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FIRE AND ICE (1983)
Too many cavemen! An animated Frank Frazetta movie! How can this fail? Well, it does - in part because in 1983, the notion of a Frank Frazetta movie had 15-20 years go to before the technology was really there to deliver on such a premise. But Ralph Bakshi did his best with the Rotoscoping that was his trademark for a while, and delivered a visually satisfactory film (i.e. there are no big crowd scenes composed of live-action characters silhouetted against a colored background), even though as a story, there's not much here. The evil sorcerer Nekron wants to take over all the land, and sends great glaciers from his ice fortress to crush all who would stand before him. Most of all he wants the lands of King Jerol, who rules from his lava fortress Fire Keep. So Nekron sends some cavemen to kidnap Jerol's hot daughter Tigra, while a displaced villager (his hometown's under a glacier now) fights for his life and hers among some fairly random hardships - giant lizards, cavemen, giant octopi, wild dogs, more cavemen, that sort of thing. Tigra and the villager Larn are shown throughout in lovingly rendered near-nudity, even when they're in the ice fortress and surely must be freezing their tits off. They, and the mysterious roaming warrior Darkwolf, are Frazetta enough in concept if not quite in texture (technology, again) - the two men are muscle-bound loincloth-wearing he-men, and Tigra is a buxom, bootylicious minx with pouty lips and she spends the entire movie in a thong and a sheer bikini top. Not even remotely a deep story, there are a couple of ambiguities that save it from being a total kiddie-flick throwaway. The audience is allowed a certain amount of doubt as to the extent of Nekron's evil, for a while. Darkwolf is never revealed to be Nekron's father unless you watch the bonus features - throwaway plotting that, apparently, go thrown away. I know the appeal of Frazetta's work isn't a heady one, but there's a way to make that visceral punch count - and it requires being a little more thoughtful about the story and characters than this movie is. This wants to be Conan The Barbarian, but it's only a little better than Conan The Destroyer. Still, the backgrounds are nice Frazetta-lite, and the characters are all well-drawn, moving with that Rotoscoped smoothness that can be a turnoff for some but I don't have too much trouble getting used to. A must-see if you're a Bashki fan, I guess (but if you are, you would've seen it long ago) but for most of us the best reason to rent this is for the second disc, which has a 90-minute feature on Frazetta's life and work. (c) Brian J. Wright 2005 BACK TO THE F's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE |