The Ice Pirates
Every Friday in Lent, our family tradition is to spend the night together as a family watching movies. Over the years this has grown from a tape for my wife and I to DVD’s for 3 then 4 and now for 5. As the years have gone by, we have gotten smarter about getting these movies. Don’t buy on Thursday, order in advance, look for sales and coupons. Don’t buy movies after Christmas. This year we did a spreadsheet, everyone got to fill in movies for each week, and if they wanted to, alternatives. This made my wife’s shopping easier.
So my first movie this Lent season is The Ice Pirates. Due to our second honeymoon trip, watching my Friday pick got delayed till the following Monday night. You may have seen this parody on the science fiction films, and if you sit down to watch it, and one point or another something will click and you will say “Oh yeah, I have seen this before” It is not a spoof in the category of Space Balls. There Mel Brooks took specific scenes from Star Wars, Alien, Planet of the Apes and other films, and did a parody on them. The Ice Pirates is a comedy about the entire genre of Sci-Fi films.
Robert Urich stars as Jason, the pirate. With his sidekick Roscoe, Michael D. Roberts, they kidnap Mary Crosby as Princess Karina. They go from an assembly line eunuch process to helping the Princess escape to find her father. Her the ship catches a bad case of space herpes. Anjelica Huston is Maida, a warrior pirate on the crew. She has done some great movies including The Witches and Adams Family.
John Matuszak, famous for his role in “The Goonies” plays Killjoy alongside Ron Perlman, as Zeno. Ron is the voice of Slade in Teen Titans - a well know fact to geeks of the Teen Titans series. You can’t have a Giant T shaped building without Ron Perlman. He is a staple in comic voice roles and a long list of sci-fi films. John Carradine, Supreme Commander, serves up a great sci-fi spoof role. Can you even have a sci-fi or horror film prior to his death in 1988 and not have John Carradine in some role? A man of many roles, many talents.
This is a low budget film with nothing super in terms of script, acting, special effects or purpose. But they don’t come off as trying to be anything other then a low-budget sci-fi comedy / action film. It is a must see, but since its release in 1984, you had to have seen in a few times, or pieces of it, these past 2 decades. Go rent it, or buy it - pop on bag of popcorn and sit back and just laugh at the enjoyable film. It’s worth it - 3.5 out of 5 stars on the serious scale, 4 out of 5 on the humor scale.
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