Product Details

• Actors: Shay Garner, Kim Nicholas
• Directors: R. Winer, Barry Mahon
• Format: NTSC, Color
• Language: English
• Rated: G (General Audience)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: United Home Video
• Run Time: 95 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000JUZCY0
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #253,053 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Poor Santa Claus. This live-action feature finds his sleigh stuck in the sand on a Florida beach only days before Christmas Eve. He psychically summons prepubescent aid from a nearby subdivision. In order to extricate Santa's sleigh, the local children bring many different animals (presumably the sheep was someone's housepet), but nothing works, and the kids are afraid they won't get any gifts this year. To boost their spirits, Santa tells them the story of Thumbellina, and the setting dissolves into a "fantasy within a fantasy". Thumbellina is a beautiful but very tiny girl, "not much larger than a clothes pin". She becomes lost in the forest during the winter and finds refuge in the underground home of Mrs. Mole. A neighbor mole, Mr. Digger, falls in love and wants to marry Thumbellina, but she's having none of it. When warm weather returns, she runs back into the forest and deserts the two kindly creatures who saved her life, crushing their spirits forever ... the end. As Santa is finishing his story and yes, that is its intended conclusion he and the children hear the wail of a siren. The "Ice Cream Bunny" has arrived in his antique fire engine to save the day!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An up and coming cult classic, May 17, 2007

By 

RNC "Necron99-23" (St Augustine, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (VHS Tape)

Some movies are indescribable and this is one of them. Maybe this movie is proof you can make a feature length film for less than a couple of thousand dollars. From the script to the costumes this movie reeks of small community theater. It is probably only a few notches above high school production values, but for all that it is completely hilarious. Santa's sleigh is not even buried in the sand for pity's sake! You get to see Santa's pink undershirt and his sweat stains on his suit in a delicate place! The Ice Cream Bunny's eye gets stuck and Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer are thrown in for good measure in a completely unrealated cameo appearance. One interesting thing about the movie is you get to see a part of vanished Florida. The Pirate World Theme Park (where the Thumbilina insert was filmed) was one of hundreds of local Florida attractions that disapeared with the coming of Disney to Orlando.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Suffer the little children"? NO! Make the little children SUFFER!, November 27, 2009

By 

Sam Franklin "gangsteroctopus" (The Valley, SoCal) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (VHS Tape)

Do you hate kids? By all evidence, the makers of this craptastic classic sure did, and how. The box says this thing runs only 76 minutes, but don't be fooled - it's nearly TWENTY minutes longer than that and feels at least TEN TIMES that. No doubt that sense of padded-ness is enhanced by the fact that the middle HOUR of this cinematic abomination is made up of an entirely recycled separate feature film, namely trash-meister Barry Mahon's 1970 filmed-play version of the fairy tale classic 'Thumbelina,' a version shot largely (entirely?) at the long-gone Pirate's World amusement park in Dania, FL.

The (approx.) 30+ min. 'framing narrative' (as it were) consists primarily of various local kids' efforts to free Santa's sleigh from the sand of some unnamed and decidedly un-picturesque stretch of Florida beach property (presumably in the vicinity of Dania and Pirate's World). Their attempts mainly involve using various animals (dog, sheep, horse, man in gorilla suit - I swear, I am not making this up) as substitutes for Santa's missing reindeer, who've returned to the North Pole because it's too hot in the Sunshine State (why Santa didn't go with them is never explained). Said efforts are miserably lame and fail. (You kids SUCK!) But Santa tells the kids to never give up, to always have faith, believe in their dreams, etc. Then, to prove his point (?), he tells them the (seemingly interminable) story of Thumbelina. Cue movie-within-movie for next 60+ minutes. Zzzzzz...

When we finally get back to 'reality,' Santa passes out (like the picked-up-from-the-local shelter hobo that the actor likely was) and the kids run away...only to return with...THE ICE CREAM BUNNY!!! At which point you ask yourself, "The WHAT?!?" Yes, the Ice Cream Bunny - why, everyone knows who/what he/it is, right? At least, that's what you'd think based on the way Santa addresses this hideous, malformed, mutant community college mascot. Oh, and the Bunny drives AN ANTIQUE FIRE ENGINE with a cacophonous, looped-in wail of a siren (the sound of which initially confuses Santa - "Is there a fire?").

So, Santa rides off with the Ice Cream Bunny, the kids chase after him, waving goodbye. Then it occurs to someone (the continuity editor?) to go back and check on Santa's sleigh (still stuck in about two-and-a-half inches of sand). The kids all run back, line up dutifully and freeze for the cheap 'vanish' shot and POOF! Santa's sleigh is magically gone, I guess back to the North Pole (which would seem to obviate for the Ice Cream Bunny's 'daring' rescue of Chris Kringle). Not 'THE END,' but, instead, 'MERRY CHRISTMAS' and blunt cut to black screen.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars No Redeeming Features, September 7, 2010

By 

Robin Wood (Dearborn, MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (VHS Tape)

I was forced to watch this thing for about 3 months one afternoon by a friend who assured us it was the worst movie ever. All of us thought it was going to be so bad it was good, if that makes any sense; but it wasn't.

It's just bad.

Nothing funny, no great one liners, nothing even remotely amusing in hour after hour after hour of terrible, disjointed, boring, badly shot footage. Even the stuff that sounds funny somehow isn't. If I could give it zero stars, I would.

Don't waste your money, because you'll never get that time back. (Okay, yes, it's not that much real time, but it certainly feels like it.)

The plot, such as it is, consists of Santa's sleigh apparently being stuck in about an inch of sand on a beach in Nowhere, Florida. It's hot. The reindeer leave, and go back to graze on the tundra at the North Pole. (There's a shot of them there. Solid land, and not a flake of snow in sight.)

Santa, for no adequately explored reason, doesn't go back with them, but stays in his full suit (which becomes disgustingly and obviously damper and damper as the movie progresses and the poor actor loses any belly he had in sweat.) He sings a little ditty, and magically calls a bunch of kids from their various games to help him. (Did I mention that this is a musical?) One of the kids was apparently "playing" by jumping off a roof using an umbrella as a parachute, but nothing is said about that at all. Isn't that a normal way for a kid to spend an afternoon in Florida?

The kids "help" by bringing all the animals from the Petting Zoo of the amusement park that apparently sponsored this thing, and some other stray critters including a man in a gorilla suit. They put all the animals, one at a time, between the shafts of the sleigh. Since there is no harness at all, it's no surprise when none of the animals can pull the sleigh out of the sand. Any two of the kids could have done it easily, but that doesn't occur to anyone. Perhaps they all have sunstroke.

After about a week of this, a different movie entirely (Thumbelina) is inserted into the middle of this one. The less said about that, the better. But it's also a story within a story, since it's a girl at the aforementioned amusement park hearing the story of Thumbelina, and imagining herself as the title character. Which takes us down three levels, and requires a sedative, doesn't it?

When that movie ends, the Ice Cream Bunny, who is some unfortunate person in quite possibly the most pathetic full body costume ever, enters on an antique fire truck and drives Santa all over the amusement park. The sleigh, now relieved of Santa, vanishes, presumably back to the North Pole, thus proving it wasn't stuck a bit; it just hates Santa.

At which the movie, mercifully, ends. (And there was much rejoicing.)