Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972)BOMB (out of 4) If you're a fan of the weird and bizarre then it's likely you've heard of this movie. After all, even if you just glance at the title you can't help but do a double take and make sure you read it right. This "film" actually runs around twenty minutes with an entirely different feature playing in between. Depending on the version of this that you're watching you'll be greeted with THUMBELINA or JACK AND THE BEANSTALK. The copy I viewed had THUMBELINA shown so you can check out that film's page for my thoughts on that film.The story to SANTA AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY is pretty simple. Santa gets his sleigh stuck in the Florida sand so he asks some local children to try and get him out. They bring everything from dogs to sheep to a giant gorilla but none of them can get Santa out of the sand. But then they're able to find a large bunny so can he do it? Again, this footage lasts around twenty minutes and it's pretty darn awful. The incredibly bad slow-motion shots really don't help anything and especially when you consider they're just dragging out the running time. Even worse are the performances as the kids are quite annoying and the skinny Santa really doesn't make you feel as if you're seeing the "real" guy. The songs that the kids sing are all rather boring. But in all honesty, how can you take any of this serious? Obviously the producers just had so much money so they shot a little footage and then tried to pass this off as a new movie when it's basically just a short with another feature in the middle.Fans of awful movies will want to check it out but that's about it.

I saw this movie at my neighborhood theater when I was a kid (the same age as the kids in the movie) and was haunted by it for decades. I must have repressed most of it as I remembered only Santa being stuck in the sand and that the movie suddenly and inexplicably switched to Thumbelina in the middle. I couldn't remember the title and no one I talked to could remember it. Lucky them. I was finally able to find references to it once the internet became established. The entire film is available on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvUmD2kP_g0 but it is truly unwatchable. However, if you can't resist seeing it, I highly recommend the RiffTrax version. The film by itself will never make it to the "so bad it's good level" but with the commentary it's pretty entertaining. I advise caution because I'm sure the film is still capable of producing nightmares.

Everything about this movie is horrible. It has:1. A plot that can be summed up in two sentences.2. Cinematography that is on par with your grandparents' 8mm home movies.3. Acting that is... wait... you can't honestly call it acting.4. A 20-minute movie that is padded with a recycled fairy-tale film to achieve a 90-minute run time.5. A "Thumbelina" insert that has the production quality of a middle-school play.6. Costumes and scenery that are atrocious.7. Children who cannot sing.8. A Santa with a beard that looks ready to fall off his face at any time.9. Lame attempts at humor.10. Amateurish special effects.11. A cameo appearance by Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. What the ...?12. A completely irrelevant appearance by the completely irrelevant Ice Cream Bunny, who has completely nothing to do with the aforementioned dessert treat.This could be used as an interrogation tool in prison, or something to threaten children with when they misbehave. Sheer torture.

Allow me to summarize the movie.Santa's sleigh ends up on a beach in Florida, buried in an inch of sand. Santa summons a bunch of kids and they basically just go along with it and get a bunch of animals (not all at once, hello?) to pull the sleigh free, including a horse, a cow, a sheep, and even a guy in a gorilla suit. Santa, meanwhile, fans himself and mumbles "oh it's hot ooh golly oh my gosh i have never been so hot in my life oh ho ho ho oh gosh oh my golly".Santa takes a break from sweating to tell the kids the story of Thumbelina, and then they pretty much just play this older film called 'Thumbelina', made by the same guy who made this. It's meant to "inspire" the kids or whatever, but it never gets referenced after it's finished, the kids don't seem to take much from it, it's unbelievably bland and forgettable, it has nothing to do with Christmas or Santa or anything to ever happen in the history of mankind, AND (possibly the worst of all), it's actually LONGER than the segment with Santa Claus. It's literally a lazy way of padding the film out to over an hour.It's like, if they made a new Harry Potter movie, and they didn't have enough for a whole film, so they had Harry experience a flashback, then they just play one of the previous films, then that ends, then we get ten minutes of nothing happening, then it ends. That is EXACTLY what this is.Anyway, when the Thumbelina segment is over, the kids go back to running around looking for help, and Santa goes back to "oh my golly it is hot oh my gosh look at that sun glaring down oh ho ho ho i have never been so hot in my life ho ho ho". The kids return with the Ice Cream Bunny.I'm dead f*cking serious.The "Ice Cream Bunny" drives a fire truck (what, you were expecting a fire truck? You're an idiot!) and Santa climbs onto the back of the truck and they drive off into the woods and that's the last we ever see of them. Then the sleigh vanishes into thin air, leaving the audience wondering, say, why was this such an issue if the sleigh could vanish at will? Where does Santa go; is he supposed to deliver presents all around the world on the fire truck now, or what? Who the hell is the Ice Cream Bunny? Was he supposed to be the Easter Bunny? There's no mention of ice cream in the film, he's literally just a guy in a generic, creepy white rabbit costume that never speaks.Also, the Thumbelina segment is incredibly weak. Terrible acting, slow and tedious dialog and pacing, and the costumes and visuals make me feel like I'm in a bad fever dream. Seriously, is it just me, or are those moles nightmare fuel? So, here's my overall summation: Go see it. I know. I know, I just bashed it and criticized it, but it's actually fascinating. I don't know why on earth it was made, I don't know what the people behind it were thinking, I don't know what the hell is going on here. But, I'll be honest, it's oddly hilarious that way.I'm pretty sure the whole thing is on YouTube for free, which is probably the best way to look for it because I strongly doubt you can still get your hands on a VHS copy of this thing anymore.Also, you should check out the RiffTrax commentary on it; it's even funnier than this. This film is hypnotically terrible, with appalling acting, questionable writing, embarrassing effects, and an overall strange, unsettling, somewhat creepy vibe. You absolutely need to see it.Merry Christmas.