THE ICE PIRATES (1984)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

Would Stanford Sherman's original script, entitled THE WATER PLANET, have made a good film had it been given its original budget of $20 million? On the plus said, around the same time Sherman's script for the 1983 KRULL yielded at least a better-than-average expensive fantasy-film. On the minus side, if Sherman's original script had the same ending as the finished film, in which the fabled Water Planet turns out to be (gasp) Earth, then maybe that story didn't need to be told AGAIN.

Many others have praised the initiating conflict of ICE PIRATES in the film as we have it, allegedly rewritten by director Stewart Raffill once MGM downgraded the budget to a measly $5 million. In a space-opera cosmos, insidious evildoers called Templars (no, the name means nothing here) have cornered all water supplies in the quadrant, forcing people to pay their exorbitant prices. In reaction, a raffish band of ice pirates begins hijacking water-shipments for resale, presumably at a comparative bargain. The leader is Jason (Robert Urich), and he's most often accompanied by his sidekick Roscoe (Michael D. Roberts). All the others get less dialogue and screen time, including such luminaries as Anjelica Huston, Ron Perlman, and John Matuszak.

The water-stealing idea is largely dropped right away, though, which suggests to me that Raffill had zero interest in it. I suspect that the film's only strong myth-kernel came from Sherman, though. When Jason and his hardies raid a Templar ship, Jason spies a sleeping beauty, none other than Princess Karina (Mary Crosby), and decides that he wants her too. Waking, Karina doesn't immediately like being kidnapped, but subsequent events suggest that her brief time in Jason's manly arms leaves some favorable impression. Though the evil Templars capture Jason and Roscoe and sentence them to become castrated slaves, Karina intervenes to save their junk from the scrap heap.

But though she and Jason clearly have a thing for one another already, Karina ostensibly wants the Ice Pirates' help to find her lost father, who alone can guide a rebel faction to the Water Planet, so as to break the Templars' power. However, once Raffill gets all these pieces in place, he promptly upends the board to pursue every goofy space-joke he can think of. He even has a badguy character reveal that the father's already dead. Way to kill suspense, Raffill!

Somewhere Raffill claimed that he never saw STAR WARS, but a long and laborious cantina-scene belies this assertion. Some jokes work, some don't, but it helps that Urich and Crosby have good chemistry, since the only remaining plotline is the flirty romance of Jason and Karina. There's so little sustained fighting in the film that it's barely a combative comedy: Jason only has one desultory sword-fight atop a moving vehicle. In fact, the character played by Huston outdoes him, getting two sword-battles, one of which involves beheading a rowdy and forcing his friend to apologize. The lack of battle shows a weakness that might have been in the original script, for there's no strong villain involved, just a brief scene of John Carradine in an extended cameo. The whole megilla concludes with a labored trip through a time-warp, in which the characters age rapidly, until they exit the warp and return to normal, And then, of course-- "a planet called Earth!"

I liked a fair number of the jokes, but I can't guarantee anyone else would. PIRATES does seem to have generated a minor cult following, though.