The Third Frosty: ‘Jack Frost’ (1997)
Who knew, there's snow in this one too!
The holidays are a time to go out for an ugly Christmas sweater bar crawl and/or snuggling up with your special someone and doing cute Christmas-y things outside with them, but for me this year as someone who first caught Covid and after that caught Getting Cut From Consideration For Cuffing Season Because of Many Personal Flaws Disease, I’ve instead spent a lot of my time watching Jack Frost-related movies this season. At this point, I’ve seen the whole trifecta: Hot Frosty, Jack Frost (the unintentionally scary one with Michael Keaton that I watched a lot as a kid), and as of writing this the Jack Frost that is intentionally scary without Michael Keaton.
Jack Frost (1997) was a wild ride from start to finish. Basically, a serial killer literally named Jack Frost was getting prison transported and then the truck crashed with another truck that had this acid that disintegrated Jack immediately but then he scientifically fused with the snow on the ground. He then takes the form of a snowman and goes into town and starts killing people by using his new science powers to melt into water, seep through the cracks, and break into people’s homes. He also can form icicles that stab people. It’s not a very good movie, but I had fun (for the most part).
The horror movie and the Michael Keaton one have some similarities, like the snowman using a sled to terrorize teenage bullies and a young boy who is annoying and not very smart. The sexy snowman movie is similar in that all three snowmen did have some kind of scarf at one point. The snowmen—puppets or a human man—are all a little too uncanny valley for my taste.
We don’t talk about the genre of snowman movies as much as we like to talk about vampires and zombies, but what does a snowman movie say about us as a society? For one, across the board snowman movies acknowledge that a sentient being made of three large snowballs by nature should NOT exist. In all genres of snowman movie, the natural environment does its best to rid the alive snowman of existence. The laws of nature does not allow the snowman to be possible for long—it must melt or something unnatural, like a top-secret acid or true love’s kiss, needs to happen in order for the sentient snowman to keep living.
When it’s a kid’s dead dad, we learn that we must let go of the snowman because we will never truly heal from our grief if we allow our dead dad, who is now a snowman, keep living in our lives. When it’s a buff snowman turned into a buff real guy who still has the frozen temperatures and ability to melt (but it’s only sweat), the only thing to let the snowman live is for the human protagonist to quickly heal from the grief of her dead husband in order to love again and kiss a dead snowman on the mouth, thus giving him enough life to grow old in human years. When it’s a serial killer turned science experiment turned evil snowman, the only thing to keep these powerful molecules at bay is some antifreeze, and even that won’t keep evil at bay (there is a sequel).
There’s not much else I think to the snowman genre other than “freak that defies nature comes in to teach someone something if it stays or not” and the fact that movie snowmen do look a little weird because their snow is puppet material. They are also pure fiction, not because of the talking snowmen, but because there’s no way that a kid is able to make a snowman look that good on the first try (and they need way more snow to accomplish it by volume).
Would I recommend any of these films based on a high-quality viewing experience? No. But would I recommend them based on the entertainment value only made better by watching with a few friends? I sure would.
Now we just need a snowperson who is a GIRLBOSS and is CRUSHING stereotypes about snowwomen in BUSINESS. That is what this America needs!
This week I’ve got some shows! 12/17 the Ghost Rats are again in the Tuesday Good Show, 7:00pm at Gallery Cabaret. Then on 12/18 Dr. Coke is in the CiC Wednesday Show, 8:00pm at Finley Dunne’s. on 12/21 I’m doing standup at The Other Side in Crystal Lake at 8:00pm. I probably won’t have anything else going on for the rest of 2024 so come on out!