Fire and Ice

This 1983 animated sword and sorcery film has quite a reputation, mostly  because it was a collaboration between Ralph Bakshi and the legendary  artist Frank Frazetta. Anything bearing Frazetta’s name is worth  checking out in my book. Well, taking that into account, and the good  word of mouth I had expected much out of it, and got almost none of my  expectations fulfilled.

The story is the most basic, generic S&S plot you could come up  with. Basically, the evil ice wizard Nekron wants to rule the world by  expanding his kingdom of ice, and is opposed by the fire king, Jarol.  Nekron’s mother Juliana wants her son to marry, so she kidnaps him a  bride – Jarol's daughter Teegra. She escapes and runs into a barbarian  named Lorn who is out to avenge the destruction of his village. And they  both run into Darkwolf, another more badass barbarian who is also bent  on Nekron’s demise.

So, why does “Fire and Ice” suck so much? Aside the generic plot, which  is perfectly alright with me, but this film has zero, and I mean ZERO  character development. Of course, such films never rely on brainwrecking  plots and the likes, and that’s the beauty of them in the first place –  people watch them because they want to see mythical creatures, evil  wizards, tough heroes and hot women. But for fuck sakes, would it hurt  to at least introduce a two sentence backstory for your characters? Not  only they’re one dimensional, but they’re also blank as a white wall, so  much that I didn’t know anyone’s name except Teegra’s by the end.

The script must’ve been 2 pages long, at most. I’m not joking. There are  maybe 15 or 20 lines of dialogue, at most. The characters are  introduced abruptly, and some of them don’t serve any purpose at all  (like the red-headed witch/lesbian whatever and her degenerate son).  Take Darkwolf, for example, potentially the most interesting of them  all. He’s a Conan clone – a barbarian with a chiseled body, bronze  skinned from the sun, wielding an axe and kicking ass. He appears and  disappears at random, in the end killing Nekron before vanishing again.  You are never told who is he, where did he come from, how did he come  here, what is his agenda… actually, I’m not sure if they even tell you  his name (I read on IMDb he’s called Darkwolf, otherwise I’d have had no  idea).

As if that weren’t bad enough, out of the 78 minutes of runtime, at  least 80% consists of Teegra and Lorn running away from the ape-like  savage subhumans, who are Nekron’s minions. Naturally, since they’re  dark(er) skinned it caused an outburst of racism accusations by the  liberal fools. I laugh in their faces! Ha ha!

The only bright light in this crappy film is the art. It’s by Frazetta,  do I need to say more? Although the animation was made with the  rotoscope technique, something I’m not a great fan of, it looked much  better than in “Heavy  Metal”, for example. The best part of it was Teegra – a vintage  Frazetta woman: supple, voluptuous and very, very curvaceous. Oh, and  did I mention the ape-men strip her silken clothes pretty early in the  film, so she runs around basically naked for the remainder of the time?

In conclusion, I think “Fire and Ice” is seriously overrated. If  Frazetta wasn’t involved, it would’ve been a complete piece of crap. I  understand and like guilty pleasures, but you have to put at least 5  minutes work into your story if you plan on making something worth  watching.

Rating: 4/10

- review by Ventilation Shaft