Iced

"Iced" focuses on a group of friends who reunite at a posh ski resort after their friend died in a skiing accident four years earlier. Naturally, more members of the group are destined to die.

This shot-on-video slasher flick directed by Jeff Kwitny ("Beyond the Door III") is a prime slice of late-'80s cheese picked off the video rental store shelf. If you know, you know. "Iced" is certainly not a good film, but it is a real low-budget charmer with its fair share of spilt blood.

The setup is banal and predictable (as is the case with most films of this ilk), but what "Iced" has going for it is a snowy atmosphere paired with dark cabin interiors, big hair (it was filmed in 1988, after all), and a fair amount of interpersonal drama between the group of friends that feels as though it could have been plucked from an episode of an '80s soap opera.

Obviously this will not appeal to all tastes, and the film does suffer from some choppy editing that really shows its budgetary restrictions. The performances are also shaky at best, but the ski-suited killer makes some menacing appearances throughout, and the despite the slow-burn nature of the first hour, things do ramp up into full-blown slasher territory in the last thirty minutes, when the bodies start to fall.

Ultimately, the reveal is predictable and the killer's logic stilted at best, but genre fans don't seek out these types of films for nuance. "Iced" is a delirious good time, and an amusing relic of its era. For a no-budget slasher, it stands as a decent shot-on-video facsimile of more polished films. 6/10.

There's something tremendously appealing to me about snowbound horror. Great white isolation, nature itself a menace in cold immensity, and of course the beauty of red blood on fleece white snow. Iced regrettably does next to nothing with its potential, but for the bad slasher aficionado it has its merits all the same. Its set up is promising, first shot a freeze frame of skier atop a mountain, stark image, arms outstretched, poles like chill antennae against the sky. Then we have a race, defeat, romantic rejection and rage. One poorly planned night skiing excursion later and there's the back story. Then its a case of various related parties heading up to the mountains to snag a free holiday out of a condo timeshare pitch, then accosted by a ski masked maniac. Its more or less an absolute textbook example of a bad slasher, nudity, very little gore (just a couple of workable gore shots here) and delicious slices of cheese. It works on vivid characters and amusing dialogue, managing a fair level of general amusement despite having little to offer for the most part. There's John, a doctor with an off key attitude and lovely heroine Trina. There's Carl, twitchy and sarcastic cokehead (scarfs up an impressive load of the stuff at one point) who serves up a fun dream sequence and wired paranoia. Best of all is Jeanette, essayed in lively fashion by Lisa Loring, giving her all for the piece like it counts for something, nicely sexual stuff (that's a carrot in your mouth, not a dick! !). Dialogue is for the most part pleasing, especially in a spell of bad date reminiscence (drive in tissue boob fiasco!) and the actors have good chemistry, there's a nice sense of disparate friends uniting and trying to make a holiday work. Things are regrettably a good deal too slow though, most of the deaths are crammed into the final block and the few sex scenes and occasional boobs don't quite hold the weight of maintaining interest, moreover the direction is generally style free (though director Jeff Kwitny did later make a rocking trashfest by the name of Death Train) and the plotting lacks suspense. Things do perk up fairly nicely in the final twenty minutes or so, with tension, fair kills and the odd giggle from continuity errors, culminating in one of the gnarliest lunatic freeze frame closers I've ever seen. Oh, and the music packs some nice daftoid tunage if memory serves. Little here to recommend to anyone that isn't already a devotee of crappy slashers, but to those that are this one is just about worth tapping for a one time watch.

A group of friends accept an invite to stay as a ski lodge but there's a crazy skier out in the snow who is intent on killing them all, one by one. This late entry in the 1980's slasher cycle has bad acting, bad script, bad plot, bad fashions and bad kill scenes. Pretty much everything about Iced is bad, with the exception of the Utah, snow covered scenery and the plentiful sex and nudity. Most of the killings only take place in the last half hour. When the Final Girl realises that there's a killer outside instead of phoning the police she instead rings the chalet manager! Hilarious! Probably the only noteworthy thing here is Lisa Loring, of the original Addams Family, now all grown up and very naked. For me Iced is a difficult film to score. To be brutally honest it is terrible, deserving a 3/10 at best. However, I found it to be of the so bad it's good variety, this slice of cheese often had me laughing, hence my 6/10.

A lot of people presume that the golden age of slasher movie ended in 1986. Admittedly censorship was beginning to have it's own devastating effect on the once thriving theme. But if truth be known, in 1988 the love it or leave it category was still alive and thriving. In that year alone, we had the impressive entries: Maniac Cop Intruder, Evil Dead Trap and they were only the really good ones! Perhaps less successful, but still as alluring was the rarely themed attempt - Iced! I say ‘rarely themed' because, as the name incautiously describes it's set on a snowy ski result with a killer that doesn't don a clown or hockey mask, but instead an orange visor and a snow suit! The only other movie I can think of that has almost exactly the same setting is Shredder, the recently released ski and slash film that's almost an unofficial remake! Totally coincidental, of course!

Six teenagers are mysteriously invited to a mountainous snow bound resort for a weekend of sex, drugs and cheesiness! It's the first time that they've been skiing since their friend, well; acquaintance was killed in an accident four years earlier. Jeff died after he had sworn vengeance on Cory for stealing the woman he had eyes for, Trina. Even before they all arrive, a psycho wearing the snowsuit and ski mask that Jeff died in viciously murders one of them. Hmmm! We've already learned that he was an eccentric character, he spent time in an asylum and he's partial to throwing violent bouts if things don't exactly go his way. Now it looks as if he's come back from the dead to make good on his last words to those who tormented him in life!

Iced sits comfortably along with Evil Laugh, Fatal Pulse, Killer Workout et al, as yet another ‘horror' movie that'll bring a smile to your lips more often than it'll ever send a shiver up your spine! Thankfully, they usually always manage to redeem their utter incompetence with the unmistakeable comedy of outright ineptness! Joseph Alan Johnson, the ‘star' of the 1986 bore-a-thon Berserker penned the story and he also plays a key role. Quite why anyone would let him loose in front of a camera again is a mystery; he must've struck some kind of deal when he sold his screenplay! But his lack of any talent fits in nicely with the rest of the brain-starved cast that also includes slasher reprobates Debra Deliso (Slumber Party Massacre) and Lisa Loring (Blood Frenzy - the 1987 one, not Mario Bava's)!

Jeff Kwitny doesn't make any use of the potentially intriguing set locations, you'd think that he could have staged a few remarkable set pieces and made good use of the snow coated mountains. But he instead decides to kill off everyone in and around the cabin, but to be fair; some of the methods of murder are fairly unique. It's amusing, because I never thought that an icicle could be used as a murder weapon! Oh well, you learn something-new everyday, don't you!

The film's real merits lie in the total plot ineptness that can only be found to this standard in slasher movies from the eighties. First off isn't it just amazing how in four years, no-one's appearance has changed at all! Each character is inimitably cheesy; especially Carl who at one point pours out enough cocaine to sniff that even Tony Montana would question his nasal capacity! Eddie's car breaks down conveniently where the killer has a snowplough parked so that he can rearrange his body parts and they all must be stone deaf, because they never hear the dieing screams of their friends as they're massacred only a few yards away! As well as suffering from hearing difficulties, Trina is also particularly dumb. If the ‘victims' from Nail Gun Massacre took the biscuit for being a little slow off the mark, then she runs off with the whole packet. She finds Cory lying in the kitchen with a knife sticking out of his chest, he asks her to get some help and after the obligatory fumble for the keys to a car that wont start, she eventually decides to use the telephone (doh)! Instead of ringing the local law enforcement or a paramedic for her Husband who's probably bleeding to death, she calls Alex the resort manager that she shared dinner with the night before! Good thinking brains! When the killer is finally unmasked after a particularly leisurely paced showdown, his motives are thinner than Lisa Loring's ‘comeback' career… and just as baffling!

If you are one of those that's riding the eighties revival and your favourite song is still ‘it's the final countdown', then Iced will rock your world! It was released in the years when slasher directors no longer had gore to rely on to obscure their lack of talent, so instead they used lame nudity and – deliberately or not – unintentional humour. It shines only because it excels in being a woefully bad movie that thinks it's extremely good! I'm in my early twenties, but it makes me feel old when I have to say that they just don't make them like this anymore

Seven yuppie friends are invited to the opening of a ski resort in northern Utah where, it turns out, a mysterious person is intent on killing them all. Could it be their jealous friend who died in a ski accident four years earlier?

"Iced" (1988) is a traditional slasher with the milieu of "Snowbeast" in the manner of "Satan's Blade" from the early 80s. Twenty-two years later, "Donner Pass" borrowed from these films for the best of the lot. If you like any of these flicks, "Iced" is worth checking despite being formulaic and strapped with some lousy music (not all of it, just bits). You can't beat the setting and, say what you will, it delivers the goods. As the story progresses, the characters are fleshed out.

Standing out in the feminine department is Lisa Loring, best known as Wednesday Addams from The Addams Family.

The flick runs 1 hour, 26 minutes, and was shot in north-central Utah with parts done in Big Cottonwood Canyon, which is a dozen miles east of Salt Lake City.

GRADE: B-