A surreal 58 minute short film, i’d seen clips from ‘The Magic Christmas Tree’ for years, but never actually had the chance to sit down and watch the thing.

Welp! Sincere thanks to the ‘Oddity Archive’ youtube channel who screened it tonight as part of their ‘Archiveland Public Domain Theater’ show. Because…well…this one is absolutely an ‘oddity’ in every sense of the word.

The film features an entirely no name cast, and follows the ‘Zots’ like misadventures of a young boy who saves a cat that transpires belongs to a witch…with it being Halloween, she feels generous and gifts the lad a magic ring with Santa clause on it, telling the boy that if he plants a wishbone in the back yard and recites the magic incantation she’ll summon a being able to grant him 3 wishes. On thanksgiving he does just that, and by christmas a magical christmas tree appears in the back yard willing to grant the lad anything he wants…shenanigans ensue.

Im going to be honest, this isnt a particularly well made film, I reference ‘Zots’ but it is essentially just that…Festive Zots, someone gets a magic ring and chaos ensues…the only difference is its the tree that grants the wishes/powers not the ring itself…the ring seemingly just acts as a kind of authenticator…

The script for this thing is a bit of a mess truthfully, opening and staying in Halloween for a significant chunk of the runtime, then jumping to thanksgiving without much rhyme or reason (its literally only done to get the wishbone from the turkey) and then suddenly its christmas eve… The kids wishes are seemingly only given to set up pre filmed segments…The host of ‘oddity archive’ described it as a ‘Home movie’ film, and thats probably the best way it *can* be described. It feels like someone shot a load of random scenes on a budget without a script, then they just…wrote a script to utilize the B-roll.

Entire plot points are just never commented on, such as the dads fight with a seemingly indestructable christmas tree…how one of the wishes the kid makes is for it to be daytime during the middle of the night, so the tree grants that wish…and NOONE says ANYTHING about how its sunny at 10pm…OR how it becomes night time again at like…8am.

A giant randomly turns up in the 3rd act without any context or reason…he just says ‘you’ve been too greedy’ and thats apparently enough pull to have him turn up…

The pacings atrocious, the tones all over the place…its a mess of a script. Not helped by lacklustre cine and direction that look and feel cheap, badly planned out and badly executed. its shot in a mixture of black and white and colour for no reason other than I assume thats all the film the producer had lying around.

They didnt have on set audio so the entire film had to be redubbed from scratch in post, which is INCREDIBLY disorienting. The cast all look ill or strange. Santa here looks like hes got a bloating condition and spends most of the time he’s on screen looking like he’s about to pop.

the soundtracks irritating and scratchy. Look…this is EXACTLY the kind of movie you’d think it would be. and I imagine it would pair up WONDERFULLY as a good B-picture ahead of something like ‘Santa Clause vs The Devil’ or ‘Santa Clause Conqours the Martians’…But on its own? it feels like a cheap appitizer and not much else. like…you can ENJOY a cheap appitizer…but that doesnt necissarily mean you’ll be happy when you find the main and dessert arnt coming…

Fun enough, if you like your schlock I’d say definitely try and check it out at least once…but I dont know if it has the clout to survive more than a watch and maybe one more rewatch honestly…

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/magic-christmas-tree/