In short: Iced (1988)

It’s the wild, wild 80s, a time of deadly hairspray fog and nauseating pastel colours, so is it any wonder that some rather crazy twat misunderstands the interest of lovely – it says so in the script – Trina (Debra De Liso) in him and skis himself to death when she prefers getting (very) naked in a hilarious sex scene with some other twit?

Four years later, Trina is actually married to the other guy. She and the rest of the gang of friends who took part in the sad affair are invited to some kind of test weekend that’s supposed to sell them a ski cabin. Then, a lot of nothing happens. Okay, there’s a murder – with awesome ski-mask-o-vision – none of the other characters witness, but that’s a minute of vague interest followed by what feels like a worthy arthouse film’s length of characters just babbling, some nudity (male and female, at least), some awkward attempts at suspense by paper note, and some coke snorting, followed by more babbling and the sort of seduction sequence that’ll make you run for the hills (hopefully to the dulcet sounds of Iron Maiden).

After ages of that stuff, the film suddenly remembers it’s supposed to be a slasher and packs four or five kills (you don’t expect me to remember how many characters actually were in the film, or to have taken notes on this one, I hope) into the space of ten minutes. It’s a bit of a shame, too, for the hectic series of killings is actually rather fun, with some choice murder methods (ski stick to the throat being the obvious winner), “tasteful” corpse nudity (always a sign of all kinds of good sense and a deep appreciation for human suffering on account of filmmakers) and other exciting extras. If that had been sprinkled throughout the rest of the film, perhaps with the help of some sort of “plot”, Iced might have gone down much better with me, which is to say, with less yawns. Be that as it may, once the killings are done, it’s off to a pretty fun(ny) scene of Trina finding the corpses of her friends and a final girl sequence that suggests our supposed heroine to be one of the worst final girls in a slasher.


One Jeff Kwitny directed the whole she-bang with some visible basic skill, and I have indeed seen much worse fourth tier slashers than this one. Hey, at least there’s a lot of snow on screen.