Magic Christmas Tree

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.

THE MAGIC Christmas TREE is one of the worst kiddie movies ever made. Obviously made with NO budget, the acting is atrocious - the guy who plays the father has a scene where he tries to start the family lawn mower and this "bit" goes on FOREVER - he pulls the chord - nothing - he pulls the chord - nothing - but they always add absurd sound effects with each pull! Circus horns, whatever, etc.....this disaster isn't quite as good/bad as Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny but it sure is close. The scene where the little boy is lost in the woods and confronted by a giant "woodsman" is one of the creepiest things I've ever seen - it unintentionally is more uncomfortable than Ned Beatty's scenes in Deliverance. Obviously this thing was made for nothing and probably shown at schools and churches and such. Man, the only good performance in the whole thing is given by Ichabod, an actual tortoise who is shown eating clover (LOTS of clover - they obviously show this a lot only because they hoped to "pad" the running time of the movie.)

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.

You know a film's going to be good when it starts with a three-minute bologna sandwich exchange.

Truly bizarre, essentially plotless '60s family flick that should've been a 10-minute short, but is instead padded out by endless scenes of newspaper reading, lawnmower starting, and pointless dialogue read by a boy with the most over-the-top, '50s-educational-film voice in the world ("WOW, GOSH, GEEZ!"). After about half an hour of actually nothing happening, the boy gets his magic Christmas tree which will grant him three wishes, but the boy has NO IDEAS. He has had a magic ring for TWO MONTHS and can't think of a single thing that he wants. Just awesome.

The whole thing looks and feels like it was improvised completely on the spot. Aware of its own pointlessness, it randomly becomes a morality play for five minutes (a morality play with a random forest giant, no less!) before wrapping things up as haphazardly as they started. MAGIC CHRISTMAS TREE is as delirious and disastrous as they come and is probably at least partially responsible for the higher suicide rates during the Christmas season.

Best line: "I guess I'll have to find another selfish boy to be my slave!"

My wife and I both had head aches while watching this film. This satanic Christmas diddy should be shown in film schools as an example of how not to make a movie. From the incredibly bad editing to the atrocious acting, the remarkably bad lighting to the unsettling, nonsensical plot this film fails on all cylinders. My wife commented that she wished everyone in this movie would die except the turtle. It's easy to understand her feelings. There is one scene with an obese man who is supposed to be a giant that is especially disconcerting. But most harmful to any child who is unfortunate enough to view this is the message (if one can really be derived). It seems in the end that a satanic Christmas tree, brought into existence by black magic is to be desired by children on the night of Christs birth because it can grant the child awesome, evil powers over mankind and even help him to kidnap large jolly fat men. Unsettling.It's even more odd in that it takes place with in that classic 1950's nuclear house hold. Very unsettling, though often funny for it's extreme inability to get anything right.