Magic Christmas Tree

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.

Think of a seriously shoddy and underbudgeted TV movie from yesteryear, add strong dashes of evil and homoeroticism, and hire a cast missing half their chromosomes and you'll end up with THE MAGIC CHRISTMAS TREE. The only "magic" is that this piece of junk was made at all. I can't help but wonder if the executive who signed off on it lost his job...we can only hope. Let me put it another way, the blurb on the VHS, and most of the reviews can't agree on little things like the main character's name or whether or not the "movie" takes place with snow on the ground; I suspect the critics could not bear to watch the whole thing. A trite and joyless experience that will leave you rummaging through the medicine cabinet.

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".

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.

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.