “snow” lying on the ground a few time.  And the killer snowman comes alive mostly through editing and a few bits of puppetry.  They must not have been able to afford to make an animatronic I guess.  There are also the typical trappings of a low budget production like bad dialogue, bad acting, nonsensical behavior, not the best cinematography, etc.

But hey if you want a Christmas horror movie that’s proud of who it is, what it’s trying to accomplish and is pretty off the wall this might be for you.

Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman

I guess a few people liked ol’ Jack so here we are.  This time scientists bring him back (we never find out why by the way) and he escapes to get his revenge on the Snowmonton sheriff that bested him a year earlier.  They eventually duke it out on a tropical island where the sheriff and his wife are vacationing for Christmas.  That’s right, they went tropical for number two which puts this film in such illustrious company as Weekend at Bernie’s II, The Hangover II, Speed 2: Cruise Control (this one doesn’t exactly fit but it’s close enough) and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie’s Island Adventure.

Surprisingly Jack isn’t in this as much, at least as we’ve come to know him.  His first five or six victims are attacked while he’s in a melted state with the ability to form ice to deliver the deathblow whenever needed.  So first off the filmmakers seemed to make him more powerful than before because he’s essentially invincible as deadly water that can go anywhere (even across oceans).  In the original he couldn’t really do much when he was melted.  His mobility was somewhat limited and he had to refreeze fully to actually kill someone.

But the other thing is we’re introduced to new creatures that take over the mayhem for the last half hour.  They’re snowball critters that, like Jack, can’t be destroyed by almost anything, including heat.  Their affinity for destruction, the sheer number of them and their silly behavior makes them fairly strong Gremlin rip offs.  I wanna say this is supposed to be an homage because of how overt it is.  If it’s not then that’s kinda bad. 

I also don’t know if the snowballs were a way to cut back on Jack for budget reasons (the snowballs are static figures in many shots) or if it was purely a creative decision.  Either way these things are mostly annoying, although I appreciate the effort to try to change it up.

I can’t recommend this one.  It’s harder to watch than the first in every way.  The budget is seemingly lower, they went for more laughs (unsuccessfully in my opinion), the script is much worse, the effects are sorta bad overall and the deaths are stupidly comical.  Please don’t see this.