Customer Reviews

Fire and Ice [Blu-ray]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A real tribute to Frank Frazetta. If you are a fan of Frazetta's work you will really appreciate this animated movie.
From the opening stills you can get a grasp of his style and see the connection Ralph Bakshi has made to the
production of this feature.The 'Death Dealer' personna, riding in the backround at first and then becoming the
primary force in this battle of 'Good vs Evil', is straight from one of Frazetta's most famous posters.

The animation and art work are superb (by 1980's standards) and the DVD release really brings out the colors
and details missing from most of the VHS tapes I've viewed over the last twenty-plus years.

The movie is relatively short, at 80 minutes, and is packed with action from start to finish. You will not be bored.
The fast pace allows you to skip by the 'lame' sections of the story quickly and move on to the more interesting
parts that will grip you and provide an overall satisfying experience by the end of the movie.

by now i always know what to expect from bakshi. an adult themed animation with odd pacing and cool looking scenes. The movie as usual drags by but has a naked woman to keep your attention. The pacing was same as usual but i little easier to follow than bakshis previous work. There isnt really much that is memorable from this movie besides the woman in the thong and the beatifull backdrops but i still liked it more than lord of the rings and about the same as wizards.

This SE edition is the definitive and the best copy of this film. In fact the blu ray copy lacks some extras like the Frazetta documentary. So all in all this version is better than the blu ray one.

I own nearly every Ralph Bakshi film and I must say when first watching this I was amazed!
The animation is super detailed in every aspect and the kept pace all the way through. This is one adult cartoon I would recommend to anyone who enjoys a good fantasy flick.

This is another fantasy favorite from Ralph Bakshi...after watching it on YouTube that is. Set in the distant past after the Ice Age, it is a prehistoric sword-and-sorcery quest between good and evil. Nekron, Lord of the realm of Ice and his mother Queen Juliana, has set their sights on conquest of the known world. When their glaciers destroy's the village of a man named Larn. And now, Larn vows to avenge his people and kill the Ice Lord. Meanwhile, the sub-human minions of Nekron and Juliana capture Firekeep's King Jarol's sultry daughter Princess Teegra. But Teegra manages to escape, and eventually meets with Larn, who promises to escort her back to Firekeep; if the sub-humans don't find them first.

This movie did very little box office (as did most of Ralph Bakshi's films), but has become a cult classic, partly for the quality of the art, a collaboration between Ralph Bakshi and the famed fantasy artist Frank Frazetta. Also, I have heard that the screenplay was written by Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas, the two men who had done Conan comic book stories, and the background painters included James Gurney, the illustrator of the Dinotopia novels. Though admittedly I had never read Conan or Dinotopia. And also the painter Thomas Kinkade, noted for his artwork for figurines, music-boxes for The Bradford Exchange Company besides paintings. And like Bakshi's films The Lord of the Rings and American Pop, this movie was rotoscoped, but the process works better in this film.

So overall, I think it's one of the best animated fantasy movies ever made, and an awesome collaboration between two great minds - Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta. With plenty of fantasy, sexual innuendo, and thrilling adventure.

There was a certain time in the 1980s when barbarian fantasy movies were the movie trend du jour, which is presumably how Ralph Bakshi and artist Frank Frazetta got the go-ahead for "Fire and Ice." It's basically a gauzy wisp of a plot that is filled with hilariously cheezy dialogue, semi-nude damsels and other fun things dredged from the imagination of a 13-year-old swords-and-sorcery geek.

After the Ice Age, evil queen Julianna and her son Nekron (?!?!?!) decided to conquer the world with his giant telekinetically-controlled iceberg. The only place they haven't squished or conquered is Firekeep, so they kidnap King Jarol's almost-naked daughter Teegra -- but she escapes, and ends up encountering Larn, a strapping young barbarian whose village was wrecked by Nekron. They fight, she runs away, and two minutes later they're prepped for the horizontal mambo.

But after a Random Monster Attack knocks Larn out, our inept hero wakes to find that Teegra has been taken by Juliana's subhuman minions. So he joins forces with a mysterious hooded man named Dark Wolf, who apparently is POed at Julianna for reasons never explored in-story, and wants to kill Nekron (again, for reasons never explored in-story). Together they plan to take back Teegra and save the world, blah blah blah.

"Fire And Ice" is is basically your run-of-the-mill barbarian fantasy story, so it doesn't have much of a plot beyond Save The Shapely Damsel And Defeat The Threat Against The World. Blatant sexism ("Waa, nobody takes me seriously, so I'll roll around in a string bikini!"), hinted racism, a designated Evil Gay Villain, and a seemingly endless list of plot holes (Teegra is unable to escape an OVERHAND KNOT?) and inconsistencies (why can subhumans scale a cliff but not a TREE?).

And the whole thing is CHEESY. The dialogue is cheesy ("You may have caught me, but you'll never give me to Nekron!"), the monsters are cheesy (pirouetting kraken attack!), and the cheesiness of the climax could make enough grilled sandwiches to feed the entire world for a year. And it's pretty funny at times in its earnestness, with dialogue filled with unintentionally hilarious moments ("Give me your love," Teegra's dad says to his almost-naked daughter) and action scenes (two guys in speedos whacking each other with swords! Hello Freudian symbolism!).

And the whole thing is done with mind-blowing seriousness. Well, except for a few scenes of sexual symbolism that just have to be tongue-in-cheek -- like Nekron writhing and screaming as his magically upthrusting pillars of ice explode in sprays of liquid. That can't possibly be serious.

The reigning character here is Dark Wolf, a butt-kicking and level-headed guy who wears a cat-eared executioner's mask and STILL looks tough. He also sneezes more brain cells than our hero ever did -- despite being The Designated Hero, Larn never actually succeeds in anything he does. And Teegra is basically there to scamper around the woods in a child's string bikini and writhe around suggestively to get male attention, like a pornographic Snow White.

"Fire and Ice" runs neither hot nor cold -- it's just a vast oozing mass of cheese, with lots of naked women and vaguely offensive undertones. But it's tailor-made for a nice drinking game.