Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny
Tags: cult, storytelling

Plot synopsis:
In Santa's workshop in the North Pole, Santa's elves sing about Christmas nearing and Santa's absence. Meanwhile, on a beach in Florida, Santa's sleigh has become mired in the sand, and his reindeer have flown away to escape the heat, leaving him stuck. Santa sings a song bemoaning his troubles, then falls asleep.
Several local children hear Santa calling them telepathically and run to him. Santa awakes and explains his predicament. One boy asks why Santa does not fly back to the North Pole on a plane; he explains that he cannot abandon his sleigh and needs their help pulling it out of the sand. The kids bring him several animals, including a pig, a sheep, a donkey, a horse, and a gorilla.
Meanwhile, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn watch and comment on the action from a distance.
When all the children's attempts fail, Santa encourages them not to give up hope, and tells them a story about a girl who visits the theme park Pirates World and hears the story of "Thumbelina" as an example. A previously produced film of Thumbelina plays, complete with its original credit sequence, and runs longer than its frame story (alternate prints of the film use another Mahon adaptation, Jack and the Beanstalk, as Santa's story).
After the story, Santa encourages the kids to "always believe". One girl tells Santa that her dog, Rebel, can do anything. The kids leave. Santa takes off his coat and falls asleep once more. He wakes up and puts his coat back on when the kids return in an antique fire engine, singing about how they will help Santa. The engine is being driven by the titular Ice Cream Bunny, whom Rebel has summoned. The Ice Cream Bunny offers to drive Santa to the North Pole and they depart. The children realize Santa's sleigh is still stuck in the sand and wonder what to do before it teleports to the North Pole, waiting for Santa's arrival.

Review: They make Santa on the beach look pretty good!Then just when you think the movie has turned into Thumbelina and you've given up all hope of seeing Santa again, it ends.
It's a running joke in my family over the past 20 years that when we see a bad movie we always say 'yeah, but it's no Santa Clause and the Ice Cream Bunny' No joke.
And just when you think it can't get any worse, the Ice Cream Bunny actually reaches up to hold the head of his costume on while nodding vigorously at Santa's ramblings.
It only avoids mention on IMDb's bottom 100 because so far there aren't enough votes to make the minimum needed for this infamous list.The film begins with Santa and his sleigh (minus the reindeer) stuck in the sand in Florida and Christmas is just around the corner.
SANTA AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY  -  first thought:  What the ????Found this video for rental at Family Video at 76th & National in Milwaukee this week and it sounded so atrociously awful and ridiculous I just HAD to rent it.
Product #4006So apparently this company acquired the rights to release this on tape.Now the video box description mentions that Santa tells the children the story of Thumbelina, and segues into that movie...But in the video on the tape, the structure of the film has been changed.This video does contain THUMBELINA, but not as a "movie within a movie" as in the original version.
Instead THUMBELINA and all the theme-park sequences that go with it are tacked on to the end of the "Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny" story.So in this video, Santa begins to tell the story, and the picture fades to black.
Incidentally, the Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny portion of the film clocks in at about 30 minutes.In watching the THUMBELINA film on the video at the end of the SICB story I was interested in finding out more about the Pirate's World Amusement Park in Dania, Florida.
By 1973 it was in bankruptcy and in 1975 it was closed.I would not be surprised if SANTA AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY, released in 1972, in some way contributed to the demise of Pirate's World.
Wood look like Citizen Kane, the only motivation I could think that this abomination was produced in the first place was simply because some guys had a couple of tacky-looking fancy dress outfits laying around in the loft and decided to make a movie with them.The plot (or lack of) consists of a particularly creepy Santa stranded on a beach in Florida because his sleigh is trapped beneath two grains of sand (we learn that his reindeer have already flown back to the North Pole courtesy of some grainy-looking stock footage).
Even Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer join Santa's helpers, but this is all to no avail, so he decides to tell the story of Thumbelina to some REALLY bored looking children...Now, the version I watched didn't have the story of Thumbelina at this point (like the original release) and it simply fades to black and then back to Santa being creepy.For no reason whatsoever, some other guy in a white rabbit costume drives a Fire Truck with an awful lot of children passengers towards the beach only to detour through an amusement park and finally get to the beach while the children sing songs.
The kids run back to Santa's sleigh and it mysteriously vanishes.Then comes the Thumbelina adaptation, which, in a nutshell is a fairly pretty girl singing songs around the same amusement park Mr. Rabbit took an inane detour through.
However, this is the best part of SC&TICB simply because the girl who plays Thumbelina can carry a tune when she sings.I can only imagine that the intention of this movie was to advertise "Pirate World", the amusement park where most of it is based, quite the way Santa Claus (1985) advertised a certain fast food restaurant and soft drink brand.As a movie, this is the poorest you could ever find.
The second feature was Empire of the Ant's.My mom almost got up and left during the Santa and Ice Cream Bunny movie because it was so bad.All we remember was Santa sitting in a sled that was stuck in sand.And he kept saying hohoho.I think he told the story of Jack and the Beanstalk also while he was stuck..
I remember seeing this film on TV once (I think it was on AMC, Why, WHY?) and oh god, it is horrible enough to make "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" look like "The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus".It basically deals with Santa being stranded in Florida and his so-called struggle to go back to the north pole.
He does not make too much effort, since all he seems to do is sing corny songs,dance corny jigs with a bunch of kids (whom all must be traumatized for all of these years!) and deal with a bunch of whacked out losers, including a storyteller who looks like the chubby Anna Nichole Smith and married (yes, its true) an anthropomorphic mole that would make even Sid and Marty Krofft scream in rage and disgust.Oh and don't forget the other title character, who looks like a rejected baseball/football mascot.If you run across this film, AVOID IT LIKE A MAD VIRUS!.
Allow me to summarize the movie.Santa's sleigh ends up on a beach in Florida, buried in an inch of sand.
Santa summons a bunch of kids and they basically just go along with it and get a bunch of animals (not all at once, hello?) to pull the sleigh free, including a horse, a cow, a sheep, and even a guy in a gorilla suit.
Santa, meanwhile, fans himself and mumbles "oh it's hot ooh golly oh my gosh i have never been so hot in my life oh ho ho ho oh gosh oh my golly".Santa takes a break from sweating to tell the kids the story of Thumbelina, and then they pretty much just play this older film called 'Thumbelina', made by the same guy who made this.
There's no mention of ice cream in the film, he's literally just a guy in a generic, creepy white rabbit costume that never speaks.Also, the Thumbelina segment is incredibly weak.
The story he tells varies depending on the version you are watching, and is the best part of the film, which is not saying much since both fairy tales are bad.This film is the second worst piece of garbage I have EVER SEEN!
Insipid, inexplicable, imbecilic, and ignominious, Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny deserves nothing less than the lowest rating I can possibly give it, one star on IMDb(equivalent to a negative 0 out of 4.) Avoid this toxic waste of a film at all costs!.
I must have repressed most of it as I remembered only Santa being stuck in the sand and that the movie suddenly and inexplicably switched to Thumbelina in the middle.
TVBRobotnik at the Movies: Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny.
For this film, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny, is a massacre to the family matinée of the early 1970s.
It's called, "Woe Is Me." More like, woe is this movie.The kids come and help, and yes, there's actually a footage of both the unfinished work of Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn and the unfinished work of Thumbelina.
Apparently, they're made by the same guy that did this crap.This footage shows Tom Sawyer holding the raccoon, and I can just imagine that the raccoon was actually saying, "Please, kill me now!" The kids try to help by getting the animals.
I think I heard about this movie on Slate.com's periodic posting of "The Worst Cinematic Crap of All-Time." It reminded me of the movies that served as fodder for "Mystery Science Theater 3000." On the always-unproductive day before Christmas Vacation, I found it on the internet and showed part of it to my 6th grade class, without telling them anything about what they were about to view.At first the sixth graders were happy not to have to do actual work.
When I paused it after about 10 minutes to ask them what they thought of it, I got questions like "Why are Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer in it?" "Why would the elf use a hammer to make a stuffed animal?" "Why is Santa so skinny?" "Where is the Ice Cream Bunny?" They were impressed by the kid jumping off the roof with the patio umbrella parachute, though.I explained that these were all good questions, and that I didn't have an answer for any of them, but that they were watching what was widely considered to be the worst kids' movie of all time.
Sure, the movie has terrible songs, a completely ridiculous "plot," an unrelated movie that is 2/3 of the total run time grafted into the middle of it, it serves as an advertisement for a defunct theme park in central Florida, and it looks like it was filmed on a weekend with about a budget of $300, but the real reason it sucks is because of the EDITING.
The footage is taken directly from another movie filmed at Pirate's World, the same place where this atrocity was filmed, and was made two years prior to 'The Ice Cream Bunny' back in 1970.
The film takes us on an incredible journey as we witness Santa Claus' valiant yet fruitless attempts to free his sleigh from the devastating desert sands as he struggles with the scorching Florida heat and a borderline existential crisis, assisted by a colorful cast of children and wild animals that liven up the experience and bring some much-needed comic relief.
With an engaging plot and cinematic mastery, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny will be remembered by many cinema enthusiasts for years to come..
Santa Claus on the beach, met by a bunny with no ice cream.
When that proves useless, these obviously bored kids spend an inordinate amount of time listening to him tell them fairy tales- either Thumbelina, or Jack and the Beanstalk, depending on which version one watches, which is merely used to pad out the film's runtime.The Santa footage appears to be silent footage, with sound dubbed in afterward, there are continuity issues left and right, a Santa who looks like he's about 30, and taken a dump in his Santa suit, ugly kids overacting outrageously, and massive amounts of stock footage reign, until a guy in a white bunny rabbit costume drives up (is pushed up by obvious stagehands) through the nearly empty amusement park, and gives this clod a ride ...
It seems like they filmed a short ride through the awful looking amusement park, then padded that with this story of Santa on the beach, but when that still came up short, the padded it out even further with unrelated fairy tale stories, to horrible effect..
Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (1972)BOMB (out of 4) If you're a fan of the weird and bizarre then it's likely you've heard of this movie.
The copy I viewed had THUMBELINA shown so you can check out that film's page for my thoughts on that film.The story to SANTA AND THE ICE CREAM BUNNY is pretty simple.
Santa gets his sleigh stuck in the Florida sand so he asks some local children to try and get him out.
In fact, the movie within this movie is done by none other than Barry Mahon, a World War II vet, POW who ended up making tons of dough producing nudies and then started doing kiddie flicks - in fact, his version of the Wizard Of Oz - called something like Wonderful World Of Oz - is ten times worse than this Santa Claus disaster.
Santa and the Ice-cream Bunny is worse them all of them.
I'd even go as far as saying that if I were to write down all the mistakes in this movie while watching it, the movie would end before I would.Take the basic plot, a short narration that Santa's sleigh is stuck on the beach because his reindeer have left, and a single frame from the movie to illustrate this (eer, a scene of the sleigh on a beach and very little else).
At the end, when the Ice Cream Bunny comes driving up in his fire truck, I'm sure I got a glimpse of Torgo behind the wheel, or it might be that by that time my brain was fried.If anyone has ever wondered what an acid trip looks like, you need look no further then this fine mess-terpiece..
"Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny" I saw as a 7-year-old at a Saturday matinee (in what was undoubtedly a very short run at the theaters).
The plot is mediocre, and at times absurd - there is even a separate film inside the film.But if you love cult movies (Plan 9 From Outer Space, anyone?) you will absolutely find this hilarious.Poor old St. Nick got his sleigh stuck in some inch-deep sand just before Christmas.
I got butterflies in my stomach when I saw that, I thought it was comparable to the Ride of the Rohhirim in "The Lord of the Rings." Also, I think Santa Clause (Matt Daimon) deserved an academy award, and the movie also should have gotten an academy award for best original soundtrack, best cinematography, best original song, and best supporting actor (the gorilla,as played by Tom Hanks).Don't believe those other people who say this is not a good film.
More Thumbelina than an Ice Cream Bunny movie..
Barry Mahon must not have put enough money aside to make this movie cause the story of Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny is a lot shorter than it seems.
Santa is struck in Florida where his sleigh is suck in the sand and calls out to some local kids to help him out.
It makes getting a sleigh to move look like a job for the army.The thing that made this movie bad is when Santa tells the story of Thumbelina which has no relation to Christmas or the movie itself.
For this one it seems Barry Mahon couldn't make the story of Ice Cream Bunny and Santa Claus a long one when he decided to paste Thumbelina in the middle of the whole movie.
If you're looking for a movie worse than the 1959 Santa Claus, then this is it.Copies of this film are rare, so you're best chances of ever watching it would be the Rifftrax version which makes the film funnier than it already is.
Maybe I'll just pop it in for a minute or two to prove to visitors that such a thing was actually produced.I have to say though that the ending, where the sleigh for absolutely no reason teleports back to the North Pole or whatever, has been stuck firmly in my head since my viewing of this movie.
At least give us a decent stupid kid's Santa movie like The Christmas That Almost Wasn't for crying out loud!
This is the first "kiddie" film I've seen that is even worse than my gold standard for awful kid's film,"The Magic Land Of Mother Goose".As far as I can tell, the movie opens with Santa's sleigh being stuck in the sand on a beach in Florida.
You can tell he's stuck because the runners are covered by a 1/2 inch of sand; and apparently the sled is made out of depleted uranium and dark star matter because Santa and his kid helpers paw at it as if their limbs had turned to cooked spaghetti.At one point the children give up, and to cheer them up, Santa tells them the fable of "Thumbelina", so the movie cuts to a 60 minute telling of the story that would make poor Hans Christian Anderson slash his wrists.Empowered by Santa's mangled fable, the children somehow find Santa's "old friend" (?) the Ice Cream Bunny.
(If Samuel Clemens was still around, he'd have run over the director with a Paddlewheel Steamboat.) I give it 2 stars instead of one because the girl who plays "Thumbelina" is reasonably pleasant looking (if somewhat stiff) and the kids who try to help Santa don't try to "act" (which would have made things even worse.)If you see this thing, you won't soon forget it, that's for sure..
Santa gets his sleigh stuck on the beaches of South Florida, and calls kids from the region to help him out, including of all people Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
Suddenly Santa decides to tell them the story of Thumbelina, and the movie is cut to that 1970 version of Thumbelina, which was also produced by Pirate's World.
Mahon DID direct the Thumbelina film, and it (like the Ice Cream Bunny wraparound story) shamelessly plugs the Pirates World amusement park.
But I don't see any evidence to suggest that Mahon had anything to do with 'Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny.' Certainly he was not afraid to sign his name to terrible movies.
Now, at the end of the film, Santa has been rescued by the 'daring' Ice Creamm Bunny, who (I can only suppose) is going to drive him several thousand miles to the North Pole in an antique fire engine.
The version I saw started with the framing device, or whatever, of Santa's sleigh being stuck in 1/8 of an inch of Florida beach sand.
Surrendering to the horror of 1972, Santa tells the kids a story, or rather, shows them a movie, of Thumbellina.
I have seen Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny over 600 times and I would have to say that it is the greatest Christmas classic of all time!
When watching this film, one cannot help but wonder how, or even if, Santa can be rescued in time to deliver all of the Christmas presents to all of the girls and boys.