Iced



A group of eight friends are at a ski resort when two of the guys get into a fight over a girl. The Brunette with feathered hair seems to think she came as his date, while she’s clearly only interested in the blonde with feathered hair (ah, the 80s!). So, completely ignoring who the hell she wants to spend time with, the two decide to settle the “score” by having a cheesy 80s ski-off. The blonde wins by cutting the other guy off and making him trip, and he heads into the lodge with his lady love so as to do the nasty. Humiliated, and honestly a little whinny about the whole thing, the loser sulks and heads off to the bar to drink and lick his wounds. Shockingly that doesn’t help his mood, so he dons his blue ski suit, and decides to do some angry nighttime skiing to try to work off his rage. But while he’s out there, either due to being despondent over the loss or because he’s such a klutz that his loss was inevitable, he takes a jump he shouldn’t have, lands on some deceptively pointy rocks, and slowly dies in the snow.


At least he was wearing all his safety equipment.

Four years later, the remaining group of seven friends are mysteriously invited to an early access weekend at Snow Peak, a new ski resort complete with lodge and private villas. None of them are sure exactly how they got invited, but they’re not about to pass up the rare chance for all of them to have a fun get together. They eat, they drink, and they ski, and despite one of them mysteriously never showing up, they try to have a good time. But not long after night falls people start disappearing thanks to some masked skier wearing a blue ski suit…



Iced is an American slasher from the late 80s that was released straight to video, likely with very little note or fanfare, which is probably why I’d never heard of it before. And truth be told, the only reason I really chose to watch it now was because at least one of the summaries I read online claimed that it took place on New Years Eve. But after watching it I don’t think that EVER gets mentioned, so I feel that statement is dubious at best. But the film kind of complements Shredded and it is winter themed (and I don’t have enough time at this point to try to find another New Years-related film), so I’m just going to leave it here and not worry about it. I mean, I’ll be slightly bitter about being lied to (damndamndamn), but I won’t worry.


Much…

And you really shouldn’t worry much about it either, because the film is, perhaps unsurprisingly, rather unremarkable. The movie has a couple of familiar faces if you’re at all into horror. Including Debora De Liso, who also starred in the original Slumber Party Massacre, and Joseph Alan Johnson, who was also in Slumber Party Massacre, Berserker, and just so happens to have written this film. But its greatest claim to fame (or at least its most notable name) is that it stars Lisa Loring, who some older fans may recognize as the young Wednesday Adams from the original Adams Family show. And she ends up being sans-clothing for much of the film, which may also excite a certain (very creepy) subset of those same fans who once wondered what she would look like all grown up, and whom I never wish to meet. But most casual horror watchers likely won’t know who they are, or even care about their inclusion, beyond maybe the aforementioned and abundant lack of clothing on Ms. Loring’s part.


Which I would like to properly illustrate, except we like to be at least modestly SFW here at RMM.

Another thing casual horror fans will likely be put off by, is the film’s slow as hell pacing. Cause good golly, does this poor movie draaaag. Once the dumb-ass leaps to his death somewhere around 15-minutes in, there’s one more death 5-minutes later, and then you get a wait a whole 42 minutes before the killer finally crawls his ass back out of the nearest snowdrift and stuff starts to actually, you know, happen. So that means that you have to wade through three quarters worth of film before the full slasher parts of this slasher actually fully kick in. What happens during those intervening 40-some-odd minutes? Jack all. Or at least jack all that slasher fans are going to be interested in. Because all of that time is essentially comprised of little more than mild soap opera-type drama. Meaning you meet this group of friends and get to become intimately acquainted with all their petty personal problems.


Yay….

Jeanette is fighting with Eddie, so she intends on putting the moves on the Realtor guy as soon as he shows up (sight unseen, that’s how desperate/horny this chick is.) John and Diane have broken up due to his long hours at work, but gotten back together. But Diane is still having anxiety issues due to the breakup, and because she’s still feeling super guilty ever since that dumb-ass blindly jumped to his death. Carl is trying to act like his normal, frat-boy, horny self, but I guess he’s got some serious drug issues to work through, and we get to see him naked, doing smack in the bathroom and… Question? Why is any of this here? How is it relevant? Because I’m not seeing how any of it matters, and you know what, movie? I don’t bloody care. AT ALL. And I can’t imagine that there’s anyone out there who really does. What I think the filmmakers were maybe trying to do with all this, was to perhaps add some relatability to the characters, or suspense and mystery surrounding who the killer could be. But all the characters are either boring or suck, and it’s pretty easy to figure out who the killer is, thanks to that basic bit of logic called: process of elimination. So we can already easily guess who the killer is and there really isn’t any “mystery” to be had, and could you please just move on with it, Movie, because I DON’T CARE ABOUT ANY OF THIS NONSENSE!


Don’t care…


Still don’t care (and it doesn’t look like the other two really do either)…


Look, I appreciate that you didn’t forget about all the ladies watching, but I STILL DON’T CARE!

The one amusing thing I found in the midst of all this garbage, was watching Jeanette and Realtor-boy clumsily make-out in front of the fireplace, and the two of them trying to be all sweet and romantic. Then the film cuts to a different angle and you realize that they’re not alone and everyone else in the house is sitting in the living room and just awkwardly trying not to watch their friend cheat on her boyfriend by macking-out with the timeshare guy. It was beyond bizarre, but very amusing.


Hey handsome, you don’t mind sensually making out with me in front of my five closest friends, do you?

And believe it or not, according to Debora De Liso, the movie WAS actually supposed to be more of a comedy than what we ultimately ended up with. So sort of more in the vein of Slumber Party Massacre, which De Liso and the film’s writer initially starred in. Or at least that’s what she thought anyway. But much like Slumber Party Massacre, this one ended up being a lot more serious than it was (supposedly) initially intended, so… that’s not what we got. But some elements of stupid comedy do still manage to shine through on occasion. The fireside scene is one, for sure. But there’s also things like Eddie’s spectacular failure when it comes to escaping a slow-moving snowplow (he somehow manages to be worse than your average slasher victim clumsily running through the woods), or Cory going downstairs to investigate a strange noise and getting distracted by…a piece of pie, which he immediately starts to scarf down with his hands. Or the ending which is just abysmally stupid, to the point that if I’d been able to roll my eyes any harder they would have been in danger of popping right out of my head. Could some of the things I’m thinking about just have been stupid coincidence? Sure. But some of them are too deliberate to be happy accidents, and a couple of them were pretty funny, so I’ll just have to take De Liso’s word for it.


Um, dude, you know that thing is only going 2mph and you can just move out of the way, right?


Use a fork, you heathen! And slow down! Don’t you know that if you eat too much blueberry pie you become blueberry pie?


Holy shit! He didn’t listen! And why are you making that face!?!

But other than the copious amounts of skin on display from certain actresses and the glacial pacing, for the most part Iced is your typical cheap, cheesy horror film. The acting ranges from ‘okay’ to ‘highly questionable’, the dialogue can be (and often is) absolutely atrocious, and the cinematography and sound can occasionally be…weird. It often looks and sounds like a very quickly thrown together Made-for-TV movie, so nothing exciting there. But there are also occasions when they’ll randomly zoom in to something for no reason, or add a tension sting where one isn’t warranted. Like, “dun Dun DUN!… Oh, look! Pie.” So that can be a little confusing.



The one point I will give in the film’s favor, is that once it does finally get off it’s dunkus and remembers that it’s a slasher and not a cheesy teen soap opera or an episode of Murder She Wrote, it actually has some pretty decent moments. Between the snow plow, the icicle, and the hot tub, it has its fair share of amusing deaths. And while there isn’t a lot of blood or gore, it does look like they had a decent effects person on hand, so what is there ends up looking pretty good. It’s just a shame they couldn’t space those deaths out more to make the rest of the film more interesting, instead of cramming most of it into the last 25 minutes.



In the end, Iced turned out to be quite disappointing. Not only was it NOT the New Years film I was led to believe (why hath thou forsaken me, Internet?), but the pacing is so stodgy that for a while there I forgot that I was supposed to be watching a slasher. Hell, I think the movie might have forgotten. So that’s not good. But I don’t know, maybe it was intentional and Joseph Alan Johnson was just working through some weird breakup shit. Whatever the reason for the extended downtime though, it’s certainly not very engaging. At least not until it gets to the end. But either way that’s a lot of drama to sit through for not a lot of payoff… And it’s horribly cheesy… And not all that well acted. So while I think it has a couple of nice points in its favor I could really only recommend Iced to the most patient of hardcore, cheesy slasher enthusiasts. Everyone else will likely want to steer clear.

Iced is available on a variety of streaming services.

Iced is also available on Bluray from Vinegar Syndrome.

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