JACK FROST (1997)

 

(Director/screenwriter: Michael Cooney)

Review

Snowmonton, California. After a truck carrying vicious serial killer Jack Frost (Scott Macdonald) to his execution collides with a genetics company truck, Frost’s body is bathed in the experimental fluid, fusing his melted body with the snow. The police, thinking Frost dead, declare him as such.

But Frost is still alive. He is a murderous snowman seeking revenge on the small-town cop (Sheriff Sam Tiler, played by Christopher Allport) who arrested him, with a few more killings along the way. Tiler is still jittery about Frost, who to the end of his life, vociferously vowed vengeance on Tiler.

The bodies pile up quickly in this low budget horror comedy─an old man is found frozen to death, with serious spinal damage; a bully picking on Ryan, Tiler’s son, while Ryan builds a snowman (actually Frost, unbeknownst to Ryan). Horrible, quip-punctuated deaths follow. 

As a direct-to-video comedy horror flick, JACK─not to be confused with the 1998 Michael Keaton film─is a golden turkey (“so bad it’s good”): it’s fun, mostly light-toned, and fast-paced, with good cinematography and FX, and intentionally cheesy/well-shot kill scenes (and quips to accompany said killings). One of the murder scenes involving a bathtub stands out for its darkness: a young woman (Jill Metzner) is raped by Frost before she’s covered in frost (while this is shot in a ridiculous, darkly humorous way, it’s obviously still disturbing and unnecessary)─shown in JACK's original trailer, the filmmakers had not intended for Jill to be assaulted that way, just killed, but since her murder scene so closely resembled further violation, they shot additional footage of Frost saying sex puns.

Shannon Elizabeth, billed as Shannon Elizabeth Fadal, played Jill. This was her first role; she appeared in AMERICAN PIE two years later and other bigger budget movies.

There are no wasted shots in JACK and all the players are solid in their roles, making this hour-and-a-half-long B-movie breezy entertainment with an imaginative, laugh-out-loud finish to its villain. Its ending explicitly leaves JACK open for a sequel, keeping with the (mostly) fun spirit of the film. Followed by JACK FROST 2: REVENGE OF THE MUTANT KILLER SNOWMAN (2000).

 

Deep(er) filmic dive

In Andrea Subissati’s article “Massacre Under the Mistletoe” (Rue Morgue magazine, issue 203, November/December 2021, pp. 12-18), she interviewed JACK FROST director Michael Cooney. In it, Cooney said:

—JACK FROST was made in 1994 but not released until 1997, and originally was budgeted as a bigger film with a bigger director.

—JACK FROST  was not intended as a horror film, though it was “influenced by horror films. . . [it was influenced] by Sam Raimi’s THE EVIL DEAD (1981)”.

—Cooney wished he’d shot JACK FROST “on film.” The producers wanted it “shot on digital because that’s how they wanted to promote it. Nobody had lit this camera before, and we struggled. The early digital [cameras] had no depth of field; we were trying to figure out how to make pools of light; the little centre on this brand-new camera picked up every piece of light. . . I think it would have had more warmth if it were shot on film.”