The Ice Pirates (1984)

(On Cable TV, January 2020) Even knowing that The Ice Pirates is supposed to be a B-grade Science Fiction satire is not quite enough to reconcile me with the daft result shown on-screen. The first few minutes are certainly laborious, as the film makes little attempt to camouflage its low budget or its ludicrous sense of comedy. As a crew of space pirates chases down water (already we’re in bad SF territory), it’s all cheap costumes, leather outfits, ridiculous attitude and campy intentions. The SF devices are dumb, the comedy is dumb and the film itself is dumb. Some of the gags are fit to make people gag rather than laugh, and the visual look of the film seems inches away from horror at times. To be fair, The Ice Pirates does improve slightly the longer it goes on, possibly because viewers eventually get used to the film’s low-end aims. There is a semi-amusing take on Mad Max 2 midway through, and the ending does sport a demented and relatively clever take on relativistic time, although I’d be overstating things if I advanced that it redeemed anything in the rest of the film. (For all I know, I’m reading too much into a plot development from a movie that seems to be making it up as it goes along.) Mary Crosby is deservedly featured on the poster, but most contemporary viewers will get a far bigger kick of seeing distinguished serious screen legend Anjelica Huston as a leather-clad space pirate pin-up able to swordfight and drive a spaceship. Alas, The Ice Pirates is nowhere near what it should have been even as a parody of SF movies up to that point. It’s too juvenile for adults and too smutty for kids and generally too dumb for everyone. Consider that its director, Stewart Raffill, is also responsible for Mac and Me, Mannequin 2: On the Move as well as Tammy and the T-Rex—geez. Wasted opportunities and all that—The Ice Pirates fails to meet even its low ambitions.