Release Date: March 25th, 1983 (Germany)
Directed by: Ralph Bakshi
Written by: Gerry Conway, Roy Thomas
Music by: William Kraft
Cast: Susan Tyrrell, Maggie Roswell, William Ostrander, Stephen Mendel, Steve Sandor, Susan Tyrrell
Polyc International BV, Producers Sales Organization, 20th Century Fox, 81 Minutes
Review:
“Next time you present me with one of your little sluts, Mother dear… I’ll squash you like a bug.” – Nekron
I have a funny story about this film. I saw it when I was probably about four or five when my aunt told my uncle to take my cousins and I to a movie. However, she said it had to be a cartoon because he always took us to see movies he wanted to see, which were usually violent action films. So my uncle took us to this and while it was rated PG by 1983 standards (before PG-13 was even a thing), it certainly wasn’t a kids’ cartoon due to its level of violence and barely clothed voluptuous women.
Anyway, I thought it was cool as hell as a young kid and since I hadn’t seen it since the ’80s, I thought that revisiting it was long overdue.
Luckily, Fire & Ice is still a lot of fun. It has held up tremendously well and it has that early ’80s sword and sorcery spirit. Plus, the visual style is incredible.
What’s really interesting, and it wasn’t something I knew about or would have cared about as a kid, is that the film was made with rotoscoping. What that means, is that live action actors were filmed and then those frames were then traced over for the animation. This early ’80s rotoscoping isn’t as clean as the technique is in more modern films like A Scanner Darkly but it still gives fluid movement and realistic motion.
I also love the character design and the way the fantasy world was drawn. The ape men look great, the monsters are cool, especially the giant octopus, and the rotoscoped characters just fit naturally with the painted landscapes.
The story is also entertaining and what’s really cool about it, is that it was written by Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas, two guys that had previously written Conan comic stories for Marvel. For fans of classic Marvel Conan, you will see parallels to those tales. It’s also worth noting that Peter Chung, the guy who would later create Æon Flux, was an artist on this picture.
Fire & Ice is imaginative and badass. It’s a cool world and a great looking film. I heard a few years ago that Robert Rodriguez was trying to make a live action adaptation of this and frankly, I hope that he does. This is a world that could and should be explored more. Maybe a live action resurrection will help turn Fire & Ice into more than some forgotten ’80s sword and sorcery cartoon. There’s a good story here with really cool characters.
Hell, maybe a comic book company can get the publishing rights and put out The Further Adventures of Darkwolf because he is one of the coolest barbarian heroes of all-time.
Rating: 8/10
Pairs well with: other early ’80s sword and sorcery movies, as well as the animated films Wizards, The Lord of the Rings from 1978 and Starchaser: The Legend of Orin.
Talking Pulp 