Jack Frost (1996) - Movie Review

By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Kevin_Dillehay]Kevin Dillehay
Jack Frost is a 1996 horror comedy released by A-Pix Entertainment Inc. It stars Scott MacDonald as Jack Frost, Christopher Allport as Sheriff Sam Tiler, Stephen Mendel as Agent Manners, F. William Parker as Paul Davrow, and Eileen Seeley as Anne Tiler. The producers are Barry L. Collier (Decoy), Barbara Javitz (Profile for Murder), Jeremy Paige (Murder in Mind), and Vicki Slotnick (Tracks of a Killer). The director is Michael Cooney (Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman).
The story takes place in the fictional small town of Snomonton. Serial killer Jack Frost is being transported to his execution when the van he's riding in crashes head first into an oncoming truck carrying new genetic material. The crash frees Jack, but before he can do anything the genetic material splashes all over his body. It melts him into the snow, causing it to take on his personality and store his DNA. Nearby Sheriff Sam Tiler, the one who busted Jack Frost, is still having nightmares about him. His vows to return and kill him and his family still haunt him, as well. The next day, a fellow Snomonton citizen is mysteriously murdered. Tiler and his deputies cannot find anything to indicate what could have happened. Later that day, Billy Metzner is bullying Sam's son Ryan in front of a snowman, who we discover is the supposedly deceased Jack Frost. The snowman pushes Billy into the path of a sledder and the sled's blades decapitate him. After Jake Metzner, Billy's father, angrily chews out Sam for believing such an incredible story, he and his family go home. Jake goes out back to smoke a pipe when the killer snowman forces the handle of an ax down his throat. Then, Jack goes inside the house and strings up Metzner's wife to the Christmas tree after smashing her face in a box of ornaments. Again, law enforcement is baffled until an Agent Manners and Stone show up in town in search of a murderer, which we find out later is Jack. Frost takes out one of the deputies and drives his car back to police headquarters. There he finally meets Sam Tiler again, face-to-face.
If the first thought you have about this film is that it is just another small town horror story, you would be partially right. The small town setting is certainly a huge part of it, but only a part. Snomonton is a secluded town where everybody in town knows everybody else by first name and all are quite close, which makes it seemingly unlikely that a serial killer would target the town. At first glance, a viewer might think it is a film that follows a similar formula to the seventies horror flick The Town That Dreaded Sundown, which is about another secluded small town terrorized by a mysterious killer. But, as you will discover, Jack Frost is no ordinary serial killer. While still human, he was caught just outside of Snomonton by Sheriff Sam Tiler. Later on, a freak accident allows him to return to the town as a snowman. In the aforementioned seventies horror movie, the killer is seemingly human. In Jack Frost, the killer is a mutant snowman.
Another feature of this movie that makes it a somewhat lighter kind of horror is the frequent wise-cracks by the snowman killer Jack Frost. For example upon killing Jake Metzner by forcing an ax down his throat he says, "Gosh, I only axed ya for a smoke!" Later on he kills a man by biting off part of his face, calling it a "frost bite". A few minutes later, he tries to sneak out using another person's body but gives up and throws himself up. Afterward, he looks at the body and remarks, "Don't eat yellow snow!"
To wrap, Jack Frost will never be known as a classic horror movie but the originality of having a snowman as the killer is, I believe, one of its greatest strengths.
Kevin T. Dillehay has written nearly a hundred movie reviews from all genres. He provides a unique perspective on the movies you see all the time but may not stop and think about in depth. You are invited to check out his work at [http://www.moviefilmreview.com/author/kmonk10]http://www.moviefilmreview.com/author/kmonk10.
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