One of Santa's disgruntled employees gets turned into an evil snowman by a toy machine so Santa must kidnap a little girl to stop himself from killing the Snowman. It's the 1st 3D Christmas Nightmare! phelous.com / phelous
A disgruntled elf falls into a Toy-making machine an becomes an evil omnipotent T-1000 Snowman, and is hellbent on revenge against Santa Claus? That sounds lime the set up to an insane B movie! Too bad this movie looks like a bunch of rejected Baldi's Basics assets...
You know... when a movie describes someone purely in "Nobody likes them" it doesn't make me think they are a terrible person, but more than everyone is kind of a bully. Then again it seems that all he wanted to do was make people appreciate him and was kind of annoying about it.
This movie feels like something you would dream after binge watching several Rankin-Bass stop-motion Christmas specials while drinking nyquil-laced eggnog.
A disgruntled elf dies, gets frozen, shatters, turns into a demonic snowman, then grows in size, changes forms, and ultimately melts- making him die and get resurrected again? This is scarier than most body horror films.
This story legit feels like it was written by an animator's 6-year-old kid - it's shallow, weirdly juvenile with how it treats the subject of death, and introduces a "super cool new sleigh for Santa with all of these gadgets" that isn't actually used to deliver presents - not to mention, the "action scene" is presented like a bored kid's play-by-play of... creative(?) ideas.
i like how the bertrum of whatever the fuck his name is just dies right in front of santa and the other rando elf and they barely give a shit. like geez i knew nobody liked him but i didn't know they hated him _that_ much
I actually do have the bell clicked (yours is one of the few channels where I do) but for some reason YOuTube just sometimes arbitrarily doesn't put things in my feed or notifications, or puts them in one but not the other. One of the Let's Players I used to watch would only have her even-numbered videos be notified to me and not the odd-numbered ones, so I'd have to go to her page manually when I saw something in my inbox to catch up on her uploads. Y'know, YOuTube making pointless changes for the sake of "machine learning" or whatever their excuse is when things had worked just fine previously.
Yeah, there's a reason why VeggieTales chose to use vegetables and even Pixar, who actually had a good budget, started off with plastic toys and took a long time to work their way up to human protagonists. Early CGI had a lot of limitations, so you had to work with what the technology could do instead of just writing whatever you wanted and not caring whether the animation would work.
The hilariously horrifically thing is if you look at the sequel to this, the animation actually got WORSE. For some reason in the sequel the frame rate is a lot slower, thee characters don't even have walking animation as most of the time is spent standing in place and the whole thing looks like it was a transfer of a transfer of itself.
I keep coming back to these two even outside Christmas season. They're just so fascinating terrible and I love Phelous's edits and commentary for whatever reason!
The idea of one of Santa's elves having a super villain origin and Santa having to track him down and kill him in the Blackbird seems like it could be good if told by people who knew what the hell they're doing.
I think Regular Show's first Christmas special did that. One of Santa's elves had gone rogue and Santa got the Park guys to help track him down. It was a pretty cool special.
There's a movie called Elliot the Littlest Reindeer where the villain was Santa's chief engineer elf. But his plan was really dumb. Basically, he wanted to convince Santa to switch to his new rocket sleds. To do this, he set up and manipulated the reindeer to keep quitting over allegedly personal business, and spread lies about reindeer being useless, unreliable jerks. It's better than this movie by a lot but still not that great.
Not, really, i mean it just means they can talk alot more, or just have more to say, mauler or your movie sucks can get across great points. You could also like.... not watch the long reviews too I saw to year old comments
“Isaac, you IDIOT! I told you to make toys the children of THIS decade would want!” - Jolly Old Saint Prick, several days before Toy Story’s theatrical release
Despite all the movie's obvious faults, I do quite like The Snowman's design for whatever reason. It's the one time they used the simplistic animation to their advantage, sure his floating head form is a little goofy but it just gives you this video game final boss feel. If his expressions were more robust he could be a perfectly fine looking villain design.
For a film called The Christmas Light, there was a lack of Lighting in the animation... I mean there are many scenes where the characters lack any shadows.
@@Bismuth83X I happened to be watching a play-through of Ecstatica (DOS game; humor me) last night. Even that was easier on the eyes than this movie. Might have helped that the color palette wasn't so drab, though.
This plot is so odd it's kind of unique, but instead of slow placed 22 minute primitive CGI it would benefit from being a stylized high energy 2d short about Santa in his jet fighting an elf turned evil superpowered snowman creature in space.
I think the "film" makers here thought people would be so easily impressed with the computer animation that they'd overlook every other glaring flaw this movie has. But really, with the half-assed story, character designs, layout, lighting, and movement on display, this movie would suck even with today's graphics. It's not just dated; it's unprofessional on every level. I'd bet anything if you gave whatever software they made this with to a Pixar animator, they'd make diamonds out of dog crap. But naaaaahhh, effort's just not in the budget.
Indeed, people have made claymation movies featuring painstakingly sculpted clay models where you have to rework them for every single frame of the movie, and they still had more natural movements than this movie.
You'll rue the day you had your way with me? Uh, having your way with somebody usually means well... all I'm saying is somebody should investigate Santa.
The reason it said that is because they both were entirely CG. That may be the norm now, but not then. Toy Story was the first full length computer animated film.
*_AAAAUGGHHH!_* THE CHRISTMAS LIGHT IS INSIDE ME! IT'S INSIDE MY HEART! [Screen becomes a monochrome freeze-frame as Christmas Light bursts out of my chest, spewing blood and guts everywhere. Heavily reverberated "IT'S INSIDE MY HEART!" plays as screen fades to black.]
I know CG animation is hard especially back in the 90s and not all studios could be Pixar but at least try to be like Reboot and put some effort in the animation.
Veggie Tales came out a few years before this did and it looked better. Also, the story is too banal and even if the animation looked good it wouldn’t be worth saving.
@@oz_jones Actually, the original Reboot's animation has aged better than you think... sure there's the clipping and empty background problem, but it's a lot nicer looking and less janky than the Christmas Light and The Nuttiest Nutcracker...
I even came up with better lyrics for the snowman myself. "Ain't no way! I'm here to stay! I'll never sway no matter what you say!" nothing incredible but still
Burton's evil planet voice does remind me a little of "I've been waiting for you, Star Fox." And that buzzsaw attack he does, very much like a Star Fox boss fight.
Whats any of these characters motivations? Its so weird that the movie has a premise you can work with (elf wants to be the best toymaker, fails and gets salty) and they end up with the plot of “monster snowman wants to destroy everything“...How is that gonna help his goal exactly? It feels like they came up with the elfs motivation 20 minutes before the movie was being finished.
Wanna know how I want it to be like? After failing and stuff and when he becomes the snow man he should be called. The snow conductor. A individual who rides around in his train of cold madness. And instead of destroying everything. He would rather be idolized by the many children he gives gifts to. Giving them what they wanted and always a step ahead of Santa Claus. And he would have much knowledge of any train he sees as interesting and wonderful giving out presents which are legit fully detail miniatures of a famous train and cart. And stuff.
Wanna know what's rather sad? This had a fairly decent plot, but terrible execution. Taking a look at what we've got there was a hint of a possible rivalry between Isaac and Berton. Here's my wack at it. Due to the increase in demand for toys around the world, the elves work tirelessly to meet those demands year after year. While their love for the craft continued to fuel them in their work, the stress on the body and mind began taking its toll on them. This caused many injuries and short-tempered interactions among the elves. One elf, seeing the seemingly endless workload, built a machine that reduced the work greatly. Toys were being made in minutes rather than days, much to the relief of the crew. The elf responsible was Isaac. Because of his solution, he was promoted to Santa's number one elf. Since then most of the other elves respected him, however, there was a fair amount that complained about not being able to customize the toys to each child's liking. But since Isaac's machine worked so well for everyone's benefit, no one could really give an argument. Among those who admired Isaac, one set out to impress his idol. This elf, Berton, had made his own toy-making machine to show Isaac. He didn't want to surpass Isaac but merely work alongside him, but Isaac deemed it impractical due to all the detailed options in the machine processing. Saying that it was simply impractical and would slow down production. if there's one Isaac is, it's being blunt. He then says to Berton to return to his work with the others. This crushes Berton and leaves him distraught for several days. Unbeknownst to them, someone was watching and waiting for a moment like this. The *insert magical sentient thing name here* feeds on jealousy and despair. It won't destroy Christmas, but rather twist it into something that's loathed than celebrated. It reveals itself to Berton, telling him that it'll help achieve his dream of gaining Isaacs' respect. It would demonstrate how it would do this by aiding him with his own inventions and Berton would accept. Weeks go by and Berton has received admiration from many of his fellow elves. They're claiming that he's another Isaac. Upon hearing this he doesn't know how to feel until he directly interacts with Isaac again. Isaac is slightly annoyed by all the ruckus Berton has been making, resulting in numbers falling behind. At least that's how Isaac sees it when actually they're ahead of schedule by several weeks. Isaac smells something fishy. How could someone so impractical be compared to him?! He bluntly tells Berton to focus on work rather than these "distractions". But Berton refuses, being absolutely disgusted by Isaac's actions. Thus giving Berton a new mission: surpass Isaac and crush his pride. This is when the *insert magical sentient thing name here* really starts coming into play. Slowly taking control of Berton, turning his art and body to ice and warping his mission to render all of Isaac's work pointless. Berton, or the Snowman I guess, destroys the toy-making machine and about half of the workshop. Luckily, no one was hurt...much. To plant more seeds in order to feed, the Snowman sets out onto the nearest town, disguised as a snowstorm Santa and Isaac go after him. As for Jennifer, I suppose she would have some family issue that would get resolved by the end of the special. I'm not entirely sure if she even needs to be here, but whatever. An actual fight ensues between Sled 2 and the Snowman. Santa, on his own, would order Isaac to stop before he kills Berton. The ship still crashes that would result in Santa and Isaac having an argument with Isaac being confused as to why Santa would even think of showing mercy to that monster and Santa would try to explain to Isaac that Berton might still have a chance of being saved. The idea just seems foolish to Isaac and begins repairs while Santa and Jennifer search the area. It isn't too long that are captured by the Snowman. Though scared they try to reason with Berton, seeing that there is still good in him. But Berton refuses to listen. Finished with repairs, Isaac notices that the two haven't come back yet. Fearing the worst, he pilots Sled 2 and searches for them. The Snowman appears with the two as hostages and with a threat of a worldwide blizzard, in exchange for one thing: Isaac to admit that he was jealous of Berton and that he's better than him. Of course, Isaac won't do it and attempts to attack the Snowman can barely make a dent. Soon enough, he's captured in the Snowman's grasp and begins to be enveloped in ice. The sled is being crushed by the ice and loses all power. There seems to be no escape. During this, Berton pours out all his anger, jealousy, and hurt towards Isaac. Saying that he looked up to him, and still a part of him does. Here Isaac realizes his mistake and apologizes to Berton. He admits that he was jealous and even afraid of Berton's success because it all came about so quickly for him while it took Isaac years to perfect his craft. After both have spilled their feelings, Berton begins to fight back against the *insert magical sentient thing name here*. The roots are deep resulting in an intense struggle, but Berton with the help of his idol is freed. With the enemy defeated, the workshop being rebuilt, and Jennifer's side plot wrapping up Berton is punished a couple decades of community service up at the North pole, including assisting Isaac with inventions. The End. I kinda came up with this a while after I watched this review and there are some things that could use work, but I think it would be refreshing to have a Christmas special focusing on the elves and have them as main characters. Thank you for your time and have a pleasant whatever.
At a guess they recorded it in EP mode to reduce the ammount of tape needed per cassette. these people were so cheap they were literally counting the pennies needed to produce the tape
