I have a question and it’s a damn good one too. I’ve watched the opening sequence three times now and still can’t figure out what the hell is supposed to be going on or who’s doing what to who and why. In fact, the more I watch the less sense it makes.
Know what? It doesn’t matter. Forget I said anything. Thinking too hard is only gonna get me in trouble.
“Ice Queen” takes place on the Killington Mountains where resort employee Johnny (Harmon Walsh) has a really awesome night and a terrible morning after. He hooked up with the very hot Elaine (Jennifer Hill) and did the dirty dance all night long only to remember that he has a fiancé when he wakes up in a strange bed. Damn the luck!
Meanwhile, eeeevil machinations are afoot. Scientist Doctor Goddard is loading a unique specimen of early woman who lived during the ice age onto a plane. This “Ice Queen” has a metabolic rate that’s counter-intuitive to traditional mammal patterns. When he body temperature goes up she grows sluggish, but when it cools her functions spike. TRANSLATION: When it’s warm she looks like a normal chick but when she’s cold she turns into a monster and eats people. Got that? Good.
Daniel Hall Kuhn plays Doctor Goddard, who must be in the running for luckiest scientist in the universe. The man LITERALLY survives an assassination attempt, a crazed monster, a plane crash AND an avalanche all in the space of about ten minutes. The good doctor’s motivations are so secret that I’m fairly certain that he has no idea what they are himself. Kuhn’s acting may seem hammy at first, but when you realize just how impossible his character and how long-winded and unwieldy the dialogue he has to say is you realize that the man must be the ghost of Brando.
As you can tell, the plane that the “Ice Queen” is on crashes and causes an avalanche which swallows up the mountain resort that our pal Johnny works at. Guess the guy just can’t get a break.
This is a low-budget/low-expectation monster movie. It only wants to be an amusing time waster, and I must say that in this modest goal it succeeds. The special effects aren’t all that great (They use model cars for the avalanche sequence, and when I mean model cars I’m talking about Revell and AMT.), very little of the plot or story makes sense, and the dialogue sounds like they’re channeling Charles Band.
But you know what? I liked it. The budget’s high enough so that everything is professionally done and looks slick. The acting is very decent, even the sexpot looking Jennifer Hill doesn’t overact. Director Neil Kinsella is aware that the movie’s premise is dumb but takes it as seriously as possible considering that the title monster can be killed off by a hair dryer. The screenplay wisely skips over anything that doesn’t involve us seeing explosions, hot chicks or the Ice Queen stalking people. It’s far from perfect but most of the bits and pieces click together and that’s enough sometimes.
In the end, this is nothing great and nothing awful. This is the sort of movie that’s worth a rental on a rainy afternoon when you can’t find anything else that looks good.
