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The story couldn't be much simpler: Evil Lord Necron and his even more
evil mother Juliana want to conquer the whole world with the power of ice
- but then there's good king Jarol, who controls the power of fire and who
is the only real opponent in Necron's plans for world domination.
So Necron sends some of his Subhuman warriors to kidnap Jarol's sexy
and scantily clad daughter Teegra. Teegra though escapes her captors and
meets blond muscleman Larn. Of course the two soon fall in love, but
eventually, the Subhumans attack, knock out Larn and take Teegra prisoner
once more. Larn though is found by Darkwolf (who wears a wolf mask
complete with pointy ears), nursed back to health and trained in fighting.
Larn and Darkwolf then head to King Jarol's castle and ask him for his
army of Dragonhawks to save his daughter, to which the good King quickly
agrees. At first though their rescue attempt seems to fail when Larn fails
to defeat Necron, who seems to have hypnotic powers, in battle, and is
thrown into the dungeon. But then, Darkwolf takes on Necron and his mom
and defeats them both for good.
Meanwhile though, King Jarol has realized that the Ice-realm has come
too close for comfort and releases his secret weapon, hot molten lava, on
it to totally melt it ...
Fortunately though, Larn has since managed to free himself and Teegra
too, and the two have mounted a Dragonhawk who takes them away from the
Ice Kingdom just before it's totally destroyed ...
Regarding heroic fantasy, Frank Frazetta is one of the most
popular and very possibly one of the best illustrators and comicbook
artists, so to turn his designs into an animated movie sounds like a good
idea, doesn't it ?
The answer, unfortunately, is no.
Granted, on a visual level, Fire and Ice is fascinating, some
times even stunning, but on a story level, it is little more than another
mindless barbarian movie as there were a dime a dozen in the early 1980's
in the wake of Conan the
Barbarian, and not even a good one. As a matter of fact, Fire
and Ice is little more than a schoolboy's dirty (and politically
questionable) fantasy: All the women have gorgeous bodies and wear next to
nothing, the hero is of course muscular, blond and seems to be of Arian
descent, while the villains are a bunch of Neanderthal-like Subhumans who
deserve every slashing they get - so much for subtlety.
Now it's far from me to say that either Frank Frazetta or
director/producer Ralph Bakshi or anyone else involved in the film had the
intention to make a film based on Arian ideology - however, within the
formula of the barbarian film, one easily falls into the trap of carrying
such messages anyways ...
Interesting aside: In the 1960's, Frank Frazetta created a series of
illustrations based on Conan, which would later vastly influence
the stuly of Marvel's
Conan-comics, while co-screenwriter Roy Thomas wrote for the Conan-comics
in the 1970's.
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