The Ice Pirates (1984)

Water is scarce and the evil Templars from the planet Mithra have taken control of all of the supply. Jason (Robert Urich) leads a band of pirates in a raid to steal ice from the Templar fleet. Their raid turns into a kidnapping of Princess Karina. They are captured. Jason and his men are rescued by Karina for her own plans.It's a schlocky Star Wars derivative with a lot of campy 70s feel with some Alien and Mad Max thrown in. It's a lot of silly slapstick and broad sex comedy. I would like it if the jokes are actually funny. For some, this may be so bad that it's good. For me, this is mostly bad with a lot of amusement at how good actors get trapped in bad movies. The sets and costumes are a cheesy mix. The special effects are good B-movie work. I can't believe Anjelica Huston is in this. It's fun to see John Matuszak hulking over Ron Perlman. It's got bad sword fights, swashbuckling action and silly space battles. I'm not disputing that this brought a smile to my face which is always a good thing. It doesn't make it a good movie.

I never actually saw a film that was so bad it was good until I saw this one. It really cranks the ridiculousness up to 11! The movie is for the most part a giant Star Wars ripoff: they just copied the whole bloody concept, the 'used universe' art style, the bleeping robots, the scoundrels, the princess, the evil wizards/empire...Then they try to combine this with idiotic comedy and believe me you will laugh, not at the jokes but at the over the top nonsensical lunacy they call a film. Other scifi also gets ripped off: the chestburster from Alien is here called 'space herpe'. Ad also some 'Flash Gordon' spandex scenes, a battle sequence with accelerated aging (they just speed up the frame rate) where they use increasingly more huge wigs to indicate the aging. If you want to ROFL without being even remotely drunk or spaced out, see this. If you combine one of the previous 2 with this movie you even might easily kill yourself.

There are some films that are so bad that they come back out the other side and become so bad they are good. Or at the very least funny - given time. This film is not one of them.It's not like there isn't any effort involved in the making of this film either. Ron Perlman and Angelica Houston pop up as supporting characters - not that they are very good or have that much to do. So much so, you wonder why they even picked this film to be in. Equally the costuming for the most part is still pretty interesting. Some of the visual effects might now have been funny because they look so B grade if not for the constant abysmal dialogue peppered throughout the entire film. The nonsensical plot and padding out of the script with irrelevant and poorly executed sequences really make this film drag terribly.It's not like they weren't making decent sci-fi films during the same period either. Ice Pirates hit cinemas one year after Return of the Jedi (1983) and seven after A New Hope (1977). Alien screened in 1979 and Blade Runner 1982. These films changed the face of filmmaking and none of these films have dated as badly as The Ice Pirates. Possibly the problem is because The Ice Pirates is trying to be a space-comedy-adventure: an extraordinarily difficult thing to well and this film fails on all three counts. That and they decided to go nuts with the synthesizers. Which just seems to date films from the 80s awfully.When I turned on the TV I was hoping for a bit of a romp or at least something that would make me laugh because it was so bad. Unless you are going to watch it for some interesting costuming please don't waste your time like I did.

Awful Star Wars knock-off with a slightly more comic tinge. Robert Urich stars as the leader of a group of ice pirates, who steal ice because water is the most valuable substance in the universe now (how all the poor people stay alive is a mystery). He hooks up with Mary Crosby (Bing's daughter, around 25 and a total cutie), a princess looking for her missing father. Also in the cast are an embarrassed-looking Anjelica Huston in some hilarious sci-fi get-ups and a pudgy, short-ish Ron Perlman (whom I thought was seven feet tall from his other roles!). And John Carradine, who looks days from death and Hollywood Squares funnyman (relative term) Bruce Vilanch. If you ever wanted to see Bruce Vilanch get decapitated, here's your film. But, then again, even that's not worth seeing, as it doesn't shut him up at all (think he might have been a robot, but I nodded off a couple of times).