Lousy Lottery 27: Kicking Off the Holidays with Jack Frost
Welcome, friends, to the Lousy Lottery! Here’s how it works. First, I post four movies to a poll on Twitter. Fans vote to pick which movie to make me watch that week. I watch it, review it and spread the word about an amazingly awful, terribly terrific b-horror flick.
Deck the halls with the bowels of Holly
Fa la la la la, la la la slice
Tis the season to be slashing
Fa la la la la, la la la splat
Don, you’re dead, but you don’t knot it
Fa la la la la la la la stab
Kill the ancient bitch named Carol
Fa la la la la, la la la burn
This is week 27! Thanksgiving is over and the holiday season is officially underway. To celebrate, this week we jingle our bells with 1997’s Jack Frost! Let’s talk plot.
Three guards are transporting notorious bad guy Jack Frost, yes that’s his actual name, to his final destination. Mr. Frost is scheduled to be executed and the only thing slowing that down is a snowstorm tantamount to a blizzard. The driver’s can’t see a damn thing and just when they cross over into the tiny town of Snowmonton, yes you read that right, they get into an accident that flips the transport bus over and sends Frost and others flying. Now two truly odd and coincidental things happen. One, the sheriff of Snowmonton gets called out to the accident and, two, the bus hit a tanker filled with some sort of cryogenic materials.
The reason these two things are odd and coincidental is twofold. Firstly, that sheriff just so happens to be the guy who finally caught Frost and brought him to justice. Secondly, the tank happens to explode just as Frost is passing it on foot and he gets somehow melted by the cryogenic liquid. So, now we have Frost who, for reasons I can’t explain, is turned by the liquid into a living, actual snowman and he just so happens to be in the hometown of the guy who sent him to the electric chair. While I’m not sure how Frost got so lucky, he capitalizes on that luck and starts fucking folks up.
He starts by killing some random kid by cutting the kid’s head off with a sled. Ooh baby. I don’t know why he chose this kid, but the decapitation does take place right in front of the sheriff’s son. At first, I thought maybe Frost chose this brutal kill to traumatize the sheriff’s son. That would make some sense, but he then follows it up by going to the kid’s family home and killing them all. No sheriff’s son around for this gory business. He kills dear old dad by shoving an axe, handle first, down his throat. He then kills mom by smashing her face repeatedly into a bin of ornaments, then ties her to the Christmas tree. Next up is sis, played by Shannon Elizabeth. She’s getting into a bath that turns out to be Frost melted into the tub. He reforms and seemingly fucks her to death. No clue why he had it out for this family, but the kills were all pretty dang fun.
There’s some exposition about what the hells going on and why, but none of that really matters. This movie is about the goofy, cheesy one-liners and the sweet kills. As Frost continues to Michael Meyers his way through Snowmonton, the townsfolk work together to bring him down. They try hairdryers, they try chemicals, they even trap him in a furnace. Sure, everything melts him and slows him down, but nothing stops him. I have to circle back to the start for a second. You see, right at the beginning of the movie, the sheriff’s son made him a ‘christmas snack’ for work. The kid hands him this weird chocolaty goo in a ziplock baggie and dad tosses it in his backseat.
At the end of the movie, Frost shows up in that car just as the heroes are getting away. The backseat of a police car isn’t able to be opened from the inside. So, when Frost suddenly pops up in the backseat, the sheriff thinks fast and bolts from the car. Lucky for him, Frost decides to have a little of the chocolate left in the backseat. No, really really really lucky for the sheriff because apparently his kid put anti-freeze in the chocolate “so you won’t get cold at work.” What the actual fuck? The kid’s like 12 or so, he ain’t 2! Either way, it does the trick and Jack Frost is no more.
It has taken a very long time for casual horror fans to accept horror-comedies. Sure, the avid fan and the insider knows this subgenre well and often loves it. Most, though, either don’t know what it is or can’t wrap their mind around it. Is this supposed to be serious? This is the question the casual fan asks. Why? Well, because horror is supposed to be serious, right? After over a century of horror, we’re just now getting comfortable and accepting of horror-comedies.
With movies like Happy Death Day, Tucker and Dale versus Evil and most recently Freaky, audiences finally seem to be getting it and loving it. My theory is that it took this long largely because referring to it as horror or horror-comedy confuses people and rightly so. We don’t do this with other genres. You wouldn’t call Blazing Saddles a western-comedy, would you? You wouldn’t call Galaxy Quest a sci-fi-comedy, right? No, they’re just comedies. When one calls a movie horror, audiences expect something scary and dramatic.
Jack Frost has never been taken seriously and has never been given the credit it deserves. As of right now, it has a 7% on Rotten Tomatoes. Why? Well, because it’s not scary or dramatic. It’s, instead, silly, goofy and funny. If it were marketed as just a straight up comedy, I think more people would’ve seen it and loved it. As a comedy, it’s irreverent fun totally kills and would’ve fit right in with comedies of the late nineties like American Pie or Kingpin. I mean, Shannon Elizabeth gets fucked to death by a snowman who then says, “looks like Christmas came a little early this year.” Can’t get more dumb ‘90s fun than that.
I may not have a time machine to enable me to go back to the ‘90s and let audiences know it’s not horror, it’s a comedy, but I do have the ability to tell you all that you should sit back, relax and laugh at this comedic silliness. It’s not just the comedy that works in this movie, though. It’s also the practical effects. Sure, some of the effects are campy and dumb, but the gore is actually legit. There are all sorts of fun kills in this movie, the best of which is the very first one. When Frost gets somehow turned into a living, breathing snowman by having cryo-something-or-other sprayed on him, the effects are truly great. The melty, gory goodness is well worth the price of admission. Considering the tiny budget of this movie, that took some real skill. The writer of the film, Michael Cooney, took over as director because they couldn’t afford to hire one. To give you a sense of the size of the budge, Cooney noted in an interview that this film’s budget was the same as the catering budget of another film of his, Identity.
With cheesy one-liners, dumb/fun comedy and solid kills, what more could you ask for? This movie should be a regular holiday watch. For now, you can find it on Tubi and Prime for free. So, whiskey up that egg nog, sit back with a nice sativa and enjoy the hell out of Jack Frost.
Also, don’t forget to see what’s coming next in the Lousy Lottery. Make sure you tune into Twitter later today and vote for Lousy Lottery 28! My handle is @MrJosh79, look for it and don’t forget to vote!
Don’t want to miss anything on the site? Sign up for our newsletter HERE
Want more Lousy Lottery? Just search below:
