Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

SANTA AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY - first thought: What the ????

Found this video for rental at Family Video at 76th & National in Milwaukee this week and it sounded so atrociously awful and ridiculous I just HAD to rent it. Never heard of this movie before... It indeed was interesting viewing of one of the worst movies EVER.

For those who are seeking this video, the copy I picked up says: copyright United Entertainment, Inc. United Home Video - 1987. Product #4006

So apparently this company acquired the rights to release this on tape.

Now the video box description mentions that Santa tells the children the story of Thumbelina, and segues into that movie...

But in the video on the tape, the structure of the film has been changed.

This video does contain THUMBELINA, but not as a "movie within a movie" as in the original version. Instead THUMBELINA and all the theme-park sequences that go with it are tacked on to the end of the "Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny" story.

So in this video, Santa begins to tell the story, and the picture fades to black. Then comes back from black and now Santa has finished telling the story... wrapping up with a an incoherent moral that sounds quite nonsensical considering the Thumbelina story had been excised from the body of the SICB film. Incidentally, the Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny portion of the film clocks in at about 30 minutes.

In watching the THUMBELINA film on the video at the end of the SICB story I was interested in finding out more about the Pirate's World Amusement Park in Dania, Florida. There is considerable footage of the theme park rides in the film, and this movie could be looked at as a historical film/video document of one of Florida's Lost Roadside Attractions. Perhaps it is one of the only motion-picture visual records remaining of what that park was like. I thought the Steeplechase Ride looked cool but would not pass muster today considering safety regulations.

Pirate's World was successful enough in its early days, but the opening of Walt Disney World in 1971 was the beginning of the end for that theme park. By 1973 it was in bankruptcy and in 1975 it was closed.

I would not be surprised if SANTA AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY, released in 1972, in some way contributed to the demise of Pirate's World.

This movie is so awful, it probably scared potential theme-park visitors away!!!

Bad doesn't begin to explain this movie, And I use this term movie loosely.

My dad took my brother and I to see it at the theater when it opened in Houston, Texas in 1972. Apparently my Dad, brother and I are the last living humans that actually saw it, because there are no comments or voting as of this posting.

It's actually a really bad movie within another really bad movie. Come on, Santa Clause on the beach? It's a running joke in my family over the past 20 years that when we see a bad movie we always say 'yeah, but it's no Santa Clause and the Ice Cream Bunny' No joke. Of course having said this, I an currently trying to purchase this sorry excuse for entertainment. Go figure.

Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny… AAAHHH….. This film is a delightful(if you have been lobotomized that is) piece of cinema that was made at the now defunct amusement park Pirate's World(not that you see much of it.) The movie is such an insipid piece of fluff that they had to insert another of their films into it to liven and or pad it out. Almost nothing happens, and the little that does is poorly conceived and executed.

The plot is stupidly simple, Santa Claus loses his reindeer and is stranded in the worst place imaginable, Florida! He enlists the help of a bunch of local children to pull his sleigh out of the sand and eventually decides to tell them a fairy tale story. The story he tells varies depending on the version you are watching, and is the best part of the film, which is not saying much since both fairy tales are bad.

This film is the second worst piece of garbage I have EVER SEEN! Insipid, inexplicable, imbecilic, and ignominious, Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny deserves nothing less than the lowest rating I can possibly give it, one star on IMDb(equivalent to a negative 0 out of 4.) Avoid this toxic waste of a film at all costs!

Yes, this is among the very worst films ever made--even worse than MANOS HANDS OF FATE and light-years worse than anything made by Ed Wood, Jr.--it's that bad! Incompetent, stupid and saccharine--you just can't imagine how terrible this film is! It only avoids mention on IMDb's bottom 100 because so far there aren't enough votes to make the minimum needed for this infamous list.

The film begins with Santa and his sleigh (minus the reindeer) stuck in the sand in Florida and Christmas is just around the corner. Some kids discover him and try to help--at which point, you notice just how creepy and untalented this Santa is--and you wonder what kids would be fooled into thinking this is the genuine Saint Nick. Plus, he talks and talks and talks--he simply won't shut up--yet amazingly the kids don't run home and call the cops or walk away in boredom. Instead, they do what any kids would do--get some guy in a gorilla suit to try to dislodge the sleigh. They also try using sheep and several other half-hearted ideas. When these don't work, Santa decides to take his anger out on the kids and tells them an irrelevant story. This becomes the film "Thumbelina" (1970) and this prior film (made by the same director) consists of most of the film! Talk about a crappy way to reuse old footage. There's more to it than this, but frankly after a while I simply didn't care.

Let's face it, this film looks like a production by a local community theater--a very bad one at that. To save money, they filmed this anywhere they could locally--on the beach and at a now defunct amusement park (perhaps this film killed it). The acting, direction, production values and every aspect of the film is as poor as you can find. To make it all much worse, the film is filled with original songs--the most god-awful and annoying songs as sung by people who often couldn't carry a tune. The total effect is to make what is probably the worst Santa movie ever made--much, much worse than "Santa Claus vs. the Martians" and it's craptastic tunes. I am not exaggerating with this comparison! Aside from showing closeup footage of roadkill being eaten by vultures, I can't think of anything less entertaining for the kids. This film is likely to make parents to commit self-harm or beat the kiddies, so avoid it at all costs unless you are a genuine bad film junkie!

By the way, schlock-meister Barry Mahon made a ton of porno films before switching to saccharine kids' films late in his career. Perhaps that is why I got such creepy vibes from his Santa.

I had heard a lot about this movie before. I heard more about this movie than anyone deserves to hear. Still, I had no idea what I was in for when I finally got to see Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny. (Sitting here, I realize it's hard to articulate my true reaction to this movie). Obviously, from the comments above, it's an awful movie. Yet it has a strange draw. Like a really, really bad car accident, you can't quite turn away. And just when you think it can't get any worse, the Ice Cream Bunny actually reaches up to hold the head of his costume on while nodding vigorously at Santa's ramblings. Sad thing is, that's just a SMALL problem with this movie. My friend loves this movie. He actually recites the lines along with Santa and the gang. When I first left my initial viewing, I thought about calling the cops on him...but the more I think about it, there is a strange appeal to SICB. If you have any appreciation of the absurd and surreal then you really must see this movie. (Assuming you head doesn't explode during one of the musical numbers.)