I watched the new edition first because I found it for free first but this version is much better (sorry Rob Lowe). This script works better old school which makes sense because it’s based after a play made in 1954 originally.
Right off the bat Rhoda’s parents are concerned about her behavior and her surprisingly mature attitude but the dad has to go away because of war or something. Mama Christine speaks to Rhoda’s teacher about her strange attitude but nothing comes of it. Then Rhoda is at school when one of her classmates mysteriously drowns! Oh my! But Rhoda is taking it shockingly well… Christine is very suspicious but then again it is her little girl who is only eight (8) years old, so nothing nefarious can be happening, right? Right? Well, the teacher doesn’t think so, she thinks Rhoda had something to do with the death of the little boy. Wow, and right away too? These people have a healthy amount of distrust even for a child, I am about it. Oh and the scene of the mother of the dead child drunkenly monologuing? Exquisite.
Christine is friends with a criminologist in this version of the movie which is much more of a draw and even mentions the title of Bad Seed in the film which was pretty great. There is even a moment with Christine and her father where she mirrors the behavior that Rhoda does with her (the reassuring petting) while the criminologist talks about murder being Hereditary. This actually leads Christine to confronting her father about him not being her father and he comes clean, she’s adopted! She comes from a killer family and when she tries to explain to her father that this is leading to her daughter being a killer he isn’t getting it which is very hard for Christine.
Later, Christine catches Rhoda taking something to the incinerator, it is her tap shoes, uh-oh! Looks like we found the murder weapon! Little Miss Murder confesses to clobbering the now dead kid with her shoes but then turns all nicey-nice and hugs up on mom to try and get her way. Christine is VERY torn about what to do now that she knows her daughter is a cold blooded killer. The mother of the dead child is HEARTBREAKING. She crashes into the house, drunk (again), and just wants to know about her son. “Christine you know something, you know something you won’t tell me.” She is such a powerful addition to the movie I don’t know why the later edition doesn’t really include her intense grieving because it is everything.
Rhoda sets a fire for the groundskeeper and he dies, and while he is dying she is just playing the piano like a little creepy doll. Christine knows immediately that it is Rhoda who killed the groundskeeper and is distraught as Hell, realizing she should have already done something to stop this. That night she feeds Rhoda a lethal dose of sleeping pills then attempts to kill herself with a gun, this alerts others in the building which ends up saving both girls lives. Okay, so the film literally asks you at the end not the tell the secrets of the film, but that is what I do here, I give the synopsis of the movie and this ending was super satisfying, because the narcissistic little girl went out during a thunderstorm onto a pier and got struck by lightning. What an ending! She finally got what she deserved! I thought she had snuck out to try and kill her mother but no, she went out to the pier to try and get a medal she wanted because she is a selfish brat! Christine wakes from her coma and the husband is home, all will be well. Well, once they get over the death of Rhoda, that is.
Movie number ten (10) with a child death (IT Chapter Two, IT 2017, IT 1990, The Woman in Black, Don’t Hang Up, When A Stranger Calls, Pet Sematary, Evidence, Hereditary) is a user suggestion, did they know they were following the trend? Who knows at this point! After I read this in the description of the movie, “...An accident… left murderer Jack Frost dead in genetic material…” I knew I had to watch it. What in the ever-loving living-snowman is “genetic material?” (Do we want to know?) This is a wacky 90’s film with exaggerated acting and unfortunate props. It is definitely meant to be a Christmas time movie as it has a lot of Christmas time music in it (but I’m just having Christmas in July (in September)). Say what you will about Jack Frost 1997 but it is definitely a movie.
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Trigger Warning Child Death, “Rape”
We begin (as every movie does) with an uncle telling his niece a scary story. His is the story of Jack Frost, a serial murderer who got away with killing for a long time before he finally got caught. Tonight was to be the night of his execution and we meet the man on his way to his doom. The driver is struggling through heavy snowfall and doesn’t see another vehicle (full of a “Genetic Material”) coming the other way. Fabulous car crash, represented by each character spinning around and making crazy faces (a total riot), results in Jack being able to free himself from his restraints (somehow). Mr. Frost has little one liners to camera that reminds me of Ashley from Evil Dead. The “Genetic Material” (that is also acidic) reaches its point of no return and explodes out of containment, flying directly onto Jack Frost (and only Jack Frost). He screams and is burnt by the material, he begins to look a bit like The Fly. The driver of the prisoner transport van just watches and blinks rapidly, confused, perhaps he was concussed by the accident, perhaps he is just stupid, the world will never know but he just keeps making silly faces. Frost falls to the ground with his skin melting like he had just seen The Ark of The Covenant. He quite literally melts into the snow and then, he becomes it. Cut to the good old Sheriff Sam and his good old wife, Anne. They are driving in the snow as well and Sam is fretting about Jack Frost’s execution because he was the one who brought the man into custody in the first place. Anne tells him not to worry and their son, Ryan, pops up from the back seat. This is when they pass the accident sight, “Touch my finger, touch my knee, thank the Lord it was not me.” Sam offers his services but this is above his pay grade. Back at home, Ryan makes Sam oatmeal for breakfast but Sam takes it for lunch in a baggie. At work Sam discovers that someone in town has died, been murdered actually, and it looks like Jack Frost did the killing, but he’s dead, right? Sam called to confirm this and Agent Manners agreed that Jack is dead. Privately, once Manners hung up, he said to Agent Stone that Jack Frost indeed lives on, just in another form.“We hadn’t even tested the acid on an amoeba. Let alone a human cell.” Whined Stone. “At least you know it works. It’s just a shame that your guinea pig had to be a homicidal maniac like Jack Frost. Who I now have to put back in the test tube.” Manners bit back. When Anne gets home from the grocery store there is a large snowman in the yard, Ryan said he was going to build one. She tells him it looks great but Ryan tells her he didn’t build it, either way he will decorate it.
The sheriff discusses the murder further with the medical examiner, “You think he’d strike again?” The ME asks. “I don’t know, Doc, but I’ll be bolting my door tonight.” Sam answers. “I’ll be dragging my dresser in front of mine, Sam.” The ME replies. The trivia gave me a “fun fact” that the filmmakers spent 50,000 US dollars to have propmakers build multiple Jack Frost Snowmen props, what they got instead was one large and “immoble” snowman made of three big balls of foam. It seemed that they also had a suit with some replaceable heads but otherwise lacked the funding for anything else, seems they got royally screwed over with balls of foam. It should also be noted that they used foam and cotton to substitute snow which got dirty quickly and they couldn’t replace it because of blowing the entire budget on three balls of foam (their budget was $500,000). Ryan uses a Snowman oven mitt as a reference to guide him in putting the details on the snowman outside his home and I call shenanigans. Like this kid couldn’t just put the nose, eyes, and mouth on from memory? And when Jack Frost tripped that bully and his head got sliced clean off by his friend's wood and metal sled? I was stunned. In the words of Borat, “Wa-wa-we-wow.” The kids IMMEDIATELY blamed Ryan which was kind of hilarious. My dumbass googled if you could get decapitated by a sled and the results weren’t clear because it has never happened before but I’m sure it couldn’t happen. Now if they wanted to argue his neck was broken, that would be an entirely different story… But they went for this kid's head straight up flying off. The parents of the dead kid are furious because Ryan is blaming the snowman, which is actually hilarious. The whole thing is just so preposterous. Also, the general trivia for this movie is funnier than I could ever be, one of the actors auditioning for the role of Jack Frost pulled a knife during his audition (which would have given him the part instantly if I were the filmmaker but that is why I’m not a filmmaker and also why I’ve been stabbed).
The father of the dead child doesn’t notice that the snowman the sheriff’s son tried to use as a scapegoat for his kid's death is in his very own front yard? Are we really to believe that? Well, it’s what happens, Jack starts to talk to the man but the man doesn’t know the snowman is talking to him. The man grabs an axe and stands right in front of the snowman. Jack Frost then plucks the axe from the man's hands and plunges the handle side into the man’s mouth and down his throat (but not out the back of his neck, even though it is long enough that it would have gone that far). This was pretty ridiculous but this is like a Hallmark Christmas movie, you know it isn’t real but you keep watching anyway (right?). Next his wife is stalked in her own home and strangled via Christmas lights. Sort of like in Silent Night, Deadly Night. So, this, so far, has just been a naughty, largely immobile snowman who people seem to die around. There has been nothing interesting, scary, or new. Maybe for its time it was innovating but I can’t even be sure of that. While trying to investigate the crimes in town, Agent Manners and Stone come together with Sheriff Sam and they admit that Jack Frost is still alive. Back at the Sheriff’s empty house, two teens break in to kanoodle. Which is so entirely wild, breaking into someone else’s house to fuck. Gross. Anyway, the boy was downstairs alone and Frost shot him with two icicles (because Jack Frost can shoot icicles on demand, duh). Then, upstairs, the girl finds the bathtub full of water and straight up takes a bath, she even USES THE OTHER WOMANS LOOFA (fucking GROSS). But then the water grows very cold and suddenly it is snow and then the snowman grows all around her and she is inside the snowman. They play this off as a “rape” scene even though I didn’t quite see it that way, more like sexual harassment? But also just an awkward and a weird way to kill someone by holding them and banging their heads into the wall lightly over and over.
Jack shows up at the police station and he means business but so do the cops! They all know by now about his power to turn into water at will and turn back into snow so he can get through any closed door. Pew! Pew! (they shoot at the water) “Damnit, it’s not working!” They figure the only way out is to blow the station so they set out all the aerosol cans, beat feet, and spark the place up. Big explosion, that had to work, right? Wrong! Damn snowman is just put together wrong. They have a strategy meeting, the main three (3) boys talk it out, Stone is heartbroken for Frost, he loves his creation and, oh my goodness, he gets to the point and the point is that souls exist and that there is scientific proof for them (“Wa-wa-we-wow.”). I didn’t think there was going to be a big message in this film but there it is, souls exist. And did you know it took them only eighteen (18) days to shoot this masterpiece (isn’t trivia wonderful?)? The next brilliant idea is to push the iceman back with hair dryers and get him into a furnace and melt him down. This works! Until it doesn’t, until the condensation just drips down and brings him right back and he kills Manners and Stone. Outside, Sam is startled by Jack and tries to get away with Ryan. Jack is hot on their tails, though, and it is only when they throw Ryan’s oatmeal at Frost that he rears back. Turns out, Ryan put antifreeze in the oatmeal because he didn’t want his dad to get cold. Are you joking? This is never addressed again and no one ever tells Ryan that this is a very bad thing to do. In fact, Ryan is a hero for having done this horrible thing, but that is neither here nor there because they needed an ending for this movie (they couldn’t stretch it out to day nineteen (19) of filming). Sam calls on the town shop owner who fills his entire truck bed up with antifreeze and then Sam throws himself and Frost into the bath. Jack Frost melts in disgusting gobs of meaty slush. “We iced him.” Though one arm was left behind and began to strangle Ryan, so, quickly, Sam baptized the boy in antifreeze to get the offending arm off of him. They rebottle the antifreeze and bury it underground where the material began to bubble, ready for the sequel. The movie ends with a ripping guitar solo as the credits start to roll.
I'll admit--I didn't like this song on the first listen. It's strange, it's lo-fi hip hop reggatron. It's just not what I'm used to.
But Lovesick Vandal is a grower, the second or third listen won me over. There's something familiar about the song, maybe because I think of it like a Dizzee Rascal, Nine Inch Nails lovechild .
There's also something catchy about the song: maybe the repetition, maybe the mixture of synth and raw round. You get a pleasant tapping in your ears from the static. And the featured vocals, by Asher Dust, somehow emerges strong from the complex production of Lovesick Vandal.
Lovesick Vandal isn't like other songs out there but that doesn't mean it's not good.
