Jack Frost (1997 film)

Jack Frost is a 1997 American direct-to-video black comedy slasher film written and directed by Michael Cooney. It stars Scott MacDonald and Christopher Allport.

Despite being critically panned, the film has developed a cult following and was followed by a sequel in 2000, Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman. Jack Frost marked the film debut of Shannon Elizabeth.

Plot
On a snowy December night, a state execution transfer vehicle crosses into the quiet backwater town of Snowmonton. Inside is serial killer Jack Frost, who eluded police for years and left a trail of thirty-eight bodies across eleven states before finally being arrested by Sam Tiler, the sheriff of Snowmonton. Jack is scheduled to be executed at midnight, but he kills the guard and the vehicle crashes into a genetic research truck. Jack is exposed to chemicals from inside the truck, causing him to dissolve and fuse with the snow.

Despite news reports of Jack's demise, Sam cannot forget Jack's threats of vengeance. Old Man Harper is found murdered, and soon afterward a local bully named Billy is killed when he is pushed into the way of an oncoming sled, getting decapitated. According to Sam's son, Ryan, a snowman caused Billy's death. Billy's father, Jake, is murdered when the same snowman stuffs an axe into his throat. Billy's mother, Sally, is later killed when the snowman strangles her with Christmas lights, shoves her face into a box of glass ornaments, and slams a light-up snowflake into the top of her head.

FBI Agents Manners and Stone arrive in Snowmonton and convince the Sheriff to put the town on 24-hour curfew, sending his officers out to gather all the townspeople. Deputy Chris Pullman is killed when the snowman runs the officer over with a police cruiser. Billy's older sister Jill and her boyfriend Tommy sneak into the sheriff's home to steal his wine and have sex, as revenge for her brother's death. The snowman kills Tommy with icicles and pretends to be bath water to lure in Jill. Jack, then, re-solidifies with Jill in the tub, trapping her arms in his shoulders, and rapes her with a carrot on his crotch while repeatedly slamming her against the wall, ultimately killing her.

The snowman returns with the police cruiser to the station, finally confronting Sam. Agent Stone reveals himself to be a representative of the genetic research company that created the chemicals and reveals that the snowman is a mutated Jack Frost. He also reveals that the human soul exists as a chemical and that the acid was going to be used to contain DNA in case of a nuclear holocaust. They attempt to destroy Jack by blowing him up by releasing aerosol cans in the police station and firing a bullet at him, but to no avail. They then use blowdryers to drive Jack into a furnace, which evaporates the snowman. Jack condenses, killing Stone and wounding Manners. Jack traps Sam and Ryan in his car, but Sam escapes by inadvertently throwing the oatmeal Ryan made him at Jack, burning the snowman's head. Ryan put antifreeze in the oatmeal, believing it could help keep his father from getting cold.

Sam tells his friend, Paul Davrow to fill the bed of his truck with antifreeze. Jack chases Sam through the halls of a church and finally catches him, driving an icicle into his chest and almost killing him. The truck full of antifreeze arrives just in time, however, and Jack and Sam crash through a window and into the truck's bed. Jack Frost melts in the antifreeze, and the antifreeze is poured back into the containers and buried deep under the ground of Snowmonton. Sam's wife Anne, realizes that the state police are on their way. When Paul asks Sam what they are going to tell them, Sam says, "We'll tell them that it's too late". However, one of the containers is shown to be bubbling, revealing Jack is still alive.

Production
Writer Michael Cooney first got the idea for Jack Frost's story in 1989. Cooney, along with co-writer Jeremy Paige and producer Vicki Slotnick, stayed in a cabin one time up in Big Bear Lake. They built a snowman in the backyard that happened to look kind of creepy, especially at night. Slotnick told Cooney the next morning that she could not sleep because the snowman was right outside her window. Shortly after Cooney and Paige started talking about making a film about a killer snowman. At the time that Terminator 2: Judgment Day had released with all of its digital special effects, Cooney thought about what about a killer that was made of all the elements of water, including snow, ice and steam, and it could do all these amazing things. The original script started off with the action taking place in a small town and then in a skyscraper in Denver. Cooney's initial two inspirations for the film were The Abyss with its Industrial Light & Magic-animated water creature and Shocker with its concept of an executed serial killer able to seek vengeance from beyond the grave by transformation into another form. When he first wrote the script, he and Paige were thinking that Jack Frost would be quite a big budget film with all the effects, but it did not sell as that. The following year, Prism Entertainment called Paige and Slotnick and asked them if they could do the film for under a million dollars. Slotnick suggested that Cooney direct the film so that they would not have to pay any more for it, since they could not afford a director, which was fine for Cooney because he got to get behind a camera. Their script was full of special effects that could not be done on the film's extremely low budget, for which they had to streamline the script. At the beginning of pre-production, they still thought that they could make quite a nasty horror film with "a bunch of good kills", and then they actually saw the snowman, which led to the script being rewritten. Cooney, Paige and Slotnick spent $50,000 at a company that was supposed to make multiple versions of Jack Frost, but they only made one immobile 8-foot-tall snowman. It was made from three balls of foam. They had no money to make anymore, and they looked at the snowman and thought that it was not scary. This was early on before they had actors, and they realized that they were going to have to embrace it.

Cooney, Paige and Slotnick (along with Lisa Bankert) cast Christopher Allport in the lead role as Sam Tiler, and populated the world with goofball characters. Other actors and actresses cast for the film included Shannon Elizabeth in her screen debut as Jill Metzner, Stephen Mendel as Agent Manners, F. William Parker as Paul Davrow, Eileen Seeley as Anne Tiler, Darren O. Campbell as Tommy Davrow, and Scott MacDonald as Jack Frost. The production was a disaster, but the actors were all fantastic and understood. They looked at Cooney, who believed in all his heart that this was the way to do it, and they trusted him. Even when they walked in and saw the snowman, they trusted that he would be able to find a balance of humor and horror. Cooney considered Elizabeth terrific to work with, and everybody loved her on the set, especially Campbell. He was able to mix and match in the audition process, with Campbell and Elizabeth reading their lines together. The film was shot on short ends (100-300-foot leftovers of 1,000-foot rolls that major film producers discard) in January 1994 over a course of 18 days. Portions of the film were filmed at the Fawn Lodge in Fawnskin, California, on the north west shore of Big Bear Lake. According to MacDonald, the film was shot during a severe winter drought, in which there was barely any snow on the ground, and temperatures often reached as high as 70 °F (21.11 °C). This resulted in the crew having to use foam and cotton as snow substitutes.

The crew used different props for the Jack Frost suit during production. There was one head that they had with a big, open Kermit the Frog-like mouth with fangs. There was one body and two or three heads. In the last shot in the scene where the police station is blown up, there is a close-up of the snowman bursting into flames. The crew were down to one "grubby" snowman and had to make sure that they would never need him again, and they doused him in gasoline, threw a match on him and ignited it. The struggle was that it did not move. There were two bodies, one with the arms by his side and one where the arms could move. A couple of spare arms were used for close-ups. The crew realized that there was an actor (stunt coordinator Kurt Bryant) inside and his movements were very limited. The only time that Jack is actually seen moving is the "Look, ma, I'm a Picasso!" scene where he explodes and puts himself back together strangely. That scene was shot in time lapse because the actor was in the costume just shuffling along and was enormous in the frame. The first scene shot with the actor in the snowman costume was Tommy being killed in the kitchen, where he is stabbed with icicles. It was impossible to frame, with the crew having to shoot with longer lenses and compressing the scene. According to Cooney, "There is never a big shot of the snowman doing his deeds."

Further addressing the low budget of the film, Cooney references Campbell Soup's "Let it Snow" advertisement and notes that that commercial (which similarly features a living snowman character) had a budget "three times" that of the film. Furthermore, he stated that Identity, another film he wrote, had a budget of $30 million, while Jack Frost was made for "the cost of its catering budget". Cooney also provided the voice of the man who tells the story of Jack Frost over the opening credits, while actress Marsha Clark did the voice of the little girl.

The bathtub scene was intended to be Jack Frost smashing Jill into the wall until she died. It was filmed toward the end of shooting and was the most complicated to shoot. Shot in one day on a soundstage, the bathtub was built on a raised set. For the shot where Jack rises out of the tub, Kurt Bryant (in the snowman costume) and Shannon Elizabeth were strapped together on a scissor lift that raised them up 12 feet in the air through the fake tub. The scissor lift took forever to work, but they got it working and got the shot. While shooting the part where Jack hits Jill's head against the wall, the snowman's carrot nose hit Elizabeth in her eye. Medics were called in, putting saltwater in her eye, and afterward everything else went smoothly. During the editing phase, the editor told Cooney, "You know what this looks like, don't you?" Rather than reshoot the whole scene, Cooney went with it. He quickly got a few shots of Jack Frost making bad sex puns after Jill's death for continuity.

Prism was set to finance the film, but went bankrupt three weeks before principal photography, leaving its banker, Lou Horowitz, to oversee the film. When Horowitz saw the final cut, he deemed it unsellable and shelved it. The film would not be released until 1997, when A-Pix Entertainment bought the rights to the film.

Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 17% based on 18 reviews, with a weighted average rating of 3/10. Grave Reviews gave the film 2.5 out of 5 Graves.

Sequel
A sequel, Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman, was released in 2000. A third installment was planned with the tentative title of Jack Frost 3: Jackzilla, but hopes of the sequel being made are unlikely because of the death of Christopher Allport in 2008. 

Home media
It was released on VHS by A-Pix Entertainment and DVD by Simitar Entertainment in 1997. Both releases have been long out of print.

On December 13, 2016, Vinegar Syndrome released the film for the first time on Blu-ray. It includes the film digitally remastered in a 2K presentation. Special features included an audio commentary, a video introduction by director Michael Cooney, and a video interview with actor Scott MacDonald and director of photography Dean Lent.