Ice Pirates

I loved this movie as a kid. It was shown frequently on a local channel, WXPN 57, that no longer exists. Every Sunday afternoon there would be a series of movies under the heading of "Adventure Cinema" or something like that. There must have been a volume discount on Ice Pirates because I swear this flick was shown at least once per month. I loved this fucking movie.

Emphasis on the word "loved."

Of course I loved Ice Pirates when I was six; what's not cool when you're six? Twenty years later, I honestly had a hard time even watching the movie. Ice Pirates falls under that popular sub-sub-genre of B-movie cinema: the rip-off. For every Conan the Barbarian or The Road Warrior or Jaws, there are about 75 movies (mostly out of the Italian film industry) that fail to understand what made the source material so enthralling or exciting and instead copy the plot line, lower the budget, ramp up the gore, throw in about 5 times the amount of naked women and call it a day.

This is not a bad thing entirely: without these schlock treasures, there would be no B-movie scene at all. Zombie is considered one of the greatest gut-munching exploitation films and it is such a rip-off of the classic Dawn of the Dead that in European countries, the former is considered a sequel to the latter. Being a rip-off does not a bad exploitation film make. Being boring; that makes for a bad viewing experience no matter the genre.



What does all of this have to do with the film in question? Ice Pirates is a late rip-off of the Star Wars films as well as any number of barbarian fantasy films. Stuff like Beastmaster. That's bad. Well, the film isn't all bad. It mashes the pirate, fantasy, and science-fiction genres together, which is impressive; the movie attempts to be a grand adventure. Only attempts though, never succeeds.

Ice Pirates meanders along, never really providing any excitement. Honestly, there's not much to write about the movie. A group of pirates exist in a galaxy-spanning future where water by way of giant ice blocks is extremely rare and thus heavily controlled by an oppressive regime. The aptly named ice pirates liberate said ice and a princess and find a planet with water at the end. This planet is Earth. The End.

No mention is ever made, nor technology devoted to, the fact that hydrogen and oxygen can be extracted from the atmosphere to create water. Chemically speaking I think it's impossible for water to be rare. Regardless if it's water, or even if it were gold, silver, gasoline, spice, or even ketchup that was rare in this universe, nothing can overcome the boring storyline, terrible effects, and flat humor. Excitement is the real rarity.



Actually, I lied, there is one truly exciting part. At one point our heroes are threatened with castration, turned into slaves, and made to serve the evil empire before making a daring motorcycle escape with a princess in tow. It may sound it, but this is neither exciting nor funny. While escaping, our heroes encounter a family of robots going for a walk on the promenade. A father robot in the middle, flanked on the left and right by his child and his wife.

The robots are really cheap plastic effects too. The look a like like R.O.B., a crappy old Nintendo peripheral. This stupid robot was supposed to be a friend and play games with you. R.O.B. made the lonely feel even lonelier.



But I digress. Getting right to it: our heroes, speeding their way to a daring escape, collide with and completely smash to bits the robot child. As shattered plastic rolls across the promenade, the father robot begins exclaiming: "Baby! baby!" At this point, the pursuers proceed to obliterate his wife. He yells: "Baby! mother! baby! mother!" like a mantra. What a shitty day that robot's having.

I must've watched this scene three or four times. Easily the best part of the movie and the only reason to watch.

* out of ****