Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

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.

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.)

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 saw this when I was a kid and remember it being one of the worst movies ever. Many year later, someone I knew found a copy on a VHS tape and we watched. It confirmed what I knew as a child, this is a very bad movie. Why this thing was ever made to begin with is one question left to be answered? Why it was put on video is another. ALL copies should be destroyed to save the world from this travesty.

Wow I was shocked when I searched this movie and received a hit. I was telling my children about the worst movie I had seen as a child.Which happened to be this one. My mom had taken all six of us to a Saturday matinée at the Palace Theatre in Norwich,Conn which was a weekly tradition.It had to be later than the original date for this which was 1972. The second feature was Empire of the Ant's.My mom almost got up and left during the Santa and Ice Cream Bunny movie because it was so bad.All we remember was Santa sitting in a sled that was stuck in sand.And he kept saying hohoho.I think he told the story of Jack and the Beanstalk also while he was stuck.