A death row psycho gets accidentally sprayed with a dangerous mix of chemicals during the week of Christmas. He dies, but then through the magic of B-movie science comes back to life as a super-powered Frosty the Snowman. He can melt himself down into water and then in about 1.2 seconds can freeze himself all up again. This works great for sneaking under locked doors, as well as through pipes and cracks in windows. And it’s really handy for killing people. He can even shoot out ultra-sharp icicles that’ll turn any teenager who gets in his way into Jimmy Dean’s sausage, guaranteed. He’s racking up a decent body count in a small town that’s also currently getting about 147 inches of snow dumped on them. For the local sheriff, this is kind of a big deal.
Call it a horror film if you want (that’s the section it was in at every video store in America back in the day, behind its famous hologram VHS cover), but it’s just as easily a black comedy. It’s 1997. Filmmakers who grew up on slasher flicks were now making their own movies, and this stuff wasn’t scary to them. It was fun. You put these movies on and laugh and groan and wince and, in the better ones, get tickled by a clever moment or two. That’s the effect that writer/director Michael Cooney seems to be chasing here. He’s after your hoots, wants your laughs and is dead set on your smirks. If you’re into the campy side of life, Jack Frost is the killer snowman movie that you didn’t know you needed.
Terrific low-budget practical effects, too. Really.