Beyond the Slimy Wall:
Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman

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Ah, Christmas. Carolers. Mulled wine. People scurrying about the malls buying presents. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost strangling you to death with a string of Christmas tree lights...

OK; so Mel Torme didn't write about a homicidal spirit of winter, but it sure would've made the 4,256,913 versions of The Christmas Song a whole lot easier to stomach for the approximately 3,648,193,417 times it's played between the day after Thanksgiving and New Year's freakin' Day.

But fortunately for we misanthropes, the makers of the first mutant killer snowman film knew a good thing when they put it on celluloid, so they brought Jack Frost back for an encore. Of course, after the events of the first film, one would expect the protagonists - the sheriff and his wife and the deputy and his wife - to not be any too keen on the prospect of Christmas. Or snow. Especially snow. So amidst the derision of...oh, pretty much everybody save our intrepid quartet over the idea of a "killer snowman", our plucky town sheriff bundles his colleague and the spouses off to a sunnier clime, specifically a place where they never, ever have snow, for a much-needed vacation.

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Because our friend Jack, being a mutant, isn't going to let a little thing like a tropical island stop him. After being accidentally reconstituted, Jack tracks down the sheriff and his party, and the fun begins.

Now, if you're sitting there wondering how a snowman can survive in tropical temperatures...you're really in the wrong movie. But his newfound ability to melt and re-freeze himself is only the beginning of Jack's new tricks. I won't reveal them, of course, because half the fun is in the discovery. And the film plays wise-acre with its own mythos, and brings about what should, by all rights, be the climactic moment about half-way through the film, leaving the rest of the film for more surprises, smart-ass remarks, and as always, the ultimate triumph of good - from the most unlikely of sources and in the most unique of ways - over evil.

Or is it?

We may never know, but the film certainly leaves the possibility for another sequel, not to mention a bit of a throwaway joke at the end that could set off a new story. But if you're looking for a bit of filmic respite from the relentless cheeriness of the holiday season, you can't go wrong with a wisecracking, homicidal snowman terrorizing a tropical island.

Cause nothing says Christmas like a little bloodshed.

I see by the shadows falling from my bust of Pallas that our time is up. Until next time, then, when we will once again venture Beyond the Slimy Wall.