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What's this? TWO CS dream team projects in the same month? Fire and Ice is apparently the result of the combined efforts of Ralph Bakshi, creator of Fritz the Cat, the non-Go Nagai movie responsible for this feature existing, and Frank Frazetta, one of the pioneers of the fantasy art trend I find so detestable I designed an RPG specifically to lampshade it.
Producers Sales Organization Presents. Yeah, that's a good sign. I also like the Jaws-esque music when Ralph Bakshi's name appears. Twice. Then it turns to more fantasy appropriate stuff. Now here's a creepy voiced narrator. She sounds like Phillis Diller or something. It's also pretty rushed. So there's an evil ice queen and she had a kid she named Necron and they took over ice land and drove everyone down into volcano land and are magically making it colder there! This is all over pencil sketches or text. Then the actual animation starts and.... wow is it terrible. We've got Necron looking like He-Man, and then we've got an inbound ice wall looking like... unshaded white triangles. Seriously, that is some crap ice. Anyway, we've got a bunch of barbarians in loincloths fighting a bunch of barbarians in loincloths. Now remember, half of these guys are from the frozen north, and the other half are from volcano land, so it goes without saying which ones are blond white guys and which are all dark skinned and hairy right? Yeah. The blue eyed blonds are our equatorial heroes here. The Frozen North is populated by racism's greatest hits here. Seriously, take every unflattering racist caricature trait you've ever seen and put'em on one guy. At first I thought they were supposed to be orcs or something, with all their grunting and growling and muzzle-like faces and ridiculously oversized brows, it's... OK I'll have to get back to this, I'd be here all day.
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So let's see... did I mention the fact that everyone s wearing a skimpy loincloth if they're a guy,and a chaimail bikini if they're a girl? I mean, that kinda goes without saying with Frank Frazetta doing character designs, but, yeah, it needs stressing. You know what else needs stressing? Bakshi trying to animate in this style does not work, at all. The level of detail is way too high for the lack of shading, and stuff is seriously herky-jerky. Mind you, it actually looks much much much better than everything else Bakshi's ever done. I mean, usually here's drawing boobs on smurfs essentially. Here we've got some serious Gainax bouncing going on with a practically naked girl, but at least the animation is OK. Princess Teegra here incidentally apparently spends all day just practicing stripper poses. Like, seriously. She's talking to her friend right, and she keeps just randomly splaying her legs and leaning over the arms of her chair and stuff. Then when gets kidnapped by the racism all-stars here she's just like, massaging her boobs in a pond while they watch. I'm not going to get past these guys either. They are painful to look at. And seriously, they communicate also in grunts and growls, although I think I heard one mutter "boobies" at one point. Yeah, they work some baby talk in now and then. They aren't speaking oogaboogese or anything, they're just too stupid to speak complete sentences it seems.
So... hey. You know how a lot of the time when I'm watching something like this, I'll point out how certain scenes remind me way too much of Glistening Chests? Here it's actually really starting to freak me out how well I nailed it. I mean seriously, I didn't put a whole lot of research into that game. I looked at some offensive cover art, caught maybe half of Conan on TV once, and the rest was really just what I thought was massively over-exaggerated extrapolation. This though, man. This is it right here. It's amazing. There's basically no plot or anything. We've got this one blond dude here, who's just been kinda aimlessly wandering around the wilderness since the start of the movie. And then we've got Princess Teegra here who just kinda keeps alternately being captured by and escaping from the racism squad, and every so often someone gets attacked by a pack of wolves or a giant reptile or a giant octopus in a pond or something. Honestly though, I'm really surprised by how she hasn't lost her skimpy bikini yet. I mean, I REALLY had this thing pegged for gratuitous nudity.
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And oh hey, here's that Beastmaster hero from WC3x. Like, totally the same character design. Clearly what he was a reference to this. Anyway though, it's actually a really long time before the main character and girl here actually meet, and it's not for very long either. She shows up, steals some meat, shouts that she isn't a thief, they hang out for like, a couple hours maybe, then she gets nabbed for like the third or 4th tie while he's fighting a random pondtopus. Then Beastmaster shows up with no introduction to just kinda pester Blondie here to go be the main character already. He's totally one of those guys who's clearly stronger, smarter, better motivated, and generally just a much more competent awesome dude than the main character, but just kinda inserts himself as the sidekick. That's... a really common trope actually. There a name for it?
So oh hey, Teegra just kinda got rescued by redheaded Hodor and brought to his so clearly and totally evil mother Melisandre. She proceedes to drug her and steal some hair for a spell. Seriously. She is so hilariously over the top evil, and KINDA faking it. And she's referring to these guys as "the subhumans." Uh... does that make them more or less racist? I'm not entirely sure at this point. Anyway, finding out from her hair scry that she's wanted by Necron, the guy whose goons Hodor JUST unchained her from, and decides to sell her back to them. So yeah, they just come in, kill'em, and take her back. At this point I wish I'd thought to actually take a running tally. I think this is maybe the 5th time she's been nabbed by them 6th? Count gets a little fuzzy because sometimes she escapes for all of like a minute. Anyway, the very next scene is Blondie stumbling onto Melisandre's burnt hut, and getting his next destination from her vengeance demanding corpse.
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And oh hey, is this some sort of plot? Apparently Teegra's brother is making his way up to Necron's place to do the whole kidnapping negotiation thing. Meanwhile, Teegra is finally there, and Necron's all... Dude, mom, what's with the random half-naked chick? Mom's all well dude, you're all king of the world and stuff, at some point you really kinda need to get married and have some heirs. So, hey, princess for you. He's all, Yeah. Pass. Then Teegra is actually all, really? Do I smell or something? Come on, marry me, or don't. We can just be friends even. But... can we do the whole peace thing? Us volcano honkies really don't have a problem with you guys. Necron's all Mom! Seriously! Stop trying to play matchmaker! Throw this girl down a pit somewhere and seriously, don't go bringing me random sluts anymore. It's not cool. That last bit is surprisingly close to a real quote. I kinda like Necron. Then Bro shows up... this movie really needs to work out how to space scenes in the same location and with the same characters farther apart. Oh wait. He throws Bros' corpse in the same pit before she even regains consciousness so I guess this really was just like back to back. Anyway, before killing him, through telekinetic self-stabbing, he's all Yeah, I was kinda thinking of accepting a peace offering from you guys, but you're kind of a dick. You know what? I just tossed your sister out in a dumpster, but I think I'm going go back on that and bang her anyway now just to spite you.
And of course immediately after THAT, Blondie shows up, again, the timing on all this is so weird, and when HE enters the throne room, Necron strips. At first I thought they really were just making him unambiguously gay there, and I still say it's pretty darn heavily implied, but apparently he just wanted to have a sword fight and felt weird being the only character in the movie with clothes for it. Then he tosses Blondie in a box. And I know I said I wasn't going to comment on it, but the main characters don't even have to bother escaping from the badguys here. They're just set down unconscious in out of the way locations and practically just walk right out. So oh yeah, did I mention the fire nation has pterodactyls to ride around on? ... Wait a second. Creepily animated barbarians... pterodactyls... I had this really vivid nightmare when I was like, 8 where I was basically watching this movie. That was the whole thing too. Just... watching this was scary. It's weird though, because I don't recall ever seeing it before, and nothing else is familiar. Maybe I saw a trailer once or something? Anyway, it makes a whole lot more sense now.I always found that bizarre for a nightmare since I have no problem with animation or with pterodactyls, but yeah, having to watch a Bakshi movie, that's always scary.
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Anyway though, eventually Beastmaster turns up again tries to motivate Blondie to go save the day already, but then he's just kinda, you know what? @#$% it, and just goes and kills Necron himself while Blondie goes and tells Teegra it's time to leave. And he does. Yeah. Main villain totally killed by the wise mentor type dude who literally steps in out of nowhere halfway through the movie, has no backstory of any kind, and basically vanishes for half of it before coming to do this huh. And after he dramatic slow-mo kills him, we cut over to Teegra's dad going all, you know what? @#$% it. This is taking too long. Someone throw my Dwarf Fortress style doomsday switch and flood the world with lava. So... I guess all of what passes for civilization is destroyed just, you know, because why not? Then Teegra suggests Blondie and her stop killing random mooks and just go make out. And then it's over.
Well. That was... a lot better than I expected it to be really. Considering who worked on it, the lack of any nudity is actually some kind of miracle. Bakshi's lack of talent took the edge off Frazetta's shiny sleazy character designs, while said character designs demanded at least some basic effort to draw and animate competently. It succeeded in delivering some phenomenal stereotypical barbarian cheese, and it even gave me closure on a deep-seated psychological oddity. Seriously though, those "sub-humans" there. So offensive. So very very very offensive.
