(1983)
Dir - Ralph Bakshi
Overall: GOOD
A Frank Frazetta painting come to life, Fire and Ice remains one of the best sword and sorcery films from the genre's early 80s boom. This was a joint collaboration between Frazetta and animator/director Ralph Bakshi, both of whom used rotoscoping and a crack team of writers and illustrators to bring a rudimentary yet inventive tale to life about two opposing kingdoms. We have the good guys at Firekeep whose basis of operations is a volcanic citadel, and then we have the evil Nekron and his Queen mother who dwell in an ice fortress. Fleshing everything out is the scantily clad Beastmaster/He-Man hero, an also scantily clad Princess, a guy that is basically Frazetta's Death Dealer come to life who wears a wolf helmet and wields an axe, plus witches, subhuman muscle, and giant monsters. The fluid animation which traces over live-action performers may be more realistic than most, but the setting and circumstances are pure adolescent fantasy. Still, the one-dimensional story and characterizations never outstay their welcome and something this silly deserves such an eye-popping presentation to elevate it.
(1986)
Dir - Albert Pyun
Overall: MEH
Left unreleased in American and most other countries for decades after it was finished, writer/director Albert Pyun's nonsensical 80s nightmare musical Vicious Lips, (Lunar Madness, Pleasure Planet, Red Moon), has a deliciously decadent and dated aesthetic and opens with a bang, only to both figuratively and literally crash land from the second act onward. Set in some dystopian future, a bitchy all female rock band's singer has just been killed, so their sleazeball manager grabs the first aspiring front-woman that he can find, being a timid high school girl. They immediate play a gig, (or a single song at a gig), with no rehearsal, then get an offer right away to fly across the galaxy for their big break. With cornball New Wave girl pop rock songs spewing on the soundtrack left and right, frantic editing, colorful characters, intergalactic space travel, and mutant vampires all within the first twenty minutes, things are off to a splendid start before the character's rickety ship crashes into a desert, at which point Pyun's script runs out of ideas and the movie dies an instantaneous death. Nearly all of the next hour is dull and goes nowhere until an "it was all a nightmare" chase sequence attempts to spring the viewer out of their slumber. A waste of wacky midnight movie potential, at least we can ponder what could have been.
(1988)
Dir - Camilo Vila
Overall: MEH
A dopey occult B-movie from Cuban-born director Camilo Vila, The Unholy has the usual trappings for such films from the period, which is to say that it scratches the late 80s schlock itch of cheap keyboard scores, jump scares, gore, and a practical effects showdown for the finale. Actor Ben Cross portrays a priest for the second time in a row following his turn as Rufino Niccacci in Alexander Ramati's made-for-television film The Assisi Underground, here getting the "chosen one" cliche thrown on him after surviving a seventeen-story fall and tasked with reviving a New Orleans church that was closed up after its previous Father had his throat ripped open by a Mother Mary statue that looks like a prop at a Goth rock show. We get some demonic mumbo jumbo lore thrown in to explain the supernatural shenanigans, but it amounts to the usual deal where a holy man has to ward off sexual temptation in order to defeat the Satan and blah blah blah. Vila treats the material seriously which does not help a few awkward set pieces go down any more convincingly, but adorable baby gremlin demons, a giant fuck-off monster, and a trippy descent into hell gives it a nice schlocky note to go out on.
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