Rating summary

Movie		0.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.5

The Ice Pirates Blu-ray Movie Review

Melted

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 21, 2016

What can one say about The Ice Pirates? It's certainly one of the least likely titles yet to be selected for a Blu-ray release by the Warner Archive Collection ("WAC"). WAC takes a lot of heat for its Blu-ray selections, especially from fans who think it should specialize in film noir, but all of WACs choices (yes, even the musicals) have been a result of fan requests. It turns out that Ice Pirates, too, has its fan base, and WAC is obliging them. Obviously I am not one of their number, but having more than my share of soft spots for films that others consider vile, I'm not about to criticize someone else's cult favorite. Still, for anyone contemplating a "blind buy" of Ice Pirates, consider this review a public service. (If you're already a fan, you may as well skip directly to the technical evaluation, which is favorable.)

Ice Pirates' chief distinction is that it preceded Mel Brooks's Spaceballs by three years, thereby scoring the lead in big-screen parodies of Star Wars and other space-themed films. But Brooks, who has never been known for subtlety, looks like a master of nuance next to the creators of Ice Pirates. Drawing elements not only from the George Lucas franchise, but also from TV's original Battlestar Galactica, Alien, The Road Warrior and other sources, co-writers Stuart Raffill (who also directed) and Stanford Sherman created what plays like an amateur sketch revue strung together by the barest outline of a story. The costumes are a melange of themes and period, the sets often look like converted parking garages (or leftovers from the worst Star Trek episodes), and the humor is so juvenile that it makes Spaceballs' jibes about the size of one's Schwartz sound urbane.

Whatever one thinks of the result, one can't assume that it happened by accident, because Ice Pirates was made by professionals who presumably knew what they were doing. Director/co-writer Raffill helmed the original Philadelphia Experiment, which was also released in 1984 and has justly became a minor classic of the time travel sub-genre. Raffill went on to direct various family films, including The New Swiss Family Robinson for Disney. Co-writer Sherman penned the previous year's space fairytale Krull, which was a minor success and, though dated in its effects, still holds up as a fantasy film. The cast was led by Robert Urich of TV's Vega$ and Spenser for Hire, and included future Oscar winner Anjelica Huston, future Hellboy Ron Perlman, Dallas' Mary Crosby (daughter of Bing) and the legendary John Carradine. The film even managed to sell $14 million worth of tickets, which meant a lot more 32 years ago (and exceeded the budget of $9 million).

An opening title card informs us that the galaxy has gone dry. Water has become the only commodity of value, with the supply controlled by the Templars of Mithra. The Templars' only opposition are pirates who raid Templar storage facilities for ice. One such pirate is Jason (Urich), whose crew includes Roscoe (Michael D. Roberts), Maida (Huston) and Zeno (Perlman). Their numbers are expanded by a fleet of combat robots, which are worn out, grimy and subject to constant breakdown. The Templars' robots, by contrast, are shiny, new and powerful.

As in Star Wars, there's a princess. Her name is Katrina (Crosby), and Jason finds her in suspended animation aboard a Templar freighter. After fumbling with the sleeping princess' clothing to peek at her breasts (the joke about "raping and pillaging" adds insult to injury), Jason steals her along with the ice. This indulgence leads him and his crew into a series of adventures involving Katrina's father, who has been searching for a new source of water on a legendary "seventh planet", the first six having been destroyed during the interplanetary war from which the Templars emerged victorious. The film's trailer reveals crucial information about that planet, but any Galactica fan will guess immediately where the searchers are ultimately headed ("A shining planet known as . . . [fill in the blank]").

The Templars are also seeking this planet, but for nefarious purposes, since their goal is to preserve their water monopoly. The Supreme Commander (Carradine) charges his supercilious henchman, Zorn (Jeremy West), with preventing Katrina from finding her father. Jason's band of pirates acquires an additional ally in Killjoy (former Oakland Raider John Matuszak), and they have to deal with a Jabba-the-Hutt-like mercenary named Wendon (Bruce Vilanch), who has no body but only a head and a retinue of scantily clad amazonian attendants. There's also a space bar called the Pirate's Den, where someone picks a fight and loses an appendage.

The production design of Ice Pirates reflects the influence of Star Wars and Alien, presenting space travel as a workaday affair, with ships and equipment that are constantly breaking down and sets caked with dirt and grime. Devices often look like they were built from spare parts, and the costumes often look like they came from a Halloween shop. In one sequence, for example, Jason and Roscoe must disguise themselves on the Templar home world as cyborg servants, i.e., humans lobotomized and, in the case of men, castrated for conversion into slave labor. The disguises are as cheap and transparent as Woody Allen's robot garb in Sleeper, from which this routine was obviously lifted. Otherwise, the crew wears outfits resembling castoffs from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The Templars are dressed like medieval knights and nobility, presumably because of their name. Princess Katrina favors slinky polyester, which is easily shed when the time comes for her inevitable hookup with the scoundrel who rescued/kidnapped her.

Ice Pirates set the tone of its humor at the outset, when Jason and his band break into an ice storage facility, only to find themselves in a prolonged encounter with a laughing alien sitting on a toilet. One of its most memorable gags is the Alien parody, which involves a gooey slug that hatches from an egg on the ship in which the pirates escape the Templars' planet. Why the egg happens to be there is never explained, but Jason identifies it by consulting "the manifest" (which looks like a crew member's clipboard handed to the actors just before the director called "action!"). The hatchling that pops up periodically to hiss at the the crew is called a "space herpe". Get it? They've stolen a ship that has herpes.

The Ice Pirates Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Whatever one thinks of its overall merits, The Ice Pirates boasts a professional cinematographer in Matthew F. Leonetti, whose extensive fantasy and sci-fi credits include the original Poltergeist, the James Cameron-produced Strange Days and two Star Trek films (First Contact and Insurrection). Then again, Leonetti also shot Dumb and Dumber To, which The Ice Pirates might legitimately claim as a forebear.

For its 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray release, The Ice Pirates has been newly transferred at 2k from an interpositive by Warner's MPI facility. Substantial restoration in the digital domain has compensated for the age of the source, producing a fine-grained image with no visible damage. The clarity and detail are remarkable for a such a low-budget feature, allowing one to appreciate (if that's the right word) the junky aesthetic of the space vehicles, Templar palaces and other assorted locales. The space effects are limited by the optical and matte techniques of the era, but they probably look about as good as they can. (Ice Pirates is the kind of movie where cheap-looking effects fit right in.) The colors are surprisingly vivid, primarily because Leonetti uses washes of red, blue, green and yellow light for atmosphere. An extended desert scene looks more ordinary, and the approach to Wendon's lair borrows the old Star Trek gimmick of shrouding an alien environment in fog, which is cheap.

WAC has mastered The Ice Pirates at their usual high average bitrate of 34.99 Mbps. Whatever one's opinion of the film, the visual presentation can't be faulted.

The Ice Pirates Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Contrary to the information listed at IMDb, The Ice Pirates was released to theaters in mono, not stereo, and WAC's Blu-ray reproduces the original mono track, formatted in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0 with identical left and right channels. The track is in good condition, free of noise or distortion, and its style matches that of the film, which is to say that it sounds like a bad science fiction movie. The dialogue is clear enough, as are the sounds of laser blasters, rocket engines, the clanking metallic movements of the robots and other typical space adventure effects. The mock-heroic score by Bruce Broughton (who would later get to score a superior intergalactic adventure with Lost in Space) is well-matched to the events onscreen.

The Ice Pirates Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only extra is a trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:20), which is all that was offered on Warner's 2005 DVD of The Ice Pirates. With a tongue-in-cheek voiceover narration by someone who sounds an awful lot like veteran character actor William Schallert, the trailer is funnier than anything in the film. ("See depravity in zero gravity!").

The Ice Pirates Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Order The Ice Pirates if you're a fan. You'll receive a superior presentation of the film. Otherwise, I recommend you steer clear and set course for a different galaxy very far away.