Magic Christmas Tree

That is, in fact, an actual line of dialogue from the film, and it gives you a pretty good idea of what to expect. In other words...low, low budget; elementary school-level acting; post-synched dialogue (a la Coleman Francis); and a plot that seems like it was made up as they went along. For those of us who love movies that are so excruciatingly awful that they go full circle into the territory of unintentionally surreal brilliance, then this is totally for you.

The "wacky" lawnmower-starting scene goes on FOREVER. I kept waiting for the dad to run over Ichabod, the tortoise.

I can totally imagine seeing this projected in 16mm on a white-painted brick wall back when I was in grade school at Green Lake Elementary.

It's like a kids' film directed by the people at Centron. This is one of those weird, institutional-feeling movies that would seem to be perfect fodder for the MST3K guys. But really, it's sufficiently goofy enough on its own to provide an hour's worth of perverse amusement.

If you can track down a copy I highly recommend it. I use it every year to torture my family.

I know it is silly and hard to believe, but (speaking from my childhood) I LIKED IT!!! I watched it when I was young (and liked it) and I watched it a couple weeks ago AND LIKED IT!! It is silly and SHOULD BE, because IT IS A KIDS MOVIE!!!!!! I liked its "Leave It To Beaver" beginning, and the 1960's style performance. I might be wrong, as I am 34 years old.

Perhaps this movie can only be judged perspectively by a child.

I watched the Rifftrax version of this and laughed all the way through it. I did notice the demonic tone, but Bill, Mike and Kevin kept it at bay by making fun of the fat kid, the parents and even the tree itself. If you want to see it, watch the Rifftrax version. I was shocked to see a film made in the early 60s with three little boys as friends and one of them was BLACK, not something to be expected at that time when schools were not yet integrated, but if you are watching a demonic Christmas Tress turning little kids into Satanic minions on the night of Christ's birth, not accepting the three as friends seems, to me, as stupid as refusing to swallow an aspirin after one has just swallowed a door knob.

Whenever I have seen lists of the supposed worst films ever made, many small movies with limited releases never have a chance of making it simply because no one ever got much of a chance to see it in the first place. In other words, it's dreck that slipped between the cracks...a good way to describe "Magic Christmas Tree" actually.

The story is VERY slow and the plot unfolds at glacial speed. A kid helps and old witch and she gives him a reward...some magic tree that grants wishes. But the kid is a bit of a sociopath and he wishes for some bad things...but the worst is his kidnapping Santa...or at least a mall Santa from a very run down and shady neighborhood. Can Santa shed himself of the kid? And, does anyone really care? And, does anyone notice that the movie seems like a really bad ripoff of "The Wizard of Oz"-especially at the end?

The movie appears to have been made with a Super 8 movie camera and all the actors were non-professionals. Their performances are so bad...but you can't blame them since they aren't actors and the script writer was probably a lemur. I'm actually being kind, as I am not sure if they even had a writer.

By the way, one of the very worst Christmas films of all time (aside from this one) also came out in 1964, the incredibly wretched "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians". After watching both, I'd say "Magic Christmas Tree" is less annoying but a much worse film overall. The only film that approaches (and perhaps surpasses) the awfulness of "The Magic Christmas Tree" is 1972's "Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny".

Black-and-white awfulness about a trio of little brats dare each other to go into a witch's house at Halloween, as the audience hopes she'll curse them all and make them watch this godawful tale. One of these nitwits saves her kitty from a tree, and as a reward, she gives the kid a ring she bought out of a vending machine, and she apparently gives the cinematographer colour film, as the film then switches to colour, which looks even worse than the earlier poor quality black-and-white footage.

Said vending machine ring grants this little blockhead three wishes, and eventually a pedophilic, talking, yawning tree appears in his backyard. In one of the most lengthy, ponderous scenes, dad spends several minutes getting his Fred Flintstone lawn mower started, and tries to mow it down, but apparently this tree is made of iron, and it explodes his mower, and flips him on his back.

There is a message herein, a Christmas message, about not trying to mow down, or hack down demonically possessed, spontaneously appearing, talking Christmas trees given by witches on Halloween, because if you do, you'll have to watch this film for all eternity.

Nothing more than home movies shot in someone's home, with obnoxious people in the roles, and seemingly edited by using the aforementioned lawn mower, with numerous edits in the middle of a sentence, out-of-sync audio, and constantly uneven audio levels.

Only worth watching just to make fun of the film as it's playing, but the pedophilic giant is just creepy, and ruins any unintentional laughs. Oh, then the footage switches back to black-and-white again.