Santa and The Ice Cream Bunny on WFMU
I just watched this one last night, and apparently the obsessives over at WFMU in New York were on my wavelength. Click on their blog above to catch a glimpse of this truly weird holiday offering ... Santa Claus gets his sleigh stuck in the sands of Florida while out scouting the earth for good little boys and girls. The weather is too hot for the reindeer to survive, so they fly back to the North Pole, leaving Santa in the lurch. Luckily, a troupe of local kids arrives to offer help, producing pigs, dogs, donkeys and cows to pull the sleigh out of the sand, but nothing works. Despite perspiring mightily in all that fur, velvet and whiskers, Santa takes a break to tell the kids a story -- cue the opening for an entirely different feature, a zero-budget musical retelling of Thumbelina that takes up most of the film's running time. I won't give away the ending, except to say that it involves The Ice Cream Bunny and a last-minute escape in a 1920s-vintage motorcar.
This is a beautiful piece of dimestore surrealism perfect for any season. As cynically slap-dash as the production might be, there's a charming childlike quality to the logic and dialogue. At one point, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer show up, hide in the bushes and discuss the proceedings -- "Hey, Huck, what do you think Santa and all those kids over there are up to?" "I don't know, Tom, maybe if we hide here and watch for a while we'll find out!" Then they do. And the songs, oh, the songs ... tuneless free verse warbling just like you hear out of the mouths of real children not yet accustomed to conventional meter. Saddle it up alongside the legendary 1959 Mexican kiddie matinee stalwart Santa Claus and the irresistible Santa Claus Conquers the Martians for the ideal X-mas triple feature ... or just come over to my apartment on X-mas day, where my Old Lady and I will be likely to be watching at least one of these features at some point (email for directions).
A more detailed exploration of Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny is available here.
I just watched this one last night, and apparently the obsessives over at WFMU in New York were on my wavelength. Click on their blog above to catch a glimpse of this truly weird holiday offering ... Santa Claus gets his sleigh stuck in the sands of Florida while out scouting the earth for good little boys and girls. The weather is too hot for the reindeer to survive, so they fly back to the North Pole, leaving Santa in the lurch. Luckily, a troupe of local kids arrives to offer help, producing pigs, dogs, donkeys and cows to pull the sleigh out of the sand, but nothing works. Despite perspiring mightily in all that fur, velvet and whiskers, Santa takes a break to tell the kids a story -- cue the opening for an entirely different feature, a zero-budget musical retelling of Thumbelina that takes up most of the film's running time. I won't give away the ending, except to say that it involves The Ice Cream Bunny and a last-minute escape in a 1920s-vintage motorcar. This is a beautiful piece of dimestore surrealism perfect for any season. As cynically slap-dash as the production might be, there's a charming childlike quality to the logic and dialogue. At one point, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer show up, hide in the bushes and discuss the proceedings -- "Hey, Huck, what do you think Santa and all those kids over there are up to?" "I don't know, Tom, maybe if we hide here and watch for a while we'll find out!" Then they do. And the songs, oh, the songs ... tuneless free verse warbling just like you hear out of the mouths of real children not yet accustomed to conventional meter. Saddle it up alongside the legendary 1959 Mexican kiddie matinee stalwart Santa Claus and the irresistible Santa Claus Conquers the Martians for the ideal X-mas triple feature ... or just come over to my apartment on X-mas day, where my Old Lady and I will be likely to be watching at least one of these features at some point (email for directions).
A more detailed exploration of Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny is available here.
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