Years before penning James Mangold’s star studded 2003
mystery horror thriller film Identity which went on to gross around $90
million at the box office, screenwriter Michael Cooney made his writing and
directorial debut with the regional straight-to-video horror slasher/dark
comedy Jack Frost.
The film debut
of American Pie actress Shannon Elizabeth and the first leading role for
Fire in the Sky character actor Scott MacDonald, the shoestring budgeted
A-Pix Entertainment videotape horror flick came and went on Blockbuster Video
shelves for awhile before being souped up by Vinegar Syndrome in 2016 via a 2K digital
restoration of the 35mm vault elements before being again picked back up by MVD
Rewind Collection, giving the lean mean cheapie a new shot at life and a chance
to be seen as one of the better Christmas horror comedies of the late
1990s.
Though Jack seems dead, Sam remains haunted
by screams of vengeance by the killer and soon people in the neighborhood start
mysteriously dying in violent ways including but not limited to a local bully
being decapitated by a snow sled. All
the while Sam’s son Ryan (Zack Eginton) insists a snowman did it and soon the
body counts continue to rise over what appears to be not only Jack Frost
transformed into a shape-shifting ice creature, but the being seemingly cannot
be killed ala The Blob or the T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
The soundtrack by Chris Anderson and Carl Schurtz isn’t anything special
to write home about except when it does the dark and brooding version of Silent
Night or the Twelve Days of Christmas.
Acting wise, the regional cast does a pretty good job and it is easy to
see why Shannon Elizabeth was cast in American Pie having a shower scene that has to be seen to be believed. Scott MacDonald has a lot of fun channeling
Brad Dourif’s Chucky from Child’s Play while Christopher Allport’s no
stranger to the horror scene having starred prominently in Dead & Buried.
A
distinct product of its day when the patina of straight-to-video films began
changing considerably into the early 2000s, Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the
Mutant Killer Snowman came around a few years later reuniting the same cast
and crew though the passing of actor Christopher Allport in 2008 sadly nixed
plans for a third film. Yes ostensibly
it is the kind of thing you would throw on during a so-called “bad movie night”
but after actually looking at it, the film is clearly made with a deep love for
the genre with more than a few shoutouts to the holiday horrors which paved the
way for the killer snowman to do some Christmas slaying.
--Andrew Kotwicki