Editorials
Remembering ‘Jack Frost’: The Film that Accidentally Traumatized Me as a 90’s Kid
In 1997, Moonstone Entertainment released the horror film Jack Frost, straight to VHS. This horror comedy follows the story of an escaped serial killer who underwent a horrific mutation that turned him into a killer snowman. Michael Cooney directed the flick, the same Michael Cooney who would later write the screenplay for the mystery thriller Identity.
With a whopping 6% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s safe to say that this film was not a critical darling. Despite this, twenty-five years later, I never forgot this film and its impact on my childhood.
How Jack Frost Traumatized My Childhood
Let’s rewind to the time when finding out what was on television came from looking inside the pages of the TV Guide or tuning in to the dreaded TV Guide channel where every title would slowly scroll by. God help anyone who briefly looked away for the moment the thing they were looking for appeared on the screen, or else they had to sit and rewatch the entire scroll again.
Back in those days especially, it was possible to tune into a channel without knowing what was already on it. It’s a thought that is obvious to everyone who lived through it and is wholly unthinkable to anyone who didn’t live in the times before streaming, digital cable, or even Google existed.
I’d be lying if I said I could remember exactly which of these circumstances was to blame for the story I’m about to tell, though I suppose those details don’t so much matter. The point is how easily something like this could occur then.
90s Gateway Horror: My Love-Hate Relationship with Gore
To properly put this story into context, it is essential to know a little about me. Horror has been in my heart for as long as I can remember, with gateway horror films such as Edward Scissorhands, Little Monsters, Beetlejuice, and Casper being childhood favorites I watched on repeat.
Moreover, it wasn’t uncommon to find me transfixed by a children’s horror book like Bruce Coville’s Book of Nightmares, Vivian Vande Velde’s Never Trust a Deadman, Alvin Schwartz’s In a Dark, Dark Room (which contains the infamous “Girl with the Green Ribbon”). Despite all of this, little Tiffany could not handle gore.
Oh my, how times have changed.
But back then, the slightest hint of blood left me terrified. To give one critical example, I distinctly remember the carnival ride scene from Child’s Play 3 that left 6-year-old me running and crying from the room.
Now that the stage is appropriately set, to the main act.
Jack Frost the Killer Snowman: A Shocking Mix-Up
The movie was well underway when I changed the television to the channel airing the horror-comedy Jack Frost. A boy was standing outside before a snowman; clearly, this must be the little boy standing with his father in the beloved family film. I wasn’t immediately put off by the different appearance of the snowman. I had seen the family film starring Michael Keaton only once or twice before, and sure he looked different, but I attributed that to not having an accurate mental depiction of the film.
Then murder happened, and I realized my mistake far too late.
If you aren’t familiar with the family film of the same name, then you aren’t familiar with the scene where the father, in his snowman form, helps his son fend off bullies who are chasing the father-son duo on sleds.
The Sled Scene That Scarred Me
As fate would have it, the day I tuned to the channel with the snowman Jack Frost emblazoned on the screen, a child was tending to a snowman, and a troop of bullies descended on the scene with sleds in hand. I anxiously awaited the cheer-inducing father-son moment that was undoubtedly imminent.
Picture my surprise when one of the bullies was immediately beheaded, via a sled, with his blood quickly soaking the snow beneath him.
In hindsight, the blood was minimal, especially compared to the vivid detail in all modern-day slashers. But to the girl who had to close her eyes at the end of Ferngully because the smoke monster Hexxus had black roots erupting from his oily skeletal form, it was more than enough to make a lasting impact.
A Lingering Fear of Snowmen
I never forgot the mistake I made. Every year that the Nestea snowman appeared in TV commercials, I was reminded of my accidental brush with horror since, in my mind, the two snowmen were interchangeable.
Even as I grew into the horror-loving, desensitized, “give me all the gore” gal that I am today, that silly childhood experience always held me back from revisiting the film in its entirety. As a teenager, when I browsed the aisles of Blockbuster for whichever film promised to scare me most (Vampire Clan, May, and Cabin Fever were my Blockbuster go-to’s of those days), I still went out of my way to avoid that sinister snowman.
Facing My Childhood Monster: Revisiting Jack Frost
It is only now, at the age of thirty, for this article (and to give you, dear horror fan, an honest conclusion to the 20+ year nightmare) that I have finally decided to face the monster that lurked in little me’s subconscious during every snowstorm throughout childhood.
Like many people who grow up to finally look their childhood fear in the face, I am happy to declare a giant “LOL” to Jack Frost.
The story is intriguing though it seems to exist as only a vehicle for holiday and other snow-related kill scenes. The kill scenes tend to imply much of the gore and depravity rather than show it. Additionally, silly one-liners from the killer snowman, or as he refers to himself: “The world’s most pissed off snow cone,” make up a large portion of the dialogue. The most unsettling part of the entire film comes from the introduction, as a sinister uncle tells the history of the killer, Jack Frost, to his niece, despite her pleas for him to stop. Something about those voices gives me the ick and shivers.
Childhood Monsters Lose Their Power
Aside from the intro, the moral of the story is that monsters are often less terrifying in the light. Though I can’t help but wonder if my same account will be experienced by the upcoming generation as they search for the Disney hit, they find themselves watching a clip from the horror film Frozen (2010) instead.
If ski slopes get canceled in the next thirty years, I think we know what is to blame.
Experience the snowman for yourself, and stream Jack Frost on Tubi today. Take care that you’ve selected the right one, or you may find yourself sitting through the family flick instead.
The United States spent most of this year celebrating its 250th anniversary. There have been parades, fireworks, and endless reminders of what the nation wants us to think are its founding ideals. Yet anniversaries are as much about what we choose to remember as they are about what we choose to forget. There is another anniversary this year. Five years ago this month, Candyman was released. The fact that both that film and America are sharing an anniversary this year may have been an accident, but that makes it no less significant.
Released amid another national reckoning over race, Nia DaCosta’s film asks a question that every celebration of America ought to confront: Is it possible to commemorate this nation without fully reckoning with the violence woven into its history? More than a sequel to a horror classic, Candyman is a meditation on the ghosts that haunt America because it has never fully reckoned with the past that created them.
How the Original Candyman Confronted America’s Racial History
The original Candyman understood this. Released in 1992 and set in the almost post-apocalyptic urban decay that was Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects, Bernard Rose’s film arrived only months after the L.A. Race Riots, a moment when this country was coming to terms with the way the country’s relationship with Black folks was shaped by decades of segregation and racism.
Most audiences saw a supernatural slasher about a hook-handed killer summoned by saying his name five times into a mirror. But beneath the horror was a far more unsettling story. Candyman was about the lingering consequences of America’s racial history and the way white America has sometimes turned Black suffering into myth instead of confronting the systems that produced it.
The film’s true horror was never simply Candyman. It was the realization that monsters can be born from histories a nation refuses to face. That is exactly where the 2021 film expands the original’s vision.
Nia DaCosta’s Candyman Turns One Ghost Into Many
Bernard Rose’s Candyman explored the legacy of a single act of racist terror. Nia DaCosta’s film argues that the tragedy wasn’t confined to Daniel Robitaille, the man who became the monster. The 2021 film posits that Candyman is not one man but many.
Daniel Robitaille was lynched for loving a white woman. Sherman Fields takes on the mantle of the supernatural slasher because he was beaten to death by police after being falsely accused of harming a child. Anthony McCoy ultimately becomes part of the same legend. Their stories span generations, but they are connected by a nation that repeatedly produces the same injustice under different names at different points in history. The genius of the sequel is that it transforms Candyman from an individual ghost into a symbol of America’s recurring racial violence.
Candyman Shows How History Repeats Itself
History, the film suggests, is not something that happened once. It is something that keeps happening. That is why Candyman is one of my favorite films to teach in my Film and Philosophy course.
Students walk into class expecting a horror movie. They leave wrestling with questions about history, memory, and justice. We spend little time talking about jump scares or gore. (Because, let’s be honest, there is not much of that in the film.) Instead, we ask why some histories become legends while others are forgotten, what societies owe their victims, and whether a nation can ever move forward without honestly confronting the violence that shaped it.
The Horror of Remembering What America Wants to Forget
A good horror film reveals what we fear. What makes Candyman great is how it reveals what we would rather not remember. That is what haunted me the first time I saw it, long after the credits had rolled.
Five years after its release, Candyman remains one of the most unsettling movies in recent years because the history it confronts is not safely behind us. The original film understood that America’s racial violence could not simply be buried, while the 2021 film showed how easily that violence can be reproduced across generations.
Its Unquestionable Legacy in Horror
As America celebrates 250 years, Candyman reminds us that commemorating the nation’s founding requires remembering all this country’s history, including the parts that make the celebration uncomfortable.
We cannot exorcise a ghost by refusing to acknowledge why it exists. Perhaps that is the film’s most important lesson. The past does not haunt us because we remember it. It haunts us because we don’t.
Sometimes it feels borderline ridiculous to gush about John Carpenter’s The Thing as much as I do. It’s gotten to the point where when I’m asked about my favorite horror film by both friends and strangers, a little bit of embarrassment tinges my expression as I answer; it feels so obvious and rarely surprises anyone. Saying I love The Thing when people expect me to bust out an obscure foreign horror film or a cerebral thriller makes me feel like a rosy cheeked child with a propeller hat and a giant lollipop. “Wow, you love one of the most popular horror films of all time, congrats!”
But it’s just the truth. The first film of John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy”, all three of its films are among my favorites. But The Thing has a special place in my heart. It shaped my taste in horror, my taste in most media in general, to be honest. It’s become the gold standard, 10/10 baseline test for the vast majority of my reviews; it is a perfect film, so I judge other films against it. And it’s one of the few movies I have to run back to and watch yearly like clockwork (usually when I’m spending a part of winter tied to the couch). It is, in all regards, the perfect film. If it isn’t the perfect film, then it is at the very least the perfect sci-fi horror film.
So, what exactly qualifies The Thing for literal perfection? It’s a high bar to clear. This article, as informal as it is compared to most of my editorials, is an attempt to explain it.
Even if Carpenter Isn’t the Goat, His Team for The Thing Was
As far as crews go, John Carpenter’s The Thing had the cinematic equivalent of the ’96 Chicago Bulls behind it. We’re talking about an amalgam of some of the most talented people to ever grace the silver screens with their work, boasting alongside John Carpenter two of the heaviest hitters in all of cinematic history: Dean Cundey, and Rob Bottin. Now, we can debate all day about whether John Carpenter is the greatest of all time when it comes to horror directors. Personally, I’m just as liable to say Cronenberg, Del Toro, or Hooper as I am to say Carpenter.
But the key factor to remember here is that Carpenter is the coach, not the star player; the Phil Jackson, if you will. Yes, he is the visionary who directed a near perfect cast of players and composed a tale of pure, apocalyptic paranoia. More importantly, he put together and coordinated the team that would make his vision manifest as reality. And if Carpenter is Phil Jackson, Rob Bottin is the team’s Michael Jordan here, the greatest of all time.
(And to all my Lebron fans, I love you, but you have to sit down for this analogy.)
The Legend of Rob Bottin
Bottin’s story is borderline unbelievable, but it’s the best way to explain how abnormally skilled he is and what he brought to the table for Carpenter. At age 14, Bottin became an apprentice to the at-the-time GOAT Rick Baker after sending him a letter seeking an autograph while sharing his creature designs. He was a quick study under Baker, joining him on the ’76 King Kong and Star Wars, before bouncing to Carpenter’s The Fog and then iconic werewolf picture The Howling.
When he reunited with Carpenter in 1982, he now had 6 classic films under his belt and was moving like an FX bullet train. From ages 22 to 23, he worked on The Thing for 57 weeks in both pre-production and on set. Nearly 24/7 for 400 days, Bottin’s all-gas no-brakes work ethic made The Thing at the cost of his own health, and it resulted in him being hospitalized with pneumonia. He survived and went on to make Robocop. And at least one of your favorite films.
Because no conventional disease or weaponry can kill Rob Bottin.
The Thing Still Features Horror’s Best Practical Effects
Okay, that last bit might be hyperbolic, but the man sincerely put his life on the line to make special effects that haven’t been topped since. Not the best effects in just horror history, or science fiction history, but effects that haven’t been topped in any genre for over 44 years. Not by his mentor Rick Baker, not by Screaming Mad George, not by Alec Gillis (though shoutout to him for his criminally scrapped work on The Thing (2011), and even more criminally ignored work on Harbinger Down). I love Dawn of the Dead, believe me, I do, but he certainly isn’t being beaten out by Tom Savini’s body of work. And that isn’t to disrespect and say that all of the artists that I just mentioned are bad, they’re the best in the game! But Rob Bottin was just that much better.
This inevitably invites the counterpoint: “But it wasn’t just Bottin! Stan Winston and his people were the ones who worked on the Dog Thing to give Bottin’s crew a break, and that’s the best monster in the movie!”. To which I say: look me in the eye and tell me the Dog Thing sequence is better than the Palmer Thing sequence. That’s not even counting the Norwegian Thing, both Norris Things, and the absolutely masterful final creature work that was the Blair Thing. The only reason Bottin and his people didn’t win Academy Awards for their work was because they got jumped by E.T., The Dark Crystal, Conan the Barbarian, and Blade Runner all at the same time at the Oscars. It’s just a consequence of being released during the best year for movies ever.
Okay, Now We Can Talk About Dean Cundey
But of course, these effects are then supported by another true legend: Dean Cundey. Selling people on Rob Bottin being the greatest effects artist of all time, isn’t nearly as difficult as advocating for Cundey, who despite an impressive catalog of filmography, slowed down in the back half of his career. He’s often overshadowed in conversations when it comes to The Thing; it’s always talk of Carpenter’s directing, Bottin’s effects, and Ennio Morricone’s incredible soundtrack up front, and rarely any of Cundey’s work. He isn’t spoken about in the same breath as John Alcott or Michael Ballhaus, cinematographers whose work is associated with prestigious cinema because of their proximity to great directors.
Cundey might not be the director of photography your Martin Scorsese’s or Paul Thomas Anderson’s went running to, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t think he was the most important cinematographer in horror history, just for his work with Carpenter and Spielberg. He helmed three of the most influential films in all of horror with his lighting and camera operating: The Thing, Halloween, and Jurassic Park. The man’s fingerprints are automatically on the cultural DNA of all slashers, most practical effects-driven horror films, and the biggest gateway horror franchise in film history.
The Dream Team That Made The Thing Perfection
Cundey has gone on record saying that despite Carpenter’s input, he was effectively given free rein to light and frame The Thing. The man didn’t just know how to shoot effects to make them evoke true disgust from the audience, he was able to manipulate every aspect of the shot to terrify. His sixth sense cinematography wasn’t just for lighting and playing with shadows, but for the speed of camera movement, the power of his blocking, and for having a complete grasp of communicating texture and temperature.
And temperature is the soul of The Thing. John J. Lloyd’s production design of the research station and the great white expanse around it feels just as bone chilling as the film’s antagonist, thanks to Cundey. There isn’t a single flat shot in the thing, not a moment that doesn’t feel dynamic, and it’s because of Dean Cundey.
Now, all this being said about Bottin and Cundey, they are far from the only ones who synthesized this structurally perfect organism of a movie. Every bit of Todd C. Ramsay’s editing splices the film’s scenes together to move perfectly in-time. David Lewis Yewdall’s sound design and how it gave a voice to the horrors on screen will be etched into people’s brains forever. The point is that everyone, every single person who had a hand in making the film, helped make the movie flawless.
Like the cells of the thing from another world, each crew member on John Carpenter’s The Thing moved in concert with the next, in unison, to create the greatest sci-fi horror of all time. So, is it any wonder why 40 some years later, the film still has us all captured?
