The Children

Well, it's a little bit early this year(by a few days...), but this week's slasher is actually holiday-themed! I wish I could say that I planned it this way, but I had no idea. Serendipity, I guess. It's a British movie about killer kids, so we'll have to see how it goes. All I want for Christmas is a SPOILER warning!

The movie begins with some chilly-looking forest scenery. A car is driving through the woods, and a little girl named Miranda is being chastised for bothering her baby brother Paulie. There's a teen girl as well, but she's just staring out at the trees as they drive past them.

The car pulls up to a sizable-looking estate, and the parents honk their horn to announce that they've arrived. Another couple come out to greet them, along with a pair of screaming little girls. I could try to figure out everyone's names at this point, but with everyone speaking at the same time, it's just noise. The teenager is the only subdued one in the entire group, choosing to hang back and just observe.

The teen's name is Casey. She gets a hug from a guy named Uncle Robbie, and he tells her to drop the "uncle" part, which seems kind of creepy. His wife is Chloe, and she's trying to get a response from little Paulie, who looks like he'd rather be anywhere else in the world at that very moment. Poor kid.

The majority of the party people head inside, and Casey's mother tries to cheer her up. Apparently, she's upset because she wanted to go to a party with her friends instead of being out in the middle of nowhere. Her brother Paulie also lingers outside, staring intently into the forest. While mother and daughter argue, he pukes up a gooey pile of yellow slime.

Okay, so now that they're in the house, let's figure out who's who. The parents of Casey, Paulie and Miranda are Elaine and Jonah. We've already been introduced to their kids, as well as Uncle Robbie. His wife is Aunt Chloe, and their kids are Leah and Nicky. And  we're all caught up...for now...

As they all hang out in the cramped kitchen, Paulie impulsively decides that it would be smart to climb up on the furniture to get his mother's attention, and he nearly nosedives onto the floor. Luckily, Jonah is there to swoop in, and Paulie gives him a nice kick as thanks. Everyone laughs, except for Casey, who looks like she's bored out of her gourd.

After some more creepy shots of the woods, we see the party get broken up into smaller groups. Elaine and Chloe are gossiping as kids surround them; Casey tries to find a quiet place to get a good signal on her phone; and the guys are off somewhere else in the house, doing God-only-knows.

Elaine tries to coax little Paulie into brushing his teeth, but he only stares blankly at himself in the mirror. Casey has found Jonah and Rob in one of the bedrooms, and she complains to them about the phone reception. Miranda decides to be a little shit, by announcing that Casey's grounded from using her phone. Apparently, she's been having some problems with Jonah, who is her stepfather.

After Miranda and Casey stare each other down, Casey's phone inexplicably rings. She turns it off, then she torments Miranda by grabbing the cat to play with, after Miranda tries to call it over. Then Leah wanders in to say good night, and the young'uns all shuffle off to bed, leaving Casey and the adults to keep on yakking the night away.

In the bedroom that the kids are all in, Paulie is still sitting alone, just absently staring at a wall, while hitting a xylophone with his bare hand. Miranda and Nicky are throwing toys around and chatting up a storm, while Leah looks like she might be coming down with whatever Paulie has. She coughs up a loogie into her hand, looks at it, then wipes it off on a pillow.

Rob and Casey take a walk outside, and he turns up the Creepy Pervert Vibe to 11. He brings her to an isolated spot behind a pile of firewood, and it's the only place where she can get a reliable phone signal. Foreshadowing? He returns to the house, while Casey calls a friend named Lisa. Sadly, Lisa doesn't answer her phone, so it was a wasted trip.

As she disconnects, Casey hears Jinxie, the family cat, make a strange sound, like it's growling. She returns the way she came, and we hear another growl after she leaves. Maybe Jinxie has a booty call!

While Chloe is throwing out about a thousand or so empty beer bottles, Rob sneaks behind her to give her a good scare. They joke about having at least 10 more kids, and Casey brushes by them to get into the house. Rob is the last one to go inside, and the camera lingers on the little cat door built into the kitchen door. Geez, I feel like the cat's almost a main character, with all these references to it. Maybe they should have called the film The Cattening.

Jonah and Elaine, alone at last, decide to engage in some serious snuggling. Rob is making sure that the house is closed up tight, while Chloe is busy making sure that the kids are all asleep. After she gives her daughter a kiss, we see the spot where Leah wiped her hand. After the camera zooms in on the spot, we see what appear to be some kind of bacteria swimming around each other at a quick speed.

The shot of the bacteria turns into a shot of a snow globe. Everybody in the house is soon asleep, and the house is eerily silent. Wait, no, one of the kids is now awake. Paulie. He just stands there, in the middle of the dark house, staring off into space.

The following morning finds everybody, adults and kids, engaged in a massive snowball fight. Well, everyone except for Paulie. He's still staying out of the group, banging away on that xylophone. Rob takes some of the kids up a hill for some sledding, while Jonah tries to talk to Paulie. He fails to get the kid to stop playing with the toy, or even to respond to him, so he eventually gives up.

While the other adults have gone inside to warm up, Casey is behind the woodpile again, calling her pal Lisa. She hears all about the fun that her friends are having, and she arranges for them to pick her up at a secret rendezvous spot. Before they hang up, Lisa teases her about perverted Uncle Robbie lusting after her. See? I knew it wasn't just me who noticed that!

The younger kids have set up a tent in the snow, and they tell Casey that no adults are allowed to enter. At about the same time, Rob notices that Jinxie is suddenly missing. The cat's collar is then shown, hanging up inside the tent. I don't think the cat will be one of the survivors of this one...

Everyone spreads out again. Rob and Casey get some of the kids into another snowball fight, while Jonah tries to distract Rob with a scheme to invest in some kind of Chinese medicine venture; Elaine and Chloe talk about how hard parenting is; and the kids are doing "something" inside the tent.

During all of this mayhem, we do get a tidbit of information that might be important to the story. Jonah tells Rob about the numerous viruses that doctors are discovering every day, many with no known cures. Gee, is anyone in the group sick lately, maybe acting funny, coughing up strange substances? Could this be something worth looking into?

...and that's when something(finally) happens.

Nicky exchanges a glance with his sister, and we see Jonah looking at a book of model portraits. The faces of the models have all been drawn over with a magic marker. Then some of the kids create a distraction, allowing Paulie to send the heavy sled careening toward the adults, who have come back outside with hot cocoa. The sled knocks Chloe to the ground, sending the hot drinks spilling all over Jonah and his business proposal.

Jonah flies into a rage, and runs up the hill to spank Paulie, even as the other adults protest that they don't like to spank the kids. Jonah yells at Casey for not watching the younger kids, and everyone heads back inside. If the kids don't begin to kill off some of these creeps, can I volunteer?

As the children sit up in the bedroom for some "quiet time", Miranda tries to tell her mother about the strange way the other kids have been behaving. Elaine assumes that she's just being dramatic, and dismisses her story with a smile and some attempt at bribery. When she walks out of the room, Miranda sees the other three kids glaring at her, and tells them to stop.

Casey finds Rob smoking a joint in the greenhouse/toolshed/whatever, and she sits with him. She takes a puff, then reveals that she secretly had a tattoo done on her stomach. When Rob questions how rebellious she's become, Casey calls herself "the abortion that got away". Then Chloe arrives, so Rob backs off.

More random shots of snow, trees, the tent, and the cat collar. If you took all of the establishing shots out of the movie, it would probably be about 45 minutes long. It's like watching a nature screensaver, except with random moments of dialogue.

The entire group sits down for a New Year dinner feast, except for Leah. She's playing with a doll beneath the table. The dinner scene has random shots of the cat being murdered spliced in at various places, possibly to make sure that we didn't doze off.

As they all begin to eat, Leah is told to get back in her seat. She just giggles and crawls away, and they catch her trying to take a large knife with her. Casey tries to secretly text her friends with her phone in her lap, but Chloe then reveals her tattoo to the rest of the family, forcing Casey to show it off. Then more scenes from CSI: Jinxie.

All of the younger children start to throw tantrums. They cry, throw food, kick their feet...it's enough to make a single guy smile from ear-to-ear. When Chloe tries to use the bribery trick to make Miranda eat some peas, Miranda gives her a scratch on the forehead in response. Miranda is pulled away from the table by Jonah, kicking and screaming the whole time. Then Paulie gets up as well, taking the tablecloth with him. Awesome.

Now everyone is up and shouting, and Jonah drags Miranda into one of the bedrooms for a "time out", while Elaine treats Chloe's scratched head. Casey and Rob take the rest of the kids outside to give the rest of the adults a break. Oh, and Chloe blames Elaine for all of the problems with the kids, because her kids were ill.

As Rob is being kept busy being dragged up the hill by Leah, while also trying to drag Paulie uphill on the sled, Casey is trying to run away to reunite with her friends. Miranda's still screaming her head off, and Leah is trying to keep Rob from noticing that Paulie is doing something with the sled...

Then a number of things happen. First, Rob is conned into going downhill on the sled by himself. Then, Nicky pulls a wagon into the path of the sled, positioned in such a way that some sharp-looking prongs are aimed right at Rob. Thirdly, Casey's forest run is impeded when she trips and falls into a pile of debris.

Rob is on the ground, covered in blood, and the screams of the children get the attention of Elaine and Chloe. Casey also hears the commotion and comes back, while Jonah has finally quieted Miranda down, and he's just sitting there, rocking her in his lap. Casey gets him, and he rushes outside to see what's going on.

Jonah brings Paulie into the kitchen to lecture him, and Paulie knocks a container filled with knives onto the floor. One of the other kids then cuts Jonah's hand with one of the knives, and all of the kids rush outside to hide in the woods. Jonah treats the cut, then he and Elaine rush outside.

They find Chloe in tears, and realize that Rob has bled to death. Not really sure what else she can do to help, Elaine announces that she's going into the woods to find the children. Being useless characters in a horror film, no one offers to go with her. What a shock.

She tries to call their names, but gets no response. Casey then rushes at her from out of the blue, and they hug. She tries to ask Casey what caused the accident, but of course Casey can't exactly tell her. When pressed for details, Casey confesses that she was running away, so that Lisa could take her to the party. As punishment, Elaine makes Casey look for the children by herself, then she heads back to the house to check on Chloe.

Alone now, Casey realizes how vulnerable she is to being attacked by a pack of monstrous brats. She starts to cry, then her phone beeps, and she gets a text from Lisa. While reading it, she sees one of the kids dart by out of the corner of her eye. Yeah, you're dead, Casey.

She walks toward the position where she saw the figure, and assumes that it was Leah. She even finds Leah's hat, followed by hearing some coughing. Casey follows the sound to a tree, where she discovers that she was being lured into an ambush. She falls, sees something terrifying, then screams.

Jonah decides to conduct his own search from the house, but Miranda finds him first. She seems to be hiding a potential weapon in her sleeve, but we don't get to see it. She even gets an opportunity to kill him, as they hug, but Miranda lets Jonah live.


Elaine convinces Chloe to re-enter the house, and they leave Rob's body where it is. Though they don't realize it, 2 of the children have snuck back to the house, perhaps to plan another attack. While keeping herself busy with housework, Elaine sees something outside that compels her to go and take a closer look: a long, gory trail of blood, that goes from the woods right into the yard. Defying any sort of logic, Elaine walks outside to examine the messy trail.

She hears Leah laughing from inside the tent, and decides that it would be really smart to go check it out without any weapons or backup. After several attempts to call her name end in silence, Elaine STILL goes ahead with this stupid idea. She nearly opens the flap of the tent, but then Paulie calls her name. She stands up straight, then runs to the jungle gym, where he's sitting at the top of the structure.

As Elaine climbs up to get him, he backs away. Too late, she realizes that it's another trap, and she falls back in such a way that one of her legs breaks, causing the bone to break through the skin. As Elaine begins to slip into a state of shock, Casey finds her, and snaps her back to reality. Wait...Casey survived? How?

Casey pulls her injured mother into that dilapidated shed, then helps to set the broken bone into a makeshift sling. Then they both hear Paulie hitting that dumb xylophone again, followed by him throwing a projectile at one of the windows, showering them with shards of glass. These kids are little shits, man.

From the house, Jonah, Chloe and Miranda hear the screams. Then we see more rocks hitting windows, as Casey and Elaine realize that it's not Paulie doing it--he's inside with them. Casey tries to attack Paulie, but Elaine is convinced that he's innocent, and protects him. She instead orders Casey to go save Chloe, who has followed Leah to an almost-certain ambush.

Too late. Chloe's in the tent, trying to speak to Leah with a calm, loving tone of voice, while Leah's got her back to her mother. Leah giggles and runs outside again, leaving Chloe to find Rob's bloody corpse under a sheet. A closer examination reveals that the baby doll was shoved into Rob's gut, which was torn open for that purpose. As Chloe stares at the mutilation, Rob suddenly gasps and opens his eyes. Then the tent is attacked from the outside, with bladed weapons.

Casey stages a rescue, but Chloe's convinced that she was part of the attack as well. They run to the house, but Chloe locks the door on poor Casey. At the same  time, Paulie's playing a hiding game on his frightened mother. As he pops up to plunge a jagged shard of glass through her body, Casey trips him up, and he gets impaled on the way down, finally killing the kid.

Jonah steps in, and holds his stepson in his arms for a moment. Then they hustle back to the house, where they try to figure out what happened. After some fights and disagreements, the consensus is that Casey thought the kids posed a threat, so she attacked them in a fit of rage. Casey tries to get her mother to clarify things, but she's still not very coherent yet, so everyone else assumes the worst about the teen.

When they're alone for a moment, Casey tries to reason with Elaine. She tells her not to trust Leah or Nicky, then shares the theory that their sudden violent attitudes might be caused by the illness that the kids all seemed to be coming down with. When her mother silences her, Casey gets up to make sure that the door to the yard is shut, at the very least.

The radio starts to lose the signal of the nearest station, and we see Miranda looking like an extra in a Romero film, with large, dark bruises underneath her eyes. Not a good sign, either of those things. Everybody should start listening to Casey!

As Jonah and Chloe search the woods, they find a hat belonging to one of the children. Chloe freaks out, and wonders out loud what awful things that Casey might have done to the children, especially after having killed her own little brother. Jonah tries to calm down Chloe, then they intensify their search.

Back at the house, Casey is on a mad dash to lock the doors and windows in every room. As she returns to her mother's side, she wonders why the police haven't arrived yet. She goes to the kitchen to look for her phone, and Miranda suddenly pops up in the living room, looking even more zombie-ish around the eyes. She approaches Elaine in a menacing way...

Casey finds her, and promptly forgets about the phone, which we see just sitting on a countertop. She pulls Miranda off of Elaine, imploring her to help in the search for the phone. Wait, did Casey get struck by a sudden onset of blindness, or just stupidity? I mean, A.) the phone was just sitting right there, and B.) she just got finished realizing that the kids were all dangerous and untrustworthy, not even a full minute ago! Come ON, movie!

Out in the woods, Chloe finds Leah. Being a dumbass in a horror movie, she immediately hugs her. While Chloe is soothing her, she comments on how pale and cold Leah's skin seems to be. Then Leah lashes out at her with what appears to be a swift assault.

While Casey is walking through the hallway, she hears a meowing sound, followed by Miranda speaking to Jinxie. She walks toward the room at the far end of the hall, where she can hear the faint sound of purring. Oh, and another quick glimpse  at Chloe reveals that what looked like an attack, was merely Leah hugging her, followed by Nick also popping up to embrace her. Oh, this ain't gonna be good...

Casey enters the room,where she finds Miranda acting out what they did earlier to poor Jinxie. At the same time, Leah gets rough while hugging her mother, and Chloe tells her to stop. One of the kids then plunges a knife through her eye. And finally, Jonah appears at the back door, and he begs Elaine to unlock the door and let him inside. After she does, they both hear Miranda screaming.

Jonah runs upstairs, just in time to stop Casey from killing the little shi--Uh, I mean, dear, innocent Miranda. When Miranda starts to run away, Casey tries to grab her, so Jonah decks his stepdaughter in the head with a toy truck. It's amazing how quickly this movie keeps fluctuating from completely stupid, to batshit awesome, almost from minute to minute. More toy-related attack scenes, please!

Miranda runs away laughing, as Jonah locks poor, wounded Casey in the room. Then Miranda prepares to attack Elaine at the bottom of the stairs, but Jonah arrives, so she has to pretend to be a good girl. In another hilarious moment of cinematic genius, Jonah swing-drags his wife back to the couch, ignoring her howls of pain. Y'know, even if this movie is crap, it's at least FUN crap.

Jonah more or less tells his wife that she's a bitch, then he leaves to find Miranda. Miranda was just waiting for him to exit the room, so that she could make her move on poor Elaine. She hugs her, then tells her mother to be nice when Leah and Nicky arrive, before removing the sticks holding Elaine's wounded leg in place. Elaine gasps in agony, while Miranda runs off to take care of her stepdad.

Jonah picks Miranda up to get her winter jacket on her, too distracted to notice that she prevents the front door from shutting as he carries her to the car. Casey takes time out from screaming and hitting the locked bedroom door, to notice that he's driving away with Miranda. Casey drops down to the floor and begins to cry.

Leah and Nicky stand over Chloe's body, watching as her bloody hand twitches for a few, final seconds. Then they look at each other, laugh, and head back to the house. There's a shot of the sun,then we see a trail of blood in the snow, slowly being covered up by more falling snowflakes.

Casey stops crying, suddenly looking very nervous and intense. She turns toward the window, seeing both Nicky and Leah just standing in the snow, watching the house. She picks up an endtable, determined to bash the door down, and make her escape. Then she hears her mother scream her name, and we see that Elaine has managed to get up on her good leg, and is trying to escape as well. When Casey looks outside a second time, the little monsters are no longer in the yard.

Elaine hears her daughter warning her not to let the kids inside the house, then she sees them standing at one of the locked doors, peering in at her. She hops, then crawls, into the kitchen, barely managing to both close and lock the door. Then she crawls painfully back to the staircase, where she drags herself up to where her daughter is trapped.

The killer kids find the kitchen door locked, but then we see a closeup of the pet door. As Elaine reaches the top of the stairs, she hears the swinging pet door give out a squeak. She whispers to Casey to quiet down, then listens for any sign that they've managed to enter the house.

They have. As Casey tries to stay quiet and look through the keyhole of the door, Elaine works at dragging herself the rest of the way into the second floor hallway, then rounds a corner to climb ANOTHER friggin; staircase. Are you kidding me? Does this maze at least give her a piece of cheese if she gets to the exit?

As Elaine continues to drag her body through the house, she accidentally kicks a toy UFO down the stairs, where it makes enough noise to wake the dead. Worried that the banging and clanging means that her mother is in peril, Casey resumes pounding on the door.

From her side of the door, Elaine tells her daughter not to worry, then she also works on breaking the door down, clubbing it with a fireplace poker. When she turns to change her position, she finds herself facing down both Leah and Nicky, who are glaring at her from the bottom of the landing.

She begs them to stay away, waving the poker in front of her in the least-threatening way ever seen in the history of horror films. Realizing that she can't bring herself to kill the brats from Hell, Elaine begs Casey to forgive her for being so weak. She allows both of the children to reach her, and we see them brandishing a small knife and a crude, spear-like stick as weapons. Then they both begin to laugh at her.

In a sudden stroke of movie-luck, Casey breaks down a jagged gap in the door, and proceeds to jam Nicky's face down onto the broken piece of wood. Leah, unfortunately, rushes back down the stairs. Casey swoops down after her, but Elaine begs her to ignore Leah, and just help her escape instead. Damn. I was really wishing that Elaine would say something like, "No, don't kill her...I want to do it!"

They limp-run out of the house, then get into the other car. As they drive away, Casey gets a wide-eyed, far-off look on her face. Oh, crap. The radio goes into some kind of "Search Mode", but all of the radio stations appear to be gone. Double crap!

They drive back through the woods, and find the other car that Jonah and Miranda took blocking their path. Elaine gets ready to painfully limp over to the other vehicle, but Casey stops her and insists that she should check it out instead. Casey begins to trudge toward the car in the snow, while her mother watches from the driver's seat.

Casey spots a dark object in the snow a few feet from the abandoned car, and discovers that it's Jonah's, half-buried corpse. She stares at it as if in a trance, which allows Miranda to ambush her from a nearby hiding place. Elaine sees what's about to happen, and just barely manages to slam Miranda's body up against a tree, pinning her there. See what I meant earlier? Mediocrity...then batshit-classic. Mediocrity...then more batshit -classic. I still don't know if I love it or hate it.

Anyway, Casey leans against a tree, then pukes. Rut-roh! First the spaced-out eyes, now the puking...Elaine better rev up that engine and get the Hell out of Dodge! She doesn't though, not even when they both spot another creepy little boy watching them. Then another. Then about half a dozen more children appear. And yet, none of them attack. Gee, Elaine, I wonder why? Maybe because your own daughter is now on their side, hmmm???

Casey runs back to the car, but Elaine has locked the doors. After a second to think about it, Elaine decides to just completely give up on life, and lets her teen daughter back into the car. As they speed back down the road, you see Casey's eyes are getting glassier and more dazed by the moment, as the disease takes over. THE END

Wow,what a rollercoaster ride between hilariously over-the-top action, and plodding script decisions. Like I said, I really don't know how to rate this one. On the one hand, it was definitely a kooky movie, with several moments that had me actually howling with shocked laughter. But on the flip side, it's a story that's literally been done many, many times before(Just off the top of my head, in the killer-kid genre, I can name The Omen films, The original The Children, The Good Son, Devil Times Five, the Children of The Corn franchise, Wicked Little Things, Mikey, and the Pet Sematary films. Trust me, as kooky as it seems, this is not a new concept. Hell, I didn't even mention Village of the Damned, Case 39, It's Alive, or The Pit.

Still, I've seen worse. This one was sometimes great, but mostly mediocre. It gets 3.5 killer trees out of 5, because it was slightly better than the usual stuff in that kind of movie. Actually, you know what? Just because it implied that the infection was slowly spreading beyond just young kids, which suggests that it would probably have eventually made the entire human race extinct, I'll bump it up to a 4. Killing the entire world through a cold virus takes balls, and I'm filled with the spirit of Christmas. Or maybe I just don't give a crap. Either way. 4 out of 5.

And what did I learn from The Children?

-Kids are monsters.

-If you give your cat a name like Jinx, don't act all shocked when it has a run of bad luck.

-Toy trucks can really hurt the human skull.

The next movie is something from the grindhouse days, called Drive-In Massacre. Sounds like an epic bad slasher! Given that Christmas is less than a week away, I may wait a week to do this, until things have quieted down a little bit. We'll see how much free time I have this week. Happy holidays!

And hey, if I can be serious for a moment...the past couple of weeks, I've been dealing with some pretty brutal family stuff. Long story short, my uncle is having a lot of health issues, and he's probably not going to make it much longer. So...thanks. For reading this, for indulging me in my unabashed love of bottom-of-the barrel horror flicks, and mostly, just for letting me try to make you guys laugh a little bit each week with my silliness. Laughing is always good, even when you don't think that you can. My Uncle Irv taught me that one, and I've managed to turn that goofy side of myself into a pretty fun venture with this blog. I miss his dirty jokes already.

So just...Thanks for reading. And let's all keep on laughing as long as we can. All right, end of sappy rant. Peace out.

Christmas Evil

So, Christmas Eve I was floored by the flu, and was pretty much laid out until Friday. With that in mind, pretend that this is Christmas Day, and this movie still works just fine. Now, let's all go meet beneath the mistletoe, and exchange SPOILERS...

Okay, so Christmas Evil begins with a Troma logo(!), then tells us that it's Christmas Eve, circa 1947.  Santa drops down into the chimney of a house, then washes his hands in a bowl of water as 2 children spy on him. He then makes himself a snack and a drink, as Mom joins her kids. So Santa sightings were pretty common after WWII, I guess?

He puts presents under the tree, and starts filling up the stockings. One of the boys begins giggling, so Santa finishes his work, then disappears. And so does the family, literally speaking. POOF! Crazy, huh?

The 2 boys, Billy and Harry, then argue over whether it was actually Santa, or just their father. Well, let's look at the evidence: Does Daddy slide down chimneys? Does he have warlock powers that allow him to teleport himself and others from room to room? Wait, he DOES??? Oh crap kids, your dad's Satan!!!

Anyway, still convinced that Santa's real, Harry hears a noise and sneaks back downstairs to check it out. He finds Mommy being touched and kissed in the fa-la-la's, then he rushes upstairs to calm himself down. Instead, he smashes a snow globe, the picks up a jagged shard of glass from the mess. He cuts his hand, and the credits begin.

As the movie resumes, Harry is seen as a middle-aged man with a serious Santa fetish. His pajamas are a Santa suit, his bedroom is decorated for the holiday 10 times over, and he even pauses before his morning shave to admire his shaving-cream beard.  Imagine the creepiest pedophile-guy you can imagine, then multiply the creepy level by infinite, and you've got Harry.

No wait, our pal Harry just got creepier. He went up to his roof with a pair of binoculars, and watched children through their apartment windows, to determine which ones were naughty or nice. Yeah, nothing abnormal there...Aw geez, then he writes it all down in a journal. He doesn't have a human head collection somewhere, does he?

As it turns out, creepy Harry spends his days working at the Jolly Dreams toy factory, building toys on an assembly line. And not even fun toys, but piles of plastic with no movable parts. I'd go crazy too, if I were in his place.

Harry starts to get tense and frustrated, and cuts his hand with a toy's sharp edge. At the end of the day, he decides to go to a bar called The Odd Couple Lounge, and throw back a few with Felix and Oscar.(See, kids, there was this comedy called The Odd Couple, and--oh, just go look it up!) I guess the cut wasn't serious enough to get it checked out... Before he even gets in the front door, he hears a co-worker bragging about how he duped Harry into working late. Harry rushes home to have a tantrum, then has flashbacks to his childhood, while being a peeping Tom at someone's house.

The next morning, Harry gets lazy, and watches the Thanksgiving Day parade while having breakfast on the couch. He calls his brother, and tells him that he has plans for Christmas. Then Harry hangs up on Billy to watch Santa appear at the end of the parade.

He steps into the bathroom to start putting on the Santa outfit, as city worlers are shown cleaning up in the aftermath of the parade. As night falls, he even re-paints his vehicle to look "festive", and makes an ominous-sounding "naughty" list of potential victims. Let's hope he never reads my blog!

Harry stops at one boy's home, then rubs his hands and face in either motor oil or mud, and "marks" the house by leaving an imprint of his hands and face on the wall. As the boy and his mother rush out for Mass, Harry swiftly dives into the bushes. The boy, Mark, sees Harry, and decides to get a closer look. As he nearly gets nabbed and runs back to his mother, she slaps the boy for lying. Then they leave.

Harry returns home, revealing his own "workshop", where he makes weird toys. Then he goes to the annual office Christmas party. There, he discovers that the factory is donating their cheap-ass toys to hospitals. Harry storms out, then steals toys off of the assembly line, and fills a sack with them for his role as Santa.
He fills 2 other sacks with dirt. Oh, and he Super-glues his Santa beard to his face. Watch that for his super freak-out in the mirror.

Now totally crazy, Harry goes to young Mark's house, and leaves him a sack of dirt and a silly picture. Wow, that'll show him! Oh, and he vandalizes most of the gifts beneath the tree. Party animal.

Next up, Harry visits a hospital with Mark's gifts, A doubtful night watchman won't let him in, but several staff members buy into his Santa Schtick, and he leaves them smiling.

He sees several well-to-do people leaving a midnight mass, and a few closest to him mock his appearance. Harry retaliates by killing one with a long pick to the eye, and using an ax on the other 3. Then he drives away again as the rest of the crowd screams.

Harry eventually pulls his van over to calm himself down, and decides to walk for a while to clear his head. He finds a dance going full swing, and is ushered inside by some of those in attendance. So much for a clear head.

Several children surround him, so Harry gives them gifts. Then he dances for the group. Before he leaves, he tells everyone to be good, and they'll get good presents. But, if they get naughty, he promises to bring them something "horrible", which brings a tense silence to the room. He ends with a laugh, though, so it's all good.

Harry finds a ladder, and climbs up to someone's roof. He gets stuck in their chimney, but finally manages to squeeze his way back out again. He breaks in through the basement instead, and moves through the place until he arrives in the living room.

It turns out to be the home of the co-worker who made him work late, so he suffocates the guy with his bag of toys/dirt/whatever, then stabs the wife in the chest. Loud screams send him running away.

On Christmas Day, Bill and his wife hear about the killing spree the previous night, and assume it was Harry. After yelling about how best to deal with the situation, they still have no ideas. That whole scene was useless filler.

Harry goes back to the toy factory. Why? Because he wants to run all the conveyor belts at the same time. Why??? Well, because then Harry can watch as all of the crappy toys hit the floor and break. Perfectly logical!

The police arrange a line-up of killer Santa suspects. Totally not joking, I swear. Funniest scene in the damned movie. I wish this one scene could be a movie. "Number 3, step forward. Now chuckle like your tummy is a bowl full of jelly!" "Number 5, yell out 'Merry Christmas!"

Harry calls his brother, and rants and raves. Then he sees himself in a mirror. After a statement about dying, Harry heads out again. He finds a house surrounded by flourescent snowmen and reindeer, then begins to walk around among them.

A group of children see him, and their parents realize who he is. One angry father pulls out a switchblade, but Harry gets the weapon from him and escapes as the angry adults chase him. One old biddy even pokes him in the face with a brooch.

Somehow, the group end up with torches, and it becomes a Frankenstein-style pursuit. Harry barely escapes in his van, and goes to Bill for help. Angry at Harry for the trouble he caused, Bill strangles him until he passes out.

Bill panics, the stuffs Harry's body into the front seat of his van. Thing is, Harry wakes up and gets away yet again. With everyone chasing Harry again, he drives the van off of a bridge....where it flies away toward the moon. Literally. THE END

Well, that was....different. Not really a slasher, but not sure what genre it really fits. Odd. 2 killer trees out of 5, and one of those points goes entirely to the police line-up bit. Comic gold.

And what did I learn from Christmas Evil?

-Cars can fly.

-Santa prefers basements over rooftops.

-Toys made here are cheap plastic crap. Like most supermodels!

Next on my list is something called Dark House. Oooooh, scaaaary!

Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman

Most of these slasher flicks can be real downers. But every now and then, I find one that is just apeshit insane, and downright funny. That's the case with Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman, a sequel to a movie I know I've seen, but couldn't find in the SAW archives. I must have though, because I distinctly remember how surprised I was to see American Pie's Shannon Elizabeth in the film. Anyway, maybe I saw it before I started this blog, in which case, I'll have to watch it again someday. Prepare for big, snowy SPOILERS, matey!

The movie starts out with the hero from the first movie, a cop named Sam, talking to his shrink. He provides a nice recap of the first film, so I'll sum it up for you: See, Sam arrested a serial killer named Jack Frost, who was later sentenced to death. A collision during a snowstorm caused Jack's DNA to mix with some experimental chemicals and snow, causing Jack to be reborn as a killer snowman. Yeah, that's seriously what happened in the first one.

Anyway, while Sam is recalling Jack's murder spree, the doctor's receptionist and other folks in the waiting room are listening in on the session through the intercom. Sam doesn't realize that, of course, even after they start laughing. Sam describes how he finally brought Jack down(with antifreeze), and even the shrink is trying to hold back his giggles.

When Sam is asked where the evidence is, he says that the pile of antifreeze was buried someplace that is secret, to prevent anyone from ever bringing Jack to life again. Right on cue, we see a country bumpkin(well, his feet, at least) showing a mysterious stranger where the antifreeze was buried. The stranger shoots the redneck for his trouble.

In some type of laboratory, a pair of scientists are fiddling around with beakers of multicolored liquids, as a Christmas song plays over the opening credits. They keep failing with their experiments, as evidenced by a handy "PASS/FAIL" checklist that we see repeatedly on a clipboard. Wow, Exposition For Dummies.

After the credits, the scientists go home for the night. One of them leaves his coffee cup near the experiment area, and a janitor who comes into the lab to clean the floor knocks the cup into the vat of antifreeze. A cloud forms in the tank, some cartoon DNA comes to snowy life, and the tank fills with snow. Yay!

The befuddled custodian turns around, just as the tank explodes. A massive shard of glass severs his mouth, and a puddle of water yawns and starts mumbling as it trickles down a drain to freedom. Jack's back!

...And Sam's leaving. He's at the airport with his wife Anne, waiting for his best friend and deputy Joe, and Joe's new bride(and secretary at the Sheriff's office), Marla. They're all headed for a Pacific island, where Joe and Marla can enjoy a nice honeymoon, while Sam tries to get over his traumatic memories of being stalked by a living snowman. Oh, and Sam had a son in the first film, but he's "staying with relatives" while the adults go on vacation. I guess his trauma while nearly being killed by Jack didn't matter as much.

Anyway, the foursome are greeted at the island resort by the Colonel, a wacky British coot who runs the place with the help of his cohorts Bobby and Captain Fun. Wait, did I slip into a fugue state and start watching Club Dread again? No wait, that was Sam, the Fun Police. Man, I've seen WAY too many of these dumb things!

The Colonel also introduces us to our other victims: we have Rose, Ashlea and Paisley, 3 cute young ladies who've come to the resort to party; Sarah and Cindy, 2 models who've arrived to be in a bikini photo shoot; and their homosexual photographer, Greg. After the Colonel greets everyone, Sam surprises Anne by announcing that the trip also serves as their second honeymoon, complete with their own bridal suite.

Jack washes in with the tide, I guess. I did some snooping online, and found out that, since Sam was injured by Jack in the first movie, he supposedly bled into the snow and had some of his DNA mix into the toxic goo that makes Jack come to life. This is supposed to give Jack the ability to "track" Sam to any location...as long as there's water, I would assume.

Well, I guess Jack hasn't come ashore just yet, because now we're meeting 2 new characters, a pair of idiots who are stranded in the ocean on an inflatable raft. They're annoying as Hell, to each other as well as me. As they argue about being hungry, one of them finds a carrot in a small cooler.

They start to fight over the carrot, and one throws the other one overboard. He loses the carrot as well, and leans over the side of the raft to snatch it out of the ocean. When he does, Jack makes an icicle and stabs through the underside of the raft, impaling the guy. Then he thanks his victim for the "nose", and takes it as he continues to the island.

That evening, the resort has a "wild party", mostly consisting of extras who couldn't fake-dance their way out of a paper bag. No one is on the beach to see the carrot wash up onshore, and begin crawling its' way toward the resort. Yes, a carrot is crawling along a beach, looking for people to kill. Makes sense to me!

The trio of single girls are at the bar, ordering drinks and looking for hot guys to seduce. The bartender points out a pair of young men eyeing them, and they all greet each other with brainless "heys". Good lord.

Everyone else is in a conga line, save for Sam, who is staring out at the sea and having flashbacks. Captain Fun distracts him, and proves just how annoying "fun" can be when you really work at it. Then Captain Fun suggests karaoke, and we discover that whoever wrote the script, he had no idea what karaoke actually was. Instead, the main characters get roped into a singalong of Christmas carols, which isn't actually karaoke at all...although Marla is at least holding a prop microphone, trying to fake like it's on. Nice try, stupid movie.

At the end of the night, Sam and Joe are stinkin' drunk. Joe makes the mistake of bringing up how nice the weather is compared to back home, and that sets Sam off on a drunken rant about snow and killer snowmen again. Talk about a 1-track mind!

Fortunately, we switch back to the trio of cute drunk girls. They're on the beach, waiting for those dimwitted "hey" dudes from the party, but it looks like they changed their minds. Jack Carrot slides in their direction, eager to claim more victims. Sure enough, Ashlea leaves the others, because she wants more charcoal for their measly fire.

In a happy coincidence, Jack Frost also wants some charcoal, to remake his face(why he wants charcoal, before he has any snow to make his boy is anybody's guess...Maybe he's making a sand-man this time?), so he stalks Ashlea first. She finds several pieces of charcoal in the sand, next to a couple of palm trees. As she bends down to retrieve them, Jacks tries to stab her several times by dropping sharp icicles down from the treetops, but he keeps missing his target. After a few attempts, he crushes her under an anvil that looks like it's made out of snow.

The remaining girls, Paisley and Rose, begin to worry about Ashlea when she doesn't return with the coal. As Paige goes to see what's taking her so long, Jack impales her with jagged icicles that he forces up through the sand. When it's time for Rose to die, he simply stabs her in the eyes with a pair of tongs.

Early the next day, Sam and Anne are disturbed by Captain Fun, who somehow managed to get into their bungalow and has jumped into the bed between them. He's somehow even creepier than a killer snowman! Anyway, he wants them to take part in his silly activities, and he seems to have trouble taking "no" for an answer.

In the "other" honeymoon bungalow, Joe and Marla are sleeping in different beds, like a couple from a sitcom in the 1950's. Joe hates it, but Marla doesn't seem to care. Pretty much sums up marriage, doesn't it?

Bobby sets up a tropical buffet, under the watchful eye of the Colonel. The Colonel samples every dish down the length of the table, and has recipe suggestions for every single damned dish. Wasn't there supposed to be a movie in here, at some point along the way? This is even more dull than my OWN vacation movies!

They hear a scream, and the Colonel runs off to investigate. Bobby, being smarter, stays behind at the buffet. Bobby must have seen his share of slasher movie as well, to prepare for being in one.

The Colonel finds the screaming tourists, who have discovered the bodies of the three girls from the previous night...or they discovered parts of them, at least. The Colonel covers up the incident by bribing the couple with free accommodations for the remainder of their stay. Then Bobby arrives, and the Colonel tells him to fetch their head of security, a "scary dude" named Manners.

Cool! Manners was Agent Manners in the first film, until Jack Frost ripped out one of his eyes. Now he's working for the resort, and he still treats every crime like it's a case file. Manners is one step ahead of the Colonel, having found another corpse on the beach. The Colonel wants to pass the deaths off as shark attacks, until Manners shows him the tongs with eyeballs attached to them.

At that point, Sam shows up. The Colonel, Bobby and Manners all block his view of the body parts, but then Sam recognizes Manners.Manners tries to deny that they know each other, but Sam keeps insisting that they do. Finally Manners loses his cool, telling Sam that it took several surgeries to fix what Jack did to him. Unnerved by his intensity, Sam agrees to back off.

Once they're alone with the corpses again, the Colonel tells his employees to help him with the fake shark attack story. Manners doesn't like the idea of covering the tracks of a killer, but Bobby disrupts their debate by announcing that the phones are out. This is getting more and more like Club Dread by the minute! If a guy named Machete Phil shows up, I'm turning it off.

Oh, and as they leave the room, Jack's voice seems to come out of a snow globe, as he talks to himself about the vengeance that he has planned. Uh, sure. An air-tight snow globe. That sure does seem logical to me.

Bobby and the Colonel use a toolbox to open up the control panel to their satellite dish, and the box is waterlogged. Bobby suggests that they let it dry out and wait for a supply ship to arrive the next day, and the Colonel agrees. Then Captain Fun and the other staff members are told some of what's going on, and ordered not to reveal anything to the guests.

While they're having the meeting, Sam's group is at the bar wondering why no one's there to take their drink order. Back in the kitchen, Manners suggests that they interrogate the guests until someone confesses. Captain Fun disagrees, and the Colonel takes his side. When the meeting finally ends, Bobby discovers that the resort guests have opened the bar themselves, and a large, rowdy crowd is the end result.

Meanwhile, we finally get an eyeful of the photo shoot with the swimsuit model named Sarah. About time! Jack swims underwater in that direction, humming a song that is a weird mixture of the theme from Jaws and "Jingle Bells". As Jack tries to move closer for a better view, Sarah can hear him somewhere behind her.

Greg announces that Sarah's breasts seem to be drooping in the heat, so he asks her to get 'em perky again with an ice cube. She opens up a cooler, and several ice cubes, speaking in "chipmunk" voices beg for her to pick them for the job. That's actually pretty funny. When Sarah's done, she throws the ice cube away in the sand and dirt.

That pisses off Jack, but he gets his revenge soon enough. Greg grabs her a bottled ice coffee from the cooler. Sarah drinks it(and some of Jack) down rather swiftly, and Jack makes her head explode. Then Jack murders Greg, which is shown in a series of Polaroids. Again, pretty funny.

At an archery contest(what is this, summer camp?), Sam hears(or thinks he hears) some of the attack. He can apparently sense when Jack is around, similar to the way that Jack can track him. Sure he can. He probably has organic webshooters too, and the ability to climbs vertical surfaces.

As the others run to the targets to admire their archery skills, Sam is approached from behind by Manners. The retired agent wants Sam to meet him later, so they can discuss the murders. When Sam asks him why they can't just meet right now, Manners admits that he needs to pee first.

Sam goes to the rendezvous site, where Manners admits that the story of the killer snowman got him fired from the FBI. He also has Captain Fun with him, and he says that Captain Fun's whole discussion at the staff meeting was just a ruse. Sam reminds Manners that he wasn't in that scene, and the former Fed is dumbfounded--with special emphasis on the "dumb".

Anyway, Captain Fun has a plan to capture the killer. He wants to make the killer think that no one suspects anything is wrong, then throw a party. In all seriousness, that's the actual plan. At the party, Captain Fun reveals that "a party" is his solution for every problem. Again, as dumb as it is, I still laughed.

When Captain Fun and Manners mingle and lose themselves in the crowd, Sam hears Jack Frost taunting him. He runs outside, followed by the other 2, and sees a flash of movement as he searches for any sign of Jack. Sam grabs an oar to use as a weapon, then spots the carrot on the sand. When he reaches down to grab it, a snowman comes at him from behind, and Sam whacks the snowman with the paddle.

It wasn't Jack, but the Colonel, wearing a costume. Luckily, he was merely knocked out, and is soon revived. He announces again that the supply ship will arrive the following day, and that they can call the authorities when the ship arrives. Then the Colonel tells Sam and Manners to stop panicking the other guests with their strange antics.

Sam stares at the head of the snowman costume, and a clue clicks in his brain. He realizes that the head has a carrot nose sewn on it, but that he had found a carrot in the sand right before the incident. Even as his wife warns him not to over think things, Sam can't rest until he knows why the carrot was on the beach in the first place.

Jack grabs his nose back, and Sam returnsto the bungalow, while his wife tries to calm him down. Sam admits that his obsession with Jack is unhealthy, just as we see Jack prowling around the resort, looking for another victim. He soon discovers a very attractive woman in a yellow bikini, who I think might be Cindy, the second swimsuit model who came for the photo shoot.

She decides to have a late-night dip in the resort's pool, and chooses to go skinny dipping even. She dives in and makes her way to the other end of the pool, then goes underwater again. The third time, Jack arrives at the edge of the pool, dips one of his snowy hands in, and freezes the surface water into ice within seconds.

Cindy tries to come up for air, but she can't break through the ice.She sees Jack above her, and drowns when she screams in terror. Jack then finishes freezing the water in the pool, before also freezing the bar and the immediate surroundings as well. At the end of the scene, the swimsuit model is seen in a lounge chair, also being frozen over. When the heck did he unfreeze the pool to drag her out???

Jack then sneaks into Sam's bungalow, and pulls his blanket up over his shoulder, even giving him a friendly little pat. Sam wakes up, and walks into the bathroom, then sees that there's snow falling outside. He calls over to his wife that he thinks he's having one of his nightmares about an endless winter, except that he's wide awake.

Captain Fun then scares them both by lobbing snowballs at the couple. Sam and Anne step outside to see that snow is covering everything, and everyone is outside, playing in it. Even Anne seems to finally believe her husband, although their honeymooning friends don't. Sam goes back inside, presumably to come up with a plan to defeat Jack.

A couple of idiotic stoner-types find a frozen metal pole. One challenges the other to stick his tongue to the pole, and offers to pour his warm beer down the pole to keep his friend's tongue from being stuck. Being dumbasses, they agree that this sounds like a really awesome plan. Sheesh, I wonder if these are the "hey" guys from earlier?

As soon as the idiot sticks his tongue to the pole, his buddy takes off. Then Jack arrives. He puts both of his hands on either side of the poor kid's head, then yanks....causing his tongue to be wrenched out of his mouth in gory fashion. Ouch!

Captain Fun is busy passing out snowballs to folks, then he scurries away to make more Our protagonists are all back inside, when Sam gets another telepathic message from Jack. The snowman implies that something terrible is about to occur outside, so he and his friends watch the snowball fight with (club?)dread.

Jack makes the snowballs into projectiles of solid ice. When the first one is thrown, it knocks one man's arm off. Blood from the stump starts spraying everywhere, even smacking one poor woman right in the face while she screams. Another victim gets a snowball lodged in his mouth. Then there are a series of icicle-related deaths: eyes gouged out, impalements, throats torn open.....you get the idea.

Sam's group decides to venture outside, and Sam spots a snowman in the middle of the mayhem. He steps forward to confront it, even as the others try to tell him that he's being silly. How are they not seeing everyone getting killed around them?

Well, it turns out that the others were right(for once). As Sam splashes the snowman with antifreeze(which he wore in a vial around his neck, like holy water), it turns out that the snowman was just a decoy, designed to draw him out into the open. When Sam turns around to face his friends, the real Jack pops up behind him.

Just in time, Manners shows up to save the day, with his gun drawn. Jack vanishes into the snow, sparing Sam's life. Sam's wife and friends are shocked to see Manners, and they all start questioning him and Sam about what's going on. Manners searches for any sign of Jack, while urging the others to go back to the safety of the bungalow.

Once inside, Sam reveals the psychic connection that he and Jack now seem to share. Marla still has her doubts, until Sam asks her how many other psychotic, living snowmen she has any knowledge of. Sam reaches beneath the bed, and reveals that he brought a stash of antifreeze, caulking tubes and other tools along on the vacation, in case they needed them. Why doesn't he just hide porn under the mattress, like most husbands would?

Armed, Sam and Manners announce that they intend to hunt Jack down and destroy him again. They ask Joe to stay with the women, which is what he wanted to do anyway, so that worked out great. Then Manners, armed with a squirt gun, asks to be called "Agent Manners" again, and they leave the safety of the bungalow to begin their snowmanhunt...but not before the 3 others come out to give Sam goofy "pep talks".

Manners and Sam make their way to the main building, and start their search for either Jack or other survivors. They get pelted with frying pans and other kitchen implements by Bobby, the Colonel and Captain Fun, who mistake them for dangerous intruders. Are there any heroes in this movie who aren't utterly incompetent?

Sam tells the resort workers a dumbed-down(ironic, I know) version of the story of Jack. When he gets to the part about the antifreeze, Captain Fun reminds them that they're in a tropical paradise, with not a lot of access to antifreeze. Then Bobby pipes up, and reveals that the secret ingredient in one of his most popular drinks is a coolant, or similar enough to antifreeze to do the trick. Nice. Anyone thirsty?

Manners and Sam grab the chemical, then the group of men work to make a huge batch of the stuff to use against the killer snowman. Well, most of them help...Captain Fun is too busy making snow angels and dipping his head in the snow to be of much use. After creating the stuff, they build a huge, fake field of snow-like mashed potato flakes over it, and wait for Jack to step into their trap. Then Sam volunteers to be the bait to lure Jack there.

As they wait for Jack to reappear, Anne is seen watching out the window for any sign that her husband is safe. She hears the bathroom faucet dripping, and decides to check it out. Oddly enough, nothing happens to her. What a missed opportunity!

Oh well, Jack decided to approach Sam directly. Sam's squirt gun goes dry, but he turns out not to need it: Jack stumbles into the trap all on his own. He quickly melts, and everybody rushes out to congratulate Sam for not getting himself killed. Then Jack returns, reformed out of a different pile of snow, and yells at Sam about how much getting melted hurts. Shooting more antifreeze/chemical coolants at him has no effect, because Jack claims that he's now "new and improved", which explains nothing.

Jack then poops a snowball and escapes into a pile of snow. Joe and Marla stay behind to examine the snow-poop, and gingerly pick it up with a pool net. Manners, alone in an unlit section of the island, spies a second snowball. He flattens it under his shoe, then grins like a maniac.

Back indoors, they all stare at the snowball Joe and Marla captured. Not only hasn't it melted, but now it's glowing with a bright light. As they try to figure out what to do with it, the snowball hatches, revealing a baby snowball inside.

Captain Fun thinks it's cute, and begins babbling baby-talk at it. The snowball responds by sticking an icicle through his eye socket, and killing him. Yeah, how cute. Marla picks up the pan containing the snowball like it's a tennis racket, and flings it against a wall. Then the tiny snowball chases them all around the room.

Bobby squashes it with a pot, but the snowball simply resumes its round shape with no difficulty. Then they work to trap it under another pan, and fling it into a blender. It squeals and shrieks as the blender reduces it to a watery mess, but when they switch the blender off again, the living snowball simply retakes it shape and declares, "That was fun!"

They debate different ways to destroy the thing: pouring salt all over it, heating it up on the range, cooking it in a microwave, wrapping it in a towel and steaming it...Heck after about 3 years, I think a slasher movie has finally suggested a montage I wouldn't mind seeing!!

But they denied me that one pleasure. No, instead of watching a group of people attempt to kill a snowball monster in dozens of wacky ways, we get more scenes of Manners traipsing around outside. He goes back to the supply shed, where he comes face-to-face with dozens of baby snowballs. Can you imagine how great this movie would be if we were high right now?

As Manners picks up one of the babies to examine it, Anne calls him on his radio, warning him not to pick any of them up. Awesome. As he attempts to slowly back out of the shed, one of the snowballs bites his finger off, then dozens jump up and attack him. He falls to the ground, and a pool of blood seeps out of the shed.

The group in the kitchen, meanwhile try shoving the snowball into a waffle iron. It reassembles again, covered in waffle-marks, and says cheerfully, "Mmmm, toasty!"

Sam is still a shell-shocked looney, so Anne puts herself in charge. She orders the others to gather as many jars, bottles, boxes and other lidded containers as they can find. Then she dons a bicycle helmet, pots-and-pans armor, and arms herself with a dustpan and a large jar. Rambo-ette lives!

She meets up with the Colonel and Joe, and they agree to split up and search the building, one room at a time. Then we see that the snowballs have taken over the bar. They're spinning around on the turntable, getting drunk, forming conga lines...for psychotic mutants, they sure do know how to have a good time!

Several of the snowball monsters are seen dragging away a severed arm to snack on, while the Colonel is sneaking around in the same general vicinity. Other snowballs are munching on fingers, innards, eyeballs...you get the picture. Sam and the others are briefly shown, and Marla threatens to kill Sam herself if he doesn't pull his shit together.

Joe finds one of the snowballs hiding in a Christmas tree, and traps it with a vacuum cleaner. He then transfers the little monster into a jar and seals the lid. While Joe's feeling pretty victorious, the Colonel is hidden in some tall reeds, and chatting with himself about past hunting victories. One of the snowballs climbs up a bamboo shoot and gets in his line of sight, distracting the Colonel long enough for other snowballs to surround him(including one with an icicle Mohawk) and make scary noises. Frightened, the Colonel runs away.

Anne explores an area that looks deserted, but then she hears something behind a table. She flings an object at the table to surprise whatever is back there, and discovers a female tourist named Amanda. Amanda was enjoying the snow with the other guests, until the massacre started.

Anne offers take her back to the kitchen hideout, but then an army of snowballs fire themselves at poor Amanda, knocking her to the ground. The sudden commotion reveals about 6-7 more survivors, who were apparently also hiding. And none of them heard or saw Anne trying to rescue Amanda?

Anne manages to defend herself fairly well against the creatures, but then she flings a mixed drink at one of them and it blows up. Anne brings the drink back to the kitchen, and asks Bobby what it is. He identifies it as Bobby's Island Daiquiri, and it turns out that the explosive ingredient is bananas. We discover that Sam has an allergy to them, and the mixture of his and Jack's DNA must have given the snowballs the same weakness.

They quickly gather as many bananas as they can find, and make a liquid that they can squirt at the snowballs. Then we get an exploding snowballs montage, complete with "Taps" playing during the sequence. They should name this sequence "Saving Private Snowman", or maybe "Full Winter Jacket".

After the completely bananas massacre(sorry...), Jack reappears. He sees the carnage, watches one of his "babies" die, then vows even more revenge, after a single cold tear rolls down his face. Sweet.

The Colonel and Bobby discuss how to clean up the resort and cover the massacre up, and then Jack shoves an icicle through the back of the Colonel's head, until it emerges out of his mouth. Then Jack slits Bobby's throat open, and rushes away to finish off the others. Joe and Marla are seen cleaning up the mess in another room, and Marla mentions that it's after midnight. They're supposed to be getting married in a few hours.

Jack pops up as they share a kiss, and the couple run back into the kitchen, screaming like banshees. They run past Anne, and Jack surrounds her with his own body, which he reshapes into a box. As the walls close in on Anne, icicles start to appear around her, and it looks like she's doomed. Then Jack resumes his snowman shape, and cackles with evil glee.

Sam pops up, holding a bow armed with a banana-tipped arrow. He fires it at Jack, and the snowman explodes, sending gory red slush everywhere. Sam realizes that he may have arrived too late to save his wife, and he crawls around in the red, slushy snow to search for her.

As he's getting more and more upset, a hand rises out of the slush, and waves weakly at him. Sam grabs her, then wipes all of the crap off of her face. They embrace, and he carries her out to the beach, so that they can wait for the supply ship to rescue them.

Normally, that's where I'd type THE END, but there's one more scene in the credits. The supply ship, which turns out to be from Japan, arrives at the island. The crew sees that the resort is now covered in snow, and then a gigantic carrot hits the ship from above, sinking it. Yup, Jack Frost is now....Snowzilla!!! THE END

Man oh man, this movie is exactly what I needed. After seeing so many grim, serious slashers, a goofy one like this is a nice change of pace. Plus, there were some really inventive kills, and several genuinely funny bits throughout the film. Sadly though, it looks pretty unlikely that there will ever be a third movie in this series, as the actor playing Sam passed away. It's too bad, because I could watch these dumb things over and over again. 4 killer trees out of 5. Rest in Peace, Sam.

And what did I learn from Jack Frost 2?

-Carrots can really get around!

-Snowballs can hatch monstrous baby snowballs.

-When you mix your DNA with another person's DNA, it gives you a psychic link to that person. So every time you have sex or a blood transfusion, you're psychic!!!

Next up: The Ruins, a grim affair about a group of young people being picked off by Mayans and a killer plant. And no, it's not as much fun as it sounds, it's grim. Really, really grim.

Frozen

Ever have "one of those weeks"? I had 2(TWO!!) winter-themed movies queued up on Netflix, and both managed to arrive late. I was ready to throw in the towel and just re-watch Session 9, but both arrived (FINALLY) in the mail 2 days ago. Yay. It's a Christmas miracle. Anyway, without further ado, I shall pop in the first film, Frozen, so let's get our eggs nogged and snuggle up to our favorite ho-ho-ho's. I added SPOILERS to the figgy pudding, so be warned! Oh, and I promise to watch the next one IMMEDIATELY after I sign off, to make up for all of these stupid delays.

The first thing I noticed about Frozen is that it's directed by Adam Green, who also directed Hatchet and Hatchet II. That's a good sign, as Hatchet was a fun, crazy slasher flick. and the second one is on my queue. So, let's keep our fingers crossed!

The premise is deceptively simple: 3 friends on a ski vacation are left stranded on a ski lift as the place closes for the night. Will they survive? Was it done on purpose? Is there a kid somewhere in the film demanding 2 dollars from John Cusack?(wasn't part of that set at a ski resort? I may be thinking of the wrong film...)
There's Parker, the cute perky blond; Dan, a smooth-talking guy with charisma to spare; and Joe, aka "Lynch", a guy who looks a little scruffy, but also seems decent enough. The trio of friends have come to this particular slope because Lynch persuades them into thinking the girl who runs the lift has a thing for him. The plan is to let him charm her, in the hope that all 3 can ride the lift for free.
The plan is flawless, save for the fact that the lift operator is a mean-looking guy, instead of some cute bubblehead.

After a quick discussion, Lynch and Dan convince Parker to flirt with the guy until he accepts a bribe. She starts up a conversation with the guy, but he seems pretty immune to her charms.

While Parker's using her feminine wiles to get her way, Lynch and Dan are having a heated debate over why Parker's even there to begin with. It seems that, since she started dating Dan, Lynch and Dan's other buddies haven't seen him around as much. Anyway, Parker gets them all in, but is criticized when the guys discover that she bribed the lift guy with $100, the full amount they gave her. Oops. She was apparently supposed to "ask for change". For a bribe?

Well, whatever. It worked, because they all get to ride up the slope. During the ascent, Parker and Lynch start in on each other. Parker's romance-talk and smoking habit bother Lynch, and his sarcastic attitude and alpha male behavior bug her. As Dan tries to keep the peace, the lift suddenly creaks to a halt. Ooooh, here we go!

Wait, nope, after several other patrons complain, it starts up again. Anyway, they all ski and ride snowboards and blah blah blah, 'til they're nearly worn to a frazzle. Lynch tries to hook up with a cute girl whose skis keep tripping her up, but he nearly gets torn apart by her boyfriend. He defuses the situation by playing dumb, and charms the girl into breaking up with the boyfriend later.

After they find out about the break-up, the friends decide to take one more trip up the slope, but the lift operator refuses. He tells them that some rough weather is moving in, and that he can't risk it. When they remind him that he was given $100, he decides to allow them up one last time. Gee, I wonder what will happen?

Well, as it turns out, a couple of things happen...First, the lift operator is told by a fellow employee that the boss wants to see him. He remembers to tell the other guy that there are still 3 skiers up there, though. Phew!

Oops. It turns out that, as Lynch, Parker and Dan are going up in the lift, they see 3 skiers rushing downhill. When the new lift operator sees them coming, he throws the switch. Talk about bad luck!

Stranded, the trio don't realize at first that they were forgotten. They assume that the lift was stopped due to technical problems, or maybe a skiing accident. They even exchange gruesome ski stories, just to freak Parker out. Once they realize that they were left in mid-air, they try yelling for help, but it's too late by then.

As the day turns to night, they try to come up with some escape plans. Parker suggests that it might be possible to jump from their height with the snowboard, ride down, and call someone. The guys, on the other hand, think it's risky, and still hold out hope for employees to show up and get them down, possibly with ladders.

When it gets darker, they suddenly remember something else: it's Sunday. That means that, theoretically, they could be up in the air until the following Friday. As that dawns on them, Parker starts to laugh. It turns out that she has to pee. As she and Lynch argue over how THAT is going to work, he reminds her that they will all have to figure out a way to go to the bathroom, because they won't be able to hold it all in for 5 days straight. To prove his point, Lynch pees right then and there.

Well, at least it can't get worse...until the storm starts. Damn, the lift operator was right, and the storm is a doozy! Lynch zips back up, lowers the safety bar again, and they all sit tight while ice, snow and rain batter them. Makes me want to take a trip to Aspen!

As they continue to wait for the storm to die down, a pair of headlights appear. They get excited as the vehicle starts driving toward them, and shout and wave with frantic desperation. From inside his plow, the guy can't hear them. Geez dummies, try throwing something down to get his attention!

Wow, they heard me! Dan throws his goggles straight down in front of the plow. Sadly, he does this while the driver is looking at the rear of the vehicle, trying to back up. Angry now(and afraid), all 3 start throwing stuff: skis, goggles, poles, you name it. One item bounces off the windshield, but when the driver looks ahead again, he sees nothing and chalks it up to hail or something. Dumbass!

As the night goes on and the temperature drops, Lynch tries to keep them distracted from the cold by coming up with inane lists: Top 3 Breakfast Cereals, Worst 3 Blind Dates, stuff like that. When Parker loses one of her gloves, Dan turns to reassure her and sees what could be the start of frostbite on her face. He announces that he's going to jump, then get help, but the other 2 urge him to stay.

Dan jumps. He lands flat on his back, and at first it appears that he might be dead. The good news? He sits up. The bad news? Both legs are broken, so badly that the splintered bones are protruding through his pants. Oh, and he's bleeding out---FAST.
Parker tries to throw him her scarf to him to help staunch the bleeding, but it flies away into a high tree branch. Lynch balls up his scarf to throw, and it lands closer, but in FRONT of poor Dan. After several attempts, much agonized screaming and many tears, Dan finally leans over his broken, splintered legs enough to snatch up the scarf. and ties it to one of his legs.

Of course, there's still the OTHER leg...Parker offers to toss her coat, which, while a sweet gesture, is incredibly stupid. Lynch comes up with a dangerous plan of his own: he wants to try to pull himself across the cables, until he can get to a safe jumping point. After considering it, they revise the idea: he's going to cross the cables to the nearest wire-pole, and climb down to the ground to help Dan.

Before they can watch Lynch kill himself on wires, they all hear howling. The wind, perhaps? Nope, it's much worse: wolves. And thanks to Captain Numbnuts, there's now a blood-scent to follow. Great thinking, Dan. Hope you enjoy being eaten alive, dude. Dan starts to freak out, and Parker tells him it could be worse. When asked how, she tells him that he could have been eaten by the Sarlaac in the Star Wars trilogy.(that's Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi...I refuse to acknowledge the other 3 until technology is invented to make them suck less!)

Lynch prepares to scale the wire, but it's blocked by a layer of ice. As he and Parker chip away the ice, fragments of it start falling toward Dan, who covers his face. When he lowers his hands, he comes face to face with a snarling, growling wolf. While he panics, Parker throws something, and scares the wolf away. It's right about then that Dan realizes that he no longer has feeling in his legs. Uh oh.

More bad news, but this time it's up in the ski-lift chair. Frostbite is settling in on both Parker and Lynch. Determined to be brave, Lynch stands on the seat, and starts his rope-climbing idea. A short distance in, he starts to feel the wire cutting into his hands. Then he glances down and rushes to pull himself back into the chair with Parker. When she asks him what was wrong, he tells her not to look down.

Parker looks down. Below the chair, wolves have begun to circle Dan. He begs Parker and Lynch to look away, then just covers his head with his arms. The wolves tear him apart. As he screams to death, his friends try not to watch the carnage. They still see too much, and both start screaming and crying.

Later, they fight over who was responsible for Dan's death. Parker blames Lynch, because he didn't jump first. Lynch tells her that the death was a direct result of her dating Dan in the first place. They both shout, then cry, then console each other. Then Parker gets upset thinking about her dog, She imagines that the dog, while waiting for her to return, will starve to death. They eventually both calm down enough to fall asleep.

The next morning, Parker wakes up and discovers that she gripped the railing sometime during the night. As a result, her hand is now frozen, welded to the safety bar. When she does finally pry her hand loose, a whole lot of flesh stays on the bar. Her cries wake Lynch up, and he sees her hand. He also sees that her frostbite is much worse, and warns her again about scratching it. Oh, and she finally peed, all over herself.

Realizing that they won't last until the weekend, Lynch decides to try to cross the cable again. He pulls himself up, and part of the mechanism holding the chair up breaks, making the chair swing sideways. Lynch pulls himself across the wire to the next chair and rests in it.

Now alone in her section of the lift, Parker tries to keep as still as possible. At about this point, the wolves return. When they see Lynch about to make his next move, they begin to circle underneath his position. He shouts over to Parker, asking her to reach one of the remaining ski poles, and try to throw it as close to the climbing post as she can. She does, but it's not very close.

Lynch climbs out of his new seat and makes his way to the post. As the wolves watch, he actually makes it! Quickly, he starts climbing down, exciting the wolves by losing his footing once. When he gets to the ground, he makes a mad dash for the snowboard and begins to strap it on.

That's all the distraction the wolves need. Two move into position, and one of them pounces on Lynch. He tries to roll away, and struggles to reach the pole Parker threw. As the wolf keeps clawing at him, Lynch gets the pole and surprises the wolf with a sharp jab. Both wolves retreat back into the trees.

Lynch gets to his feet, and starts coasting down the trail, while Parker gets excited. A few moments later, the wolves follow him, and Parker screams for him to get to safety. There is no response, and Parker prays that he made it safely away.

The rest of the day passes with no activity, and that night Parker assumes the worst. The next morning she decides to try to do what Dan and Parker did, but she has no real plan. She sees that the last wheel holding the chair up is close to breaking, and she climbs down the chair. The wheel starts to snap, and as Parker dangles under the chair, it plummets. Luckily, it hangs on by a wire, and the wire stretches enough to the point where she thinks it might be safe to attempt a jump.
Parker takes her leap of faith, just seconds before the last wire snaps. She lands safely on the snow, but the chair falls as well, and injures one of her feet. Ignoring the pain, Parker straps on some skis and takes off down the trail.

A short way downhill, she sees the wolves eating Lynch. They start to growl at her, but the meal of Lynch distracts them, and she gets away. Once she gets to the bottom, Parker staggers past the ski lodge, heading for the main road. She sees a car, but it sails right past her, and she collapses just as she reaches the road.

While she lays there, dead or unconscious, another car arrives. This motorist stops, and he pulls her to her feet. After making sure that she's alive, the driver gets her into the car and tells her that the hospital is 10 minutes away. Parker just stares at her reflection in the sideview mirror. THE END

Phew! While not a slasher film in the least, Frozen was definitely harrowing to watch. The performances were quite convincing, and the tension was thicker than the ice! As a horror film, I'd give it a solid 5 killer trees out of 5. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

And what did I learn from Frozen?
-Ski resorts are all deathtraps.
-Never try jumping off of a ski lift, your legs will break and animals will eat you!
-The need to pee and rescue your starving puppy can give you instant bravery!

Later this weekend, I'll do the other movie Netflix sent me, something called Santa Claws. Sounds awful enough to be pretty fun. I hope. Happy holidays!