Jack Frost: During the days of the Cold War very little traveled between the US and Russia outside of threats of mutually assured destruction and the like. With Communism reigning and Lenin and Stalin sticking with the belief that "Religion is opium to the people" made strides to erase Christmas (and Christianity) from the USSR. To do this, they used the character of Father Frost, a sort of Russian Santa, and moved his day of giving presents to the religiously neutral December 31st. And so as Americans were watching their Christmas movies, the Russians were watching their movie on Father Frost day.

The Russians got cheated. While we in America got such classics as Miracle on 34th Street, the Communists got this train wreck. While one may argue that we got turkeys like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, this film makes that look like a masterpiece.

So what is so bad about it? Well for one the story makes absolutely no sense at all. There is a cute girl named Nastenka who is being tormented by her stepmother and stepsister. She meets the braggart Ivan who, after forgetting to thank a mushroom man, gets turned into a bear and has to do a good deed. If all that sounds bizarre, it gets worse. There's a witch who lives in a house which has chicken feet and a group of dwarfs who sit in the forest pulling petals from flowers and robbing people. Of course we mustn't forget Grandfather Frost, our title character.

Actually, I would like to forget him and especially forget this film. I had seen it on Mystery Science Theater and bought it for a buck for that reason. I hadn't seen the episode in years but now that I've seen it without them, I don't know that I do anymore.

I see that Amazon has a more expensive version available. Either this thing is public domain or EastWest could be in trouble, which is no surprise. I can't imagine anyone besides me paying a dollar for it let alone 17! Avoid this film unless you are a masochist for bad movies.

Note: I got some of the information on Father Frost from various sources online. Most notable are: Wikipedia, Time and Sacred Texts

Labels: Bad Movies, Cheap DVDs, Dollar DVD