THE WORST WE CAN FIND - Christmas Advent Calendar: Day 16 - SANTA AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY

Day 16 of The Worst We Can Find Christmas Advent Calendar and we're back to another live RiffTrax event, this time with the deadly Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny!

Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1970/1972)

Program: RiffTrax

Air-Date: Live broadcast, December 3, 2015; released on video, March 2016.

 

Original newspaper ad for the movie (it's creepier that way) and the RiffTrax artwork for the live version.

Plots and Thoughts: It’s another live presentation of RiffTrax at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, which was broadcast in theaters around the country. This includes three Christmas-themed shorts and a version of Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny that is different from the earlier 2010 VOD RiffTrax release, as the middle story, Thumbelina, has been replaced by Jack in the Beanstalk. Both by the same director and both hard to watch.

After some tomfoolery from Bill, Mike, and Kevin, with Bill passing out some Christmas paraphrenia to the others, the shorts begin.

Santa Claus Story (1945) It’s another Castle Films short, which means we have a wraparound story and filler in-between that may or may not have anything to do with the wraparound. In this case, it’s strictly nonsensical, as Santa talks to two children about monkeys for half the running time, while stock footage of chimps and monkeys fill the screen. He then recites most of the “Yes, Virginia” editorial covered in Day 8’s calendar blog. So it’s Santa talking about how he will live for ten thousand years, and it all sounds rather egotistical of him. Still, as some reviewers have pointed out, the editorial would not become part of our collective memory of Christmas until well into the 1960s, so to see it here is interesting. The short ends with the kids back asleep (begging the question why they would both be dreaming about Santa telling them stories about monkeys), and Santa as a phantom lording over all and laughing.

The Tale of Custard the Dragon (1965) This short is from Weston Woods Studios, which commonly made short films using famous children’s stories to be shown in classrooms. This one is based on a poem by Ogden Nash and could have been somewhat fun if it wasn’t so set in having everything look like a class presentation at Christmas. The camera work is a bit muddled, and the mistreatment of Custard would have worked better if we saw something different than a bunch of kids picking on another kid. Still, of all the films shown here, it’s probably the most professional.

Santa’s Enchanted Village (1964) Coming from K. Gordon Murray, the producer who brought up many films from Mexico, especially children movies such as the beloved Santa Claus, you go in knowing what to expect – a lot of overdubbed incomprehensible oddness and bad editing. Stinky Skunk and the Big Bad Wolf had been part of a series of children films back in Mexico in the early 1960s directed by Roberto Rodriguez, who also directed a movie featuring Puss in Boots, all of which were released in the U.S. in dubbed versions by Murray. Hence, seeing the costumes pop up here with Santa isn’t much of a stretch. Heck, Murray even uses some shots from Santa Claus to bulk up the short (oh, yeah, Merlin was VERY necessary to the plot, Mr. Murray, thanks for adding him). The footage was shot at the Santa’s Village amusement park in Dundee, Illinois. The story has the three working for Santa, but Stinky and some of the elves take off to watch a puppet show. The Big Bad Wolf scares them all back to work, only to get sucked into the show and is still watching when he gets busted by Santa for not doing his job. Well, okay, Santa just laughs, but you know he’s going to dock the Wolf’s pay for being off the clock like that when the camera isn’t on him.

Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1970/1972) – Speaking of filming in parks, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny was shot at Pirate’s World in Dania, Florida (south of Fort Lauderdale and near the ocean). The park was created in 1965 and featured several traditional amusement park rides along with special programming for kids and adults, including many rock concerts that played there between 1969 and 1973. And we’re not talking about rock and rollers playing nostalgia tours; this was a place that featured Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath, the Steve Miller Band, David Bowie, and Alice Cooper, amongst others. It was also notorious for having rough crowds at those shows and police having to be called in to control the audience at times.

It was also a place where performances were done of traditional fairy tale stories for families and that’s exactly what piqued writer-director-producer Barry Mahon’s interest in the late 1960s. Mahon has been involved with movies for some time (including Rocket Attack U.S.A., which MST3K covered, as well as a number of nudie movies up in New York). In Florida, he commonly filmed children’s movies for Childhood Productions, including The Wonderful Land of Oz, which was also covered by RiffTrax. Pirate’s World had two productions that Mahon saw could easily be put on film and released to theaters within a minimum of effort in costumes, sets and designs (since Pirate’s World already had these available).

Newspaper ad for a January 1972 showing of the two Mahon movies together.

Filming was done and completed on two productions in this manner in 1970: Thumbelina and Jack and the Beanstalk. Both were then released together to theaters that year and, like most children films done by smaller production companies, pretty much ran its course and disappeared quickly, only to occasionally pop up again when theaters needed quick matinee material to run on weekends. With Thumbelina there is at least a wraparound setup to the main story, showing a girl seeing a diorama at Pirate’s World for the story and then becoming part of the story itself before coming back to reality and then leaving the park. Jack doesn’t have that, getting right to the story until it ends. Both run around an hour long each, so the pairing made sense. Both are also rather traditional retellings of their respective fairy tale stories, with occasional songs, although there’s a darker edge to Thumbelina thanks to the various animals wanting to marry her. Jack is weighed down by a cast who seem disinterested in the story, especially the actor playing the giant, and wardrobe that really screams 1970. Backed up by more murky photography and audio that makes everything seems just above stag-film level, and there’s a depressing air around the two films that is hard to escape.

Later, Richard Winer would decide to make a movie about Santa meeting the Easter Bunny at the same park, with Mahon’s films used as filler to beef up the running time. Winer’s story has Santa stuck in the sands near the park and unable to leave.  Why he is there, how he got stuck there, why he didn’t just walk to a phone or use magic to get out, is anyone’s guess. Stranded and oh so hot, he telepathically calls out to a bunch of nearby kids to help him find a solution. After numerous attempts to use various animals to pull the sleigh including an ape (or rather, a guy in an ape costume), which makes little since if his team of magical reindeer couldn’t do it, Santa gives up.

Well, kinda. Instead, he decides to tell the children a story. In the more well-known version of the movie, he tells the story of Thumbelina, which cuts to the entire Thumbelina movie, including opening and closing credits and the girls trip to the diorama in the park (leading to an excellent series of riffs by Mike in the original VOD version of the RiffTrax version reminding viewers that this is supposedly a story being TOLD by Santa to the children, including credits and the walk through the park, etc.).

In the live RiffTrax version, a variant of the film was found with the Jack and the Beanstalk movie replacing Thumbelina (Mike makes use of the same gag about Santa telling the story, but it is to lesser effect than with Thumbelina). When the story is over, his message about the story is that the kids need to stay strong, like Jack, and something will happen. The kids then leave, only to return with a firetruck being driven by Santa’s old friend, the Ice Cream Bunny.

Now, who is the Ice Cream Bunny? Well, one would think perhaps the character was a local television personality in costume (like how Whizzo is old friends with Santa), but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Instead, it seems the original idea may have been to have the Easter Bunny appear in the film with Santa, but then nixed for some reason. Instead, it is a bunny that is the color of vanilla ice cream, therefore the Ice Cream Bunny.  So … yay, I guess.

Newspaper ad from 1983 in Atlanta. Which would you dare to see?!

The Ice Cream Bunny drive the firetruck quite hazardously with a bunch of kids barely holding on (you can see at least one fall off the truck at one point and climb back on), and nearly hitting a dog twice, before arriving at Santa in the sands. Santa leaves with the Ice Cream Bunny, on the firetruck, waving goodbye to the kids. His sleigh then magically disappears and the movie ends. Santa then gets back to the North Pole and must explain how he got his ass stuck in Florida while “on business.” “Honest, honey, I HAD to go to Florida. There was a convention for us holiday workers at the park. While we were there, we were to a party with the Grateful Dead, and I was asked to lick some stamps for them, and the next thing I know I’m on the beach in the sled!”

Now THERE’S a movie for you. Garcia even had the beard; he could have easily helped save Christmas for Santa in that situation. What a missed opportunity!

Favorite Riff: (In Santa Claus’ Story, Santa is telling children a story about monkeys for some reason)  Bill: And then, city of Bethlehem, born unto us the Savior, Yada, yada. You kids know the rest.

The Riffing:  By 2015, doing live RiffTrax shows at the Belcourt Theatre has become a tradition for the gang, and there had already been three other live shows that year (The Room, Sharknado 2, and Miami Connection), so things were running like a well-oiled machine for the trio on stage and even the audience knew the drill on what to expect and how to behave. There were no special guests for the show like in the early days, unless you accept two Ice Cream Bunnies in the crowd (one jokingly referred to as the stunt Ice Cream Bunny and the other a very authentic-looking variation of the one used in the movie.

It’s clear the material makes little sense, but because the movie was already familiar to the fans who knew the earlier VOD, but at least it did have a good hour’s worth of new material thanks to the Jack and the Beanstalk variation, and the shorts. As a fan, I would even suggest that If you wish to watch one or the other version of Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny available from RiffTrax on their website, Amazon, and other locations, I strongly suggest the live version, as I think the gags in Jack are more consistent than in the dreary Thumbelina (and you can always go back to the earlier version later to catch up on the other story anyway). Definitely worth a look either way you go, as you would expect for any release from the RiffTrax team.