Ep. 17: Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

It's one of the strangest films ever made, a delirious slice of incomprehensible Christmas cinema. In the beginning of the episode a new motto is proposed: "The podcast that tests the theory, there is no such thing as a bad movie." That sentiment is immediately put through the ringer as we analyze Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny.

Shot at the now defunct Pirates World amusement park in Dania, Florida, this film tells the tale of Santa Claus stuck in the sand, crash-landed on the beach with no reindeer around to help him out. Using telepathy, Santa summons some neighborhood children, as well as Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, who proceed to produce barnyard animals mysteriously on the beach to pull Santa's sleigh. When this doesn't work, Santa takes an unexpected detour: he sits them all down and tells them the story of Thumbelina, at which point an entire second feature film begins to play inside of this film. Finally, when that film concludes (yes, the entire film), the Ice Cream Bunny arrives on a firetruck and drives Santa off into the sunset.

What does it all mean? Well, it's easy to write this one off as just incoherent and "bad", but that's boring. So we're picking this one apart from every possible angle. Ryan connects the film to Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad and Chantal Akerman's Hotel Monterey and identifies shared narrative and visual techniques that could help unlock the deeper meaning in Santa's plight. Is it possible that Thumbelia and, by extension, Santa's rescue by the Ice Cream Bunny stands as a metaphor for Marxism winning out over classic yellow socialism in pre-WWI France? The ISV crew thinks so, but there's more to it than that. Cassie takes a critical eye to Santa's complaint that the beach is so hot and uses that plot point to identify the moment in the film when Santa experiences ego death.

And furthermore, no discussion of Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny is complete without a historical review of Pirates World's bizarre history, including how the amusement park and this film tie into the Grateful Dead song "Truckin'".

Turns out this thing isn't bad at all. Turns out it's a surprising deconstruction of narrative cinema and - if you allow it - a vehicle for exploring your subconscious via its Lynchian dream state. It's a film unlike any other and perhaps one of the finest and richest Christmas films ever made. Let's dive in!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny
Directed by Richard Winer
1972, United States

Additional Music:
"Christmas Spirit" by Silverman Sound Studios
Creative Commons (BY 4.0) license
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Incredibly Strange Video is produced and edited by Ryan Quinn and Cassie Kay. Follow us on Bluesky @isvpodcast.bsky.social for updates on the newest episodes!

Theme music:
The End by EVA
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All excerpts from the films discussed are used for educational and critical purposes only.