Oct 041984
 
two reels

Space pirates Jason (Robert Urich) and Roscoe (Michael D. Roberts), along with their crew (Anjelica Huston, John Matuszak, and Ron Perlman) raid “Templar” ships to steal water, the most valuable substance in the galaxy. Their most recent attack goes wrong and they are captured, but Princess Karina (Mary Crosby) frees them so they can help find her lost father, who was searching for the mythical seventh world of water.

A Swashbuckler with a Sci-Fi trappings, The Ice Pirates is generally called a parody, because somehow, calling a failed comedy a “parody” excuses the humor falling flat.  It also can be used as a justification for swiping plot and characters from better films. But The Ice Pirates takes it a step further and actually steals jokes from other parodies (the heroes hiding out in a line of eunuchs was funny in Mel Brooks’ History of the World: Part 1; here it is…cute).

While part of the late-’70s/early-’80s Star Wars rip-off craze, The Ice Pirates owes much more to the television show Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, including the overall tone and the boogie-down tendencies of the robots. The effects also look like something you’d expect to see on ’70s TV.

The story starts with the pirates raiding a ship of the evil Templars who rule the galaxy through their water monopoly. With huge energy reserves, I don’t know why everyone isn’t making water from hydrogen and oxygen, but it’s best not to question such things.  More troubling is that the scarcity of water has no effect on anything, and the monopoly plot is forgotten (except for calling Earth, “The Water World”). Perhaps I shouldn’t worry about storylines vanishing, but this isn’t a standup routine, it’s a movie; if the filmmakers didn’t care about them, why stick them in the movie at all?

I wonder how much of the script was written based on what costumes and set dressings they found at the studio. Characters wear a mixture of fantasy tunics, chain mail, leather from a biker flick, Arabian robes, and spacesuits from a dozen low budget films. Anjelica Huston makes a surprisingly fetching Xena-like babe, and the other characters’ outfits aren’t embarrassing, but it all looks tossed together. The sets don’t do as well, being half the size they should be but being packed with twice the needed junk. Perhaps if the director knew where to place a camera, every scene wouldn’t look claustrophobic.

The editing is primitive, with sudden jumps to the middle of unrelated moments. Often, it appears sections of the movie are missing. And then the film ends, not with the completion of anything, but as if they ran out of film.

While a juvenile mess of a movie, with so many gags, a few are bound to be at least mildly amusing.  I never laughed, but I smiled from time to time. And watching it was never an unpleasant experience.  Well, the disco songs (which are mixed with the high adventure music to make a confused score), were pushing it.

Here’s a movie where they don’t re-shoot scenes when the actors crack up, which happens to both Urich and Roberts. The Ice Pirates isn’t horrible, and that’s as high a recommendation as I can give it.

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