Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

A new pandemic tradition...My daughter and I spend Wed afternoons together, drinking and watching bad movies. This one hit a new low. I can't believe this was an honest to goodness theatrical release. It looks like something kids would film for their parents at YMCA summer camp. We killed a bottle of Pinot Noir in 1hr 22 min. However, there was some value added to my life from the experience: 1) I researched the amusement park featured in the film (Pirate World) and learned they had some amazing concerts there between 1967-1973 - like Led Zeppelin 2) Decided to read some Hans Christian Anderson stories to see if they are as dark as I remember.

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!

I just watched this movie online... Wow!! It's so hideously bad it makes some notoriously bad movies by Edward D. Wood look like Citizen Kane, the only motivation I could think that this abomination was produced in the first place was simply because some guys had a couple of tacky-looking fancy dress outfits laying around in the loft and decided to make a movie with them.

The plot (or lack of) consists of a particularly creepy Santa stranded on a beach in Florida because his sleigh is trapped beneath two grains of sand (we learn that his reindeer have already flown back to the North Pole courtesy of some grainy-looking stock footage). Santa sings a song and waves his hand around a lot and telepathically enlists the help of some neighbourhood kids to bring their household pets to help him out of this pickle. One girl turns up with a guy in a Gorilla suit, while others with a variety of farmyard animals. Even Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer join Santa's helpers, but this is all to no avail, so he decides to tell the story of Thumbelina to some REALLY bored looking children...

Now, the version I watched didn't have the story of Thumbelina at this point (like the original release) and it simply fades to black and then back to Santa being creepy.

For no reason whatsoever, some other guy in a white rabbit costume drives a Fire Truck with an awful lot of children passengers towards the beach only to detour through an amusement park and finally get to the beach while the children sing songs. Santa and the rabbit character mumble to each other and then they take off. The kids run back to Santa's sleigh and it mysteriously vanishes.

Then comes the Thumbelina adaptation, which, in a nutshell is a fairly pretty girl singing songs around the same amusement park Mr. Rabbit took an inane detour through. The narration of the story sounds like it's coming through a PA system and the sets look like something in the average 4th graders Christmas nativity. However, this is the best part of SC&TICB simply because the girl who plays Thumbelina can carry a tune when she sings.

I can only imagine that the intention of this movie was to advertise "Pirate World", the amusement park where most of it is based, quite the way Santa Claus (1985) advertised a certain fast food restaurant and soft drink brand.

As a movie, this is the poorest you could ever find. Everything about it is amateur, from the acting to the set design to the photography, editing and direction. Even the songs are akin to the type a 6-year-old could come up with. The kazoo-heavy score is also inferior. This could surpass for entertainment as a movie, and if it's intended to be a 90-minute advert, it fails at that too. Pirate World shut down around 1975. With this movie to advertise it... I'm expecting Santa's wake very soon...

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.)

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!!!