Just perfect...

good back-story, and good acting

Fantastic!

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Words cannot adequately convey how awful this film is. Nothing makes any sense, everything moves at a glacial pace, and the budget seems to have been loose change out of the director's pants pockets. The version I saw started with the framing device, or whatever, of Santa's sleigh being stuck in 1/8 of an inch of Florida beach sand. Children show up, including Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn for some reason. Various children and animals try to free the sleigh, including a guy in a gorilla suit. If that sounds delightful, it isn't. Surrendering to the horror of 1972, Santa tells the kids a story, or rather, shows them a movie, of Thumbellina. Everything about that is a deep-discount mess. Eventually credits roll and we're back to a sweltering Santa stuck in the sand. He gets rescued by a frightening adult-sized "Ice Cream Bunny" in an antique fire engine. Theologians in future generations will be challenged to proved that a loving G_d exists in the same universe as this nightmare of a movie.

I saw this movie at my neighborhood theater when I was a kid (the same age as the kids in the movie) and was haunted by it for decades. I must have repressed most of it as I remembered only Santa being stuck in the sand and that the movie suddenly and inexplicably switched to Thumbelina in the middle. I couldn't remember the title and no one I talked to could remember it. Lucky them. I was finally able to find references to it once the internet became established. The entire film is available on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvUmD2kP_g0 but it is truly unwatchable. However, if you can't resist seeing it, I highly recommend the RiffTrax version. The film by itself will never make it to the "so bad it's good level" but with the commentary it's pretty entertaining. I advise caution because I'm sure the film is still capable of producing nightmares.

Everything about this movie is horrible. It has:1. A plot that can be summed up in two sentences.2. Cinematography that is on par with your grandparents' 8mm home movies.3. Acting that is... wait... you can't honestly call it acting.4. A 20-minute movie that is padded with a recycled fairy-tale film to achieve a 90-minute run time.5. A "Thumbelina" insert that has the production quality of a middle-school play.6. Costumes and scenery that are atrocious.7. Children who cannot sing.8. A Santa with a beard that looks ready to fall off his face at any time.9. Lame attempts at humor.10. Amateurish special effects.11. A cameo appearance by Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. What the ...?12. A completely irrelevant appearance by the completely irrelevant Ice Cream Bunny, who has completely nothing to do with the aforementioned dessert treat.This could be used as an interrogation tool in prison, or something to threaten children with when they misbehave. Sheer torture.

I think I heard about this movie on Slate.com's periodic posting of "The Worst Cinematic Crap of All-Time." It reminded me of the movies that served as fodder for "Mystery Science Theater 3000." On the always-unproductive day before Christmas Vacation, I found it on the internet and showed part of it to my 6th grade class, without telling them anything about what they were about to view.At first the sixth graders were happy not to have to do actual work. The campiness of the stock-footage Caribou and the horrid elf songs and even more horrid kazoo singing were lost on them, but soon confusion and irritation set in. When I paused it after about 10 minutes to ask them what they thought of it, I got questions like "Why are Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer in it?" "Why would the elf use a hammer to make a stuffed animal?" "Why is Santa so skinny?" "Where is the Ice Cream Bunny?" They were impressed by the kid jumping off the roof with the patio umbrella parachute, though.I explained that these were all good questions, and that I didn't have an answer for any of them, but that they were watching what was widely considered to be the worst kids' movie of all time. Thanks to the beauty of streaming video, I was able to show them the remaining 80(!) or so minutes of this crap in about ten minutes, by skipping to various scenes and adding my own narration of what they were seeing.The sixth graders' reactions: *The attempts to free the sleigh using barnyard animals were amusing, but mostly confusing. *The horse-on-a-rail ride at Pirate World looks like a lot of fun. *The sets for Thumbalina are uproariously horrid. *It's really random to have a completely different movie inside of another movie. *Why did Santa go to all that trouble if the sleigh could just disappear on its own? They mostly enjoyed it because it was better than taking a spelling test and sixth graders love making fun of stuff. Why does this movie suck so much? Sure, the movie has terrible songs, a completely ridiculous "plot," an unrelated movie that is 2/3 of the total run time grafted into the middle of it, it serves as an advertisement for a defunct theme park in central Florida, and it looks like it was filmed on a weekend with about a budget of $300, but the real reason it sucks is because of the EDITING. My gripe isn't even that it's obvious that only one camera was used to film this, so nearly every scene is shot from a distance. It's that every scene is about 5 times longer than it has to be! Overly-long footage of kids running, Santa fanning himself and staring at the sun, and walking, walking, walking! The worst is the "daring rescue" in the fire truck. It is literally five minutes (I timed it!) of driving at about 5 mph, with the only interesting thing happening when the dog stops to drink from a puddle in front of the truck and almost gets run over.It's fairly easy to find part or all of S&TICB on the internet, but remember, your only reason for watching it should be to avoid taking a spelling test or because you like making fun of things.