1996
9 kills
First Kill - 5 minutes
Black guy: "He's a bad mutha--"
Black woman: "Shut yo mouth!"
Black guy: "I'm only talkin' 'bout Frosty."
Jana: "How do you spell 'ho?'"
This Jack Frost isn't Michael Keaton's take on Frosty the Snowman -- this one is pure evil, never mind that that's an oxymoron. Of course, the horror Jack Frost lacks the budget and acting talent of the wussy kiddie Jack Frost to make the snowman's lips (if you can call them that) move or seem believable, but then we're only here to see sex and gore anyway, so no biggie.
Even Kevin Spacey himself couldn't make a better snowman than the no-name lunatic actor in Jack Frost. The lunatic cast in the role of the snowman does a terrific job of the stereotypical psycho hellbent on revenge. Why does he want revenge and go on a killing spree? Cause a small town sheriff caught him peeing on the side of the road.
[pause] Okay, let's stop right here. You're traveling cross country. You got a Biggie Coke Deluxe. You finish it. Hours later you have to urinate and there's no bathroom in sight. You have two options: 1) Pee on yourself and relax in the warmth and bouquet of your own bodily fluids or 2) pull over and go on some weeds. You're damned well going to pull over. Now, if some cop comes and sends you to jail for life, you're damned well also going to go insane. I mean, the guy just wet some unwanted weeds! It's like the St. Bernard cops who have nothing better to do than to pull over unsuspecting law abiding white kids just cause they drive a Monte Carlo. You'd almost sympathize with the lunatic if he wasn't so stupid.
[play] Anyway, apparently that's a major offense in this small probably Texan town, and Jack is arrested and sentenced to jail. Coming out of the courthouse (which is darn impressive for a town with a population of two dozen people) he swears to the sheriff that he'll get revenge. On the way to jail, lunatic tries to escape, and a series of vehicular accidents end up with Jack Frost being doused with some experimental chemical and merging with the snow.
The first half of the movie and spent setting up the cast and watching the stupid sheriff trying to find who this mysterious killer is. See, normal human killers can't normally freeze old people and turn them into ice, so he's got quite a handful of a mystery to solve since there's no superhumans in his town. His attempts to solve this mystery are pathetic, as you'll see while watching him stare at a victim and rocking the rocking chair with his foot for a couple of minutes while pondering who could have done such a thing. The second half of the movie focuses on trying to kill this seemingly invincibile snowman, and an FBI agent and the nervous inventor of the chemical are brought in to overact and accomplish nothing. All the while Jack keeps killing people left and right, always with some not quite clever comment. The sheriff tries to do the same when he finishes off Jack, though it doesn't quite make sense: "What's the difference between snowmen and snowwomen? No balls." This is where I groaned and scratched my head profusely, much like the mighty primates of African though quite a bit paler.
Otherwise, Jack Frost is just loaded with tons of scenes that'll have you laughing, including various out of place background people and some poorly edited dialogue ("I WILL FIND A WAY!"). There's an old guy who's always going around trying to sell people salt for some reason, and the sheriff really struggles in once scene to pull some keys out of a door that's like right in front of him. A lot of the acting and reactions don't make much sence as well, such as a family who forgets to grieve when their son is murdered or a girl who gets horny when her family is killed.
The girl, by the way, is supposedly someone from American Pie, which seemed to be a big deal to others. Her and some talented snowman builder (there was a contest earlier in the week) broke into the sheriff's home to raid their wine and get to know each other in the Biblical sense. Of course, she stumbles upon the shower and decides to use it... AFTER she dried her hair!? I don't get it. I also don't get why she's never shown nekkid -- her shower scene is presented in rapid, non-nude flashes like that episode of Who's the Boss? when Tony Danza walks into the bathroom when that boss lady he lived with was taking a shower. Being paid to live with a woman... Tony Danza had it made, but I digress. Now, the lack of nudity is fine and dandy and doesn't really detract from the movie, but if you're going to do an extended shower scene, they could at least get it right. I guess the constant snowman nudity kinda sucked up the movie's nude budget. Poor girl never finishes her shower as she's promptly raped (with a carrot nose!) by Jack Frost.
"Christmas came a little early this year, huh!?" Well, that was a sucky kill. Jack kinda just bashes her a bit against the wall and she dies. Now, for a girl so eager to please the local male population, you'd think she'd be used to that kind of thing. Oh well. The rest of the kills are better, though, including the standard decapitations, various stabbing, and so forth. Unfortunately, there's not much in the way of holiday themed kills, though the big one is one of the most brutal things I've seen yet. Jack Frost takes some old woman who mentioned that she always wanted to be a Christmas tree angel (foreshadowing her death as most in the movie do) and begins wrapping her with lights, stuffing her mouth with ornaments till they start ripping through her cheeks, bashing her face repeatedly into the box of ornaments, and finally smashing her into the tree. You wouldn't think a stupid looking snowman would make a good killer, but the results speak for themselves. Shh! Listen!
Living in Louisiana, I don't get to see much snow outside of the stuff they're selling in Village Square, but even then I can see how fake the snow is in Jack Frost. While the budget is certainly enough to give Jack Frost that "real movie" look, everything else from the snowman outfit to the map of boxes the sheriff and FBI guy love to pass looks cheap and phony. The FBI guy doesn't even seem FBI-y enough, wasting all his screen time hitting on other male characters to go strolling with him. The stupid cop-secretary-woman-thing is always clinging to her hair spray bottle, which is actually labeled "Hair Spray" in big bold letters, and the sheriff's hermaphrodite son loves cooking sacks of manure and marshmallows for some reason. We're never really told what that crap is, but it certainly looks like feces that they pack away into zip lock bags. We find out later that the kid cooks with anti-freeze. Don't ask; don't tell. I'm sure the FBI guy will do the same.
The only thing that really bugged me about Jack Frost was how the snowman's innards appeared all gory and realistic looking. Now, I have nothing against gore (after all, I'd be promptly kicked out SSMS if I did), but gore in a snowman just looks phony and wrong, ESPECIALLY after we've seen the thing melt and reform dozens of times with only the carrot nose and coal eyes not liquefying. It's just silly, but then the whole movie is silly, so I can let that slide a bit. That said, the movie will wear you down as the end draws near, since the stupid cup overfloweth, and the ridiculousness of the ending scenes will just make you wish it have ended sooner.
Jack Frost has an over abundance of great lines, good (bad) acting, a decent metal/holiday soundtrack, and a nice amount of quality kills. Sure, the whole snowman thing is silly, but it works mostly in Jack Frost's favor. Jack Frost is definitely one of the better horror movies out there and easily one of if not the most original, plus it has stupidity to spare.
-- Dad's Sticky Axe
Coolio -- Very good concept and very good kills. The ornaments to the face is an immediate classic and the sled decapitation was excellent as well. However, it started to really get on my nerves after an hour or so. It shouldn't have been so hard to kill a stupid snowman. Also, I never did understand why he was attacking that one family.
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