Evil ice mage, Lord Nekron (Sean Hannon) sends his Neanderthal minions to kidnap Princess Teegra (Cynthia Leake) of the Fire Keep. Young warrior Larn (Randy Norton Voice: William Ostrander), whose village was destroyed by Nekron, and the enigmatic but powerful berserker Darkwolf (Steve Sandor), set out to rescue Teegra.
Fire and Ice is a handy film to have around, because I never have to define Sword and Sorcery. Someone asks me what that terms means, I can just hand him the disk. But being the iconic movie for a troubled genre is a mixed bag. It means it has all the standards: fast paced action, muscled, sword-wielding heroes, a buxom babe in need of rescue, an effeminate, megalomaniac sorcerer, and plenty of monsters. It also means that what very little plot exists is just a series of cliché’s cobbled together, there is no theme, and the budget is insufficient.
For anyone who missed the poster or cover art, Fire and Ice is an animated fantasy from producer-director Ralph Bakshi (Wizards, Lord of the Rings), inspired by the artwork of Frank Frazetta. Bakshi was a proponent of rotoscoping, where live-action scenes are filmed, and then drawn over to create the animation. In Fire and Ice, we can see his best use of the technique, but the result is still problematic. Characters move in a very realistic fashion, creating a sense of excitement often missing from animation, but monsters, rocks, ice, and everything else on the screen has a quickie-cartoon appearance, giving the film an uneven look that often pulled me out of the adventure.
For a small, generally forgotten work, Fire and Ice had an interesting group responsible for its animation. Frazetta’s influence is obvious. He dominated fantasy illustration for a generation, with his overly-bulked barbarians, standing on piles of dead bodies with large-bottomed girls clinging on. But the project is also filled with unknowns who would soon lose their anonymity in unexpected ways. Uncredited animator Peter Chung would go on to create Aeon Flux, a cult favorite on MTV for years and now a live-action feature with Charlize Theron. The two (yes, there were only two) background painters were college friends, James Gurney and Thomas Kinkade. Gurney created the Dinotopia books as well as produced and wrote the TV series based on them. Kinkade is now best known as the artist behind uncountable generic paintings of little cottages, churches, and lighthouses that filled the homes of undiscerning middle Americans. I am more sympathetic to his work now that I am aware of his past, speculating that there could be a hulking warrior or heaving babe hiding in the perfectly sculpted bushes of those cottages.
While the axe-whacking and sword slicing is fun, the meager story and undeveloped characters make Fire and Ice an unengaging affair. Larn is bland and has no noticeable personality. Teegra’s personality is in her thinly-covered, bouncing breasts (no, this isn’t a sexist film; all characters shows off their skin, with loin cloth-garbed Larn displaying his thighs at every opportunity). Darkwolf shows up, hits people with his axe, then leaves. That’s not exactly a complete personality. The climactic battle between Darkwolf and Nekron is empty as I have no idea who these people are. In earlier drafts, Darkwolf and Nekron were related, but that never made it to the screen.
Perhaps if Bakshi’s resources had been more substantial, he’d have been able to create the fifteen or twenty minutes of needed character development and plot twists. Without the bucks, he did what he could, focusing on the fundamentals of sword and sorcery. It’s something, but not enough.