cult film freak: RALPH BAKSHI & FRANK FRAZETTA'S CULT FANTASY 'FIRE AND ICE'

Written by James M. Tate / 10/11/2024 / No comments / adventure , eighties , exploitation , fantasy , leo gordon , ralph bakshi , steve sandor , susan tyrrell , william ostrander

RALPH BAKSHI & FRANK FRAZETTA'S CULT FANTASY 'FIRE AND ICE'

10/11/2024 | No comment

Steve Sandor as Darkwolf in FIRE AND ICE Year: 1983 Rating: ****1/2

Ironic that animation director Ralph Bakshi and fantasy-book-cover illustrating-legend Frank Frazetta's collaboration FIRE AND ICE is narrated by one of the antagonists, witchy mother of an evil ice kingdom ruling son, when the intrepid good guys are the most intriguing, and numerous: three total covering a 90-minute traipsing-adventure where a princess is captured before escaping until she's captured once again...

Mostly by primal slave creatures sent by Susan Tyrrell's whiskey-voiced queen, provoking other dangerous obstacles for the jungle-resilient, Tarzan-esque Lark, survivor of a peacefully picturesque woodsy-village encroached by sharp glacier fortresses that open the film as the title literally plays-out...

Randy Norton as Larn in FIRE AND ICE

There's also the princess's idealist brother (CHRISTINE bully William Ostrander sent by father/king veteran actor Leo Gordon)... but the coolest, meanest, most lethal protagonist is tough guy actor Steve Sandor's Darkwolf, who, with an already-established vengeance against the antagonist mother and son, remains a kind of sporadically-peripheral coach/sidekick of the younger hero's mission to rescue (while protecting and falling in love with) the damsel-in-constant-distress...

Meanwhile, professional voice-actor Sean Hannon spices up the menace with a wonderfully over-the-top, borderline-homoerotic delivery as the uncompromising yet deeply brooding villain Nekron, who wants only power and, like all good heavies, makes the heroes better for working harder...

Randy Norton as Larn in FIRE AND ICE

All existing in a dangerous otherwold of giant squids and reptiles, venomous wolves and saddle-ridden pterodactyls, making FIRE AND ICE a deliberately basic good-vs-evil ride that blends Frazetta's muscular-male-barbarian/vulnerably-voluptuous-female aesthetic with director Bashki's rotoscoping...

A process here that, unlike his infamous LORD OF THE RINGS, is completely animated from sequences involving real actors and actresses: overall resulting in an even more exploitive, testosterone-driven, brutally-sensuous, primitively-sadistic, wish-fulfilled sword-and-sorcery adventure.