Iced

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-

"Iced" is a low-budget and heavy on drama slasher flick about six young vacationers who check into a posh ski resort where they are systematically dispatched by the killer hidden behind the ski mask.It's apparently a retribution for the suicidal death of one of their friends years before."Iced" is a pretty damn bad.Almost nothing happens during the first hour of the film.The multiple conversations shared mostly by the women are dull,unconvincing and add nothing to the story.At least Lisa Loring of "Blood Frenzy" fame gets naked a lot.Fortunately the last half of the film features some creative death scenes via ski-pole and icicle.Still "Iced" is too boring and goreless to satisfy fans of early 80's slasher movies.4 out of 10.One to avoid.

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.

Group of college kids get together in a cabin for a vacation of drinking, sex, skiing, and more sex. And by the way, a masked killer is on the loose killing off all the kids and the killings seem connected to a fellow skiers death years earlier. Lots of sex and some nudity, but little else. Botched special effects, poor editing that takes away from the enjoyment of some the better scenes in the movie, and a lack of excitement ruin this slasher.

Unrated; Frontal Nudity (male though), Strong Sexual Content, Graphic Violence, and Profanity.

Maybe it was the beer talking, but Iced was a perpetual favorite amongst my friends and I during our college days. A poorly-made skiing-themed slasher with virtually no gore, the film somehow managed to entertain time and time again.

From the Rockadiles t-shirt to Debra Deliso's workout using a rolling pin, this baby is is pure, unfettered bad fun. We've got the most painfully inept man on Earth trying to escape a snowplow. There's some hilariously unintentional homo-erotic moments between two male friends as they lie in the snow together. We've got piles of cocaine you could go sledding on, a killer who leaves messages in puffy paint, and gratuitous Wednesday Addams nudity.

The score, which I find myself humming at least a few times a year, is so bad, its great... and the ending? Wooo baby. If you haven't seen how this delicious piece of cheese ends, then you haven't seen jack.

Iced is a wonderful film. Sure, its wonderfully bad, but that won't stop be from loving every last moment of it.

Now where's my DVD?!