The animated movie was a fusion of director Ralph Bakshi’s rotoscoping animation and the work of fantasy artist, Frank Frazetta. Rotoscoping is painting over live action frames. Bakshi and Frazetta created the character and also produced the film. Bakshi is also the director of the animated The Lord of the Rings (1978) film. The screenplay was written by comic book writers, Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas, the duo wrote the screenplay for Conan the Destroyer (1984). The film is swords & sorcery in the violent, sexy fashion, but still comes in at rated PG. Fire and Ice is currently streaming on Amazon Prime and available on Blu Ray and DVD. The prequel comic book has just been announced by Dynamite Comics.
We hear the heroic trumpets of William Kraft’s score, he conducted the drama, Dead Again (1991). A prologue notes that at the end of the last Ice Age, in the North, was Queen Juliana whose ambition was to take over the world. We see the black and white sketches by Frazetta of the queen and her Sub Human hordes. The narrator explains that the queen had a son named Nekron. He became powerful in sorcery and they sent a glacier to the south from their castle, Ice Peak. The villagers headed south to the volcanic region of the good king, Jarol, we see him at his throne with his daughter sitting before him. Nekron (Sean Hannon), whom we now see animated, continues the glacier to clash against the Southern volcanos!
The actors are credited by their performance models. Stephen Mendel, who was on the show Mad Men, provides Nekron’s voice. Nekron has long, white hair. He struggles on his throne as the jagged ice of the glacier plows up to the wooden fort of barbarian men. Larn (Randy Norton), blond-haired barbarian, joins the warriors at the battlement. William Ostrander is the voice actor and he was also Buddy in the horror movie, Christine (1983). A glacier against a wooden fort? Not strong defenses. He looks up to see a dark rider with an axe. Nekron screams and the ice shatters crushing many of the warriors and breaking the fort walls of North Village! We hear guttural sounds as the Sub Humans run from the mist to the teepee huts.
The barbarians retreat and one of the fallen is Larn. After the battle, the witness is Dark Wolf (Steve Sandor who also voices the role) almost stepping out of Frazetta’s “Death Dealer” painting, but with a black panther hood. He looks to the Ice Peak castle, it is atop a gaping mouth with icy fangs. Nekron is recovering inside. At the battlefield are the shattered wood and barbarian warriors. Nekron drops his hand and a glacier peak falls on some warriors! The slinky, pale figure of Queen Juliana (Eileen O’Neill) enters and congradulates her son. Susan Tyrell voices the queen and was the narrator in Bakshi’s Wizards (1977). They still have to cross the Great Plain before reaching Fire Keep.
The queen sends a robed Sub Human as messager with demands and she adds King Jarol’s “lovely daughter.” Sub Humans are scavenging through the barbarians, one is looking at a shield, and this wakens Larn. He reaches for a flail, spiked ball and chain, which he uses to strike down the Sub Human! Another runs at him with a club, but Larn throws a spear! This gets the attention of the others. Larn escapes into a jungle. The animation including the rotoscoping looks great! He fends off the Sub Humans as Larn tries to escape into the jungle. He is cornered at the edge of a branch and then leaps into the mists! Larn falls, vines are snapped by him until he reaches the ground, this is the scene duplicated in Avatar (2009).
At the mountainous, bearded and bald King Jarol (Leo Gordon) with his fur vest greets his daughter, Princess Teegra (Cynthia Leake). Maggie Roswell, who voices Helen Lovejoy in The Simpsons, provides Teegra’s voice. She is dark haired with an almost see-through purple dress. Teegra sees entering the castle, the three hooded messengers, but her tutor (Tamarah Park) continues her lessons about the four elements. Teegra is bored and falls on her bed, wow. The messengers deliver Nekron’s message of total surrender. This is rejected by King Jarol and his son, Prince Taro (Ostrander, Narn’s voice, is Taro’s live action model and voice). While they speak, three Sub Humans scale the tower to reach Teegra!
Her black panther, Shaitan, growls at their appearance, but a spike is thrown at him! She screams, a Sub Human knocks out the tutor, and takes away the struggling Teegra! Her screams are heard at the throne room and the messengers are killed by Taro and Jarol. Taro calls for soldiers to ride the dragonhawks. The pteradactyl-like dragonhawks are ridden like Avatar’s ikran. King Jarol says the jungle is too dark for the Sub Humans to be found. The Sub Humans push Teegra along and then drink from a river. One tears off Teegra’s dress and pushes her into the river. She still has her bikini-like clothes. Teegra dips into the water and then swims away! On the other side of the river, she runs and takes cover in a fallen tree trunk. The Sub Humans search for her.
The closeup of Teegra’s face with the moonlight through the cracks of the tree is a great shot! A Sub Human reaches into a tree trunk and pulls out a large insectoid that bites his arm! Another kills it and they pull back into the jungle. Larn is resting in a giant tree and then takes down a Sub Human and takes its spear. Teegra is on a log floating on a lake and reaches an island. The Sub Human hunters are suddenly attacked by a dinosaur-like beast! A Sub Human survivor uses a log like Teegra and reaches the island. He is wounded, but still swing his axe! Teegra has a knife and kills him. At the Sub Human camp, a blue fire has Queen Juliana demand to see Teegra. A Sub Human reports that she escaped and he is hung by Juliana’s fire! In the morning, Teegra reaches a temple ruins.
Larn is walking in a graveyard of dinosaur creature bones. He takes cover as some wolf beasts sense him. Larn uses a spear to pole vault over them and run! He is about to reach a jungle when an arrow kills one of the beasts! The arrow was loosed by the mysterious Dark Wolf. Larn continues into the jungle and sees some ruins. At night, he eats from one of his kills, a boar crature. Someone approaches and Larn pretends to sleep. The figure, kinda shapely, approaches him. Larn catches Teegra trying to take part of the boar. She starts to run and of course Larn follows. Teegra reaches a bush of red berries that Larn eats. A few days and nights together (?), Teegra suddenly starts to head home. Caught in the conflict, Larn must save Teegra and ultimately face the sorcery of Necron! There is great adventure that is more action, not bloody swords and sorcery violence, but with a kind tame fantasy story. Fire and Ice is a stunning animated film with heroic characters in a Frank Frazetta fantasy world!
Five Spears out of Five!
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