Wednesday, June 25, 2008

The Ice Pirates (1984)

Ahh, Ice Pirates, you hold such a special place in my heart. This brilliantly hilarious film is basically a blatant rip-off of Star Wars ('hologram portraying distress' scene...check ; 'cantina' scene [including a fight to the death and gross invertebrate appetizers]...check; two male characters getting out of a fix by being bought off the market by some friendly, future-protagonists...check; 'dude losing his hand' scene...check) with a much smaller budget, the worst wigs you've ever seen, a garishly flamboyant costume designer (everything from pirate to medieval to space-age to disco-fever to clairvoyant, all in the same frame! The fabric is just so cheap-looking!), some irresistibly bad jokes (ah the green frog tranny slut), Anjelica Huston, Ron Perlman, space herpes, castration and man slaves, a variety of small animals (dwarf donkeys, pigs, wild felines, etc.), bikini-clad female warriors defending an affluent, body-less freak, and, of course, robot pimps, lasers and trippy space-travel scenes. They also throw in sex in a virtual storm machine, a scene with rapid time advancement, explosions, car-chases, bizarro aliens, and, my personal favorite, a freeze-frame ending. Man, if they added any more low-budget action into this flick, I think I'd explode! It's like they thought, "we don't really have enough money to make a good sci-fi film, so let's just try and throw in as many sci-fi/action aspects (for a low low price) as is temporally possible and hope for the best.' Well let me tell you: it fucking worked; this movie is awesome! I've seen it so many times, and I still can't remember it all because so many super weird things happen. Super-Weird! I love movies that are super-weird, and, even better, that "attempt" to approach "new" and "interesting" sci-fi themes.
Overall, this is probably the funniest low-budget film that is actually amusing and still takes itself seriously [Anjelica is so serious! Even with that stupid claw hairpiece!] and even then has some good action scenes. It's even got a mildly meaningful message about human existence and ecology (right?) Oh, and did I mention: there are animals!

Final Judgment: "Animals + Action + Awesome Sci-Fi Adventure + Ridiculous Costumes/Plot + Aliens = The best night to get your not-so-stoner friends to smoke with you!"

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Excellent review. Also the night you get your stoner though not sci-fi watching friends to watch sci-fi.