Jack Frost

Jack Frost is probably best known today for featuring American Pie star Shannon Elizabeth in her first film role, as the designated small-town slut. She still had her natural nose and smaller breasts at the time.

It's a hokey parody of the horror/slasher genre - Jack Frost is to Christmas as Michael Myers is to Halloween. I kinda liked it, but two of my children voted a resounding "no" on it.

Scoopy Jr wrote:

This one falls into the "We know we're making a bad movie, so we're going to try really hard to make it funny but at the same time still try to make it serious" category. A serial killer is genetically mutated in car wreck on the way to his execution. After the wreck he becomes a murdering snowman hell-bent on revenge for the sheriff who caught him. Why it sucked eggs: Poor attempt at humor added at random intervals from characters who were previously one dimensional straight guys. My guess is that later in the production after viewing the dailies, they realized how bad this thing really was and tried to spice it up and make it a spoof. Why I care: I don't, and neither should you. The bottom line is that Shannon does get naked but all we see is her very lovely bum.

The film was was designed to be dumb, and not many people "get" that kind of humor.

Woman locks door to keep out evil snowman, dramatic music, sight of water under door ("Oh, no, he's gonna melt his way in", she realizes). Cut to the face of a silly Frosty-lookin'-mofo and the woman now dead.

Oh, yeah, the joke did wear a little thin, I admit. I got bored with it after a while, but you have to love any movie which dares to show the only known screen instance of a woman having sex with a snowman. Hell, you have to watch the film for a couple of minutes just to see the silly face on the Snowman.

Frankly, you can't blame the Snowman for going after a little strange. After all, his wife is frigid.

Michael Cooney has only two directing credits: Jack Frost and Jack Frost 2, but he has some talent. There are a lot of good touches in the film:

The murderous snowman is funny. In addition to his evil puns (as if there were good puns) he puts on a smoking jacket and smokes a pipe, ala Hef, after his sex/murder scene with Shannon Elizabeth.
The town sheriff is actually a solid professional actor who plays the entire movie as if he were in a real film.
The Christmas-themed opening credits are slick.
You have to love the scene where the townspeople defend themselves by using their hair dryers against the snowman.
Quiet a bit of thought went into the photography and set design, especially the details of the small town. It looks quite good for a B movie.
One woman was murdered by being turned into a Christmas tree, and the snowman really decorated her lovingly.
One scene that made me laugh out loud - Shannon Elizabeth is in the bathtub, unaware that the snowman can freely transmute between snow and water. Little does she know that she's actually bathing in the snowman himself! Everything seems normal until we get a look at the bath water. Floating in the water is the carrot used as a snowman nose. Dramatic music accompanies its appearance.
Another good laugh. Shannon Elizabeth seduces her boyfriend right after her mother, father, and brother are killed by the snowman. Her boyfriend is surprised that she wants to party that same night, but Shannon says, "Hey, do you want me to mourn forever?"

DVD info from Amazon

widescreen letterboxed, not anamorphic, but a good looking transfer
no features

OK, I know the film isn't a great work of genius, but I got a lot of laughs out of it, and I appreciated the elements of the film that did work. It's one of those enjoyably bad movies like Hell Comes to Frogtown, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Creature from the Haunted Sea, and Deathstalker II.

For a grade-B film, it has attracted an amazing level of attention. There are 126 comments at IMDb, and it is reviewed by every one of the best-known bad movie sites (see the external review section at IMDb).

The Critics Vote ...

No major reviews, but there are more than two dozen internet reviews at IMDb.

Rotten Tomatoes 11% positive

The People Vote ...

IMDB summary. IMDb voters score it 3.9/10

The meaning of the IMDb score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics, or a C- from our system. Films rated below five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

My own guideline: A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. C means it will only appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover appeal. (C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but will be considered excellent by genre fans, while C- indicates that it we found it to be a poor movie although genre addicts find it watchable). D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre. F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of film. Any film rated B- or better is recommended for just about anyone. We don't score films below C- that often, because we like movies and we think that most of them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below C-.

Based on this description, this is a C-. Not quite a good genre parody and not quite a good horror movie, but often a delightfully dumb movie, ala Hell Comes to Frogtown.