Feuer und Eis

Forget "Wizards", this is the best Ralph Bakshi ever has given! Using Frank Frazetta's characters and art, he created this beautiful and stunning epic that has more life and interest than any other movie he has done. Wheras "Wizards" just is confusing and way too cartoonish to be taken seriously, "Fire and Ice" never shows any humor or cartoonish elements. It is simply a straight foward and to-the-point action cartoon. It also is a bit deeper and interesting than most of the other "sword and sorcery" movies in the 80s. Definately recommended!!!!

Picked up the movie at the flea market for 4 bucks, sure did get my moneys worth!. Could care-less about the hot babes but the animation just blew me away after a steady diet of Simpsons (Sorry Mr. Groening). The best part, facial expressions. Recommend multiple viewings with some cool tunes, good friends and a couple of cold ones!

Fire and Ice is Ralph Bakshi's animated vision of Frank Frazetta's fantasy world (who even assisted in the making of this feature). The story is your basic tale of good verse evil; a ruthless sorcerer and his mother are intent on taking over the world, using their power to spawn ice glaciers to achieve this goal. Their last resistance is Fire Keep, a city built around a volcano. Really, the story and characters are kept simple while the showcase of this movie is the animation and action. Bakshi uses a process known as rotoscoping in this film (not his first time though). Rotoscoping is when actors are shot in live action and then later drawn over and added into the backgrounds. Nowadays, you might call it a form of motion capture. Anyway, the effect is actually pretty cool, bringing a certain realism to the characters that is absent from traditional animation. Keeping this in mind, we now come to the action in this movie, of which there is plenty. The movie only takes breaks to set up the next scene of combat for our two warrior heroes. It's often rather brutal, involving swords, spears, axes, and arrows. Aside from taking on gangs of Subhumans (the evil foot soldiers), there are also a few mythical-type creatures to deal with. Fire and Ice is the third Bakshi production I've seen and at that, the best. While I think it could've been better, it's still a fairly fun and entertaining fantasy picture, and I believe that's all it's meant to be. The Limited Edition DVD from Blue Underground does the movie justice with a decent transfer (the video shows some age but the audio is fine) and a few featurettes. There's also a sufficient commentary with Lance Laspina and Bakshi, who comes off as a bit of a jerk. Finally, the set includes Laspina's documentary, Frazetta: Painting with Fire.

By the way, for those in the know, John would love Princess Teegra, a voluptuous, scantly-clad lady right out of one of Frazetta's pictures!

When I was a lot younger and 'traditional hand-drawn animation,' to quote Mr. Eisner, wasn't dead, I was a fan of Ralph Bakshi. Sort of the anti-Disney, Bakshi did counter-culture movies like Fritz the Cat (which Robert Crumb hated so much he subsequently killed off the character), Wizards (a midnight movie staple for years), and the unfortunately named Coonskin, which was nearly incomprehensible. Bakshi was a sort of cultural renegade, offering up in animation what no one else could – basically, he made animated films for adults – and following his own warped vision of how things should be. Probably his highest profile work was his 1978 version of Lord of the Rings, a movie I still enjoy to this day. Problem is, aside from Rings, none of Bakshi's films ever made any money, and an attempt to go commercial with 1981's American Pop fizzled (granted, it was an uneven film). Bakshi returned to the genre that he'd done the best with – swords and sorcery – for 1983's Fire and Ice. 70s megastar artist Frank Frazetta designed most of the characters and did a fair amount of pre-production art (some of which, in true Bakshi fashion, shows up in montages in the film). It was a teaming up of the greatest fantasy artist if the day and the only animator who could have brought his stuff to life with any accuracy. The film was scripted by Roy Thomas, famous for working on Marvel Comics' Conan series, and Gerry Conway, another comics writer. That's a lot of genre talent for a small animated film.

Fire and Ice is no classic. It probably marks the pinnacle of rotoscoping and is a beautifully rendered film. There's a scant excuse for a plot and the characters are wafer thin, but the joy of the film is in the design and animation. This one really is eye candy, and I don't know if any of those involved with its creation ever aimed higher than making an animated Frazetta painting. Certainly they achieved that in spades.

Fire and Ice is achingly simple in its set up. Evil Ice Lord Nekron (a Bakshi staple name, used previously in Wizards) uses his magic powers to crush his enemies with a rapidly moving glacier. He also has a bunch of orcs (call them what they are) at his command who wipe out anyone who dodges the ice. Next up on his deep freeze: Fire Keep, run by King Jerol, who controls the lava, etc. The story centers mostly around a young man named Larn, the stereotypical hottie boy with long hair who runs around in a loincloth. After his village is iced, Larn encounters Jerol's ample daughter, Teegra, a Frazetta gal if ever there were one; body by Pamela Anderson, wardrobe by Frederick's of Hollywood. Aside from the pretty pictures, this would have been a forgettable flick if not for the presence of Dark Wolf, a mysterious warrior who's part Batman, part Superman, and all bad-ass. Dark Wolf's fun to watch, and he elevates the movie into the realm of the watchable.

The dialogue is pretty bad and the story is cliché-ridden, but Fire and Ice is still fun in a dopey kind of way. Some of the elements could have made a decent fantasy pulp novel, and a lot of the designs are pretty neat. Bakshi made better films than this (Wizards, Rings) but he made worse, too (most of the rest of his stuff). I wouldn't recommend this for anyone other than Bakshi fans or animation die-hards, or someone who really likes the fantasy genre. But it's light, brainless fun, and in my mind deserves not to be forgotten to the dustbin of obscurity.

June 8, 2004

I loved this as a kid, but seeing it as a 19 year old I did like it but don't love it. While the animation is great, some of the effects have a choppy look to them, but the story and script were the biggest problems. The action scenes are great and I liked the sense of fantasy but overall the story is basically a very overly-simplistic good vs. evil tale. The script is very cheesy and meandering. However, the animation is great, with beautiful backgrounds, strong colours and characters that are reasonably well modelled. The characters are engaging enough, nothing extraordinary, but at least effort is done to make us care for them. The music is both rousing and mystical. The voice acting is good considering what they had to work with. Overall, good but imperfect. 7/10 Bethany Cox