Sangre en la nieve

A group of friends accept an invite to stay as a ski lodge but there's a crazy skier out in the snow who is intent on killing them all, one by one. This late entry in the 1980's slasher cycle has bad acting, bad script, bad plot, bad fashions and bad kill scenes. Pretty much everything about Iced is bad, with the exception of the Utah, snow covered scenery and the plentiful sex and nudity. Most of the killings only take place in the last half hour. When the Final Girl realises that there's a killer outside instead of phoning the police she instead rings the chalet manager! Hilarious! Probably the only noteworthy thing here is Lisa Loring, of the original Addams Family, now all grown up and very naked. For me Iced is a difficult film to score. To be brutally honest it is terrible, deserving a 3/10 at best. However, I found it to be of the so bad it's good variety, this slice of cheese often had me laughing, hence my 6/10.

Seven yuppie friends are invited to the opening of a ski resort in northern Utah where, it turns out, a mysterious person is intent on killing them all. Could it be their jealous friend who died in a ski accident four years earlier?

"Iced" (1988) is a traditional slasher with the milieu of "Snowbeast" in the manner of "Satan's Blade" from the early 80s. Twenty-two years later, "Donner Pass" borrowed from these films for the best of the lot. If you like any of these flicks, "Iced" is worth checking despite being formulaic and strapped with some lousy music (not all of it, just bits). You can't beat the setting and, say what you will, it delivers the goods. As the story progresses, the characters are fleshed out.

Standing out in the feminine department is Lisa Loring, best known as Wednesday Addams from The Addams Family.

The flick runs 1 hour, 26 minutes, and was shot in north-central Utah with parts done in Big Cottonwood Canyon, which is a dozen miles east of Salt Lake City.

GRADE: B-

Sigh … I suppose I'll never be able to claim that I've seen all 80's slashers ever made, because here's yet another one I never even heard or read about before today. Oh well, "Iced" certainly isn't a great loss and not at all worth tracking down unless you're an avid fan of the decade and/or the sub genre. The story takes place in a skiing resort – duh – where the usual crowd of teenage stereotypes gathered together for a holiday of fun, until of course a homicidal maniac decides to pick them off one by one. I wouldn't exactly call this original, but since most 80's slashers took place either on high school grounds or in sunny summer camps, I'll reward this movie with half a point extra for its setting. A couple years ago during a previous ski trip in the same resort, the popular girl of the bunch had to choose between two admirers. Her resolute choice for the hunky guy drove the loser to commit suicide and now it looks like he's back from the dead with a vengeance. I know, that's not very groundbreaking either. Like sadly too often the case in this sort of movies, the murders only begin to occur in the third act of the film. The first hour only features false scares, juvenile pranks, dull flashbacks and some welcome nudity. Lisa Loring plays one of the girls who gets topless quite frequently. I mainly know her as little Wednesday from the original "The Addams Family", so I hope it doesn't sound too perverted to mention her naked chest as one of the film's only highlights.

"Iced" focuses on a group of friends who reunite at a posh ski resort after their friend died in a skiing accident four years earlier. Naturally, more members of the group are destined to die.

This shot-on-video slasher flick directed by Jeff Kwitny ("Beyond the Door III") is a prime slice of late-'80s cheese picked off the video rental store shelf. If you know, you know. "Iced" is certainly not a good film, but it is a real low-budget charmer with its fair share of spilt blood.

The setup is banal and predictable (as is the case with most films of this ilk), but what "Iced" has going for it is a snowy atmosphere paired with dark cabin interiors, big hair (it was filmed in 1988, after all), and a fair amount of interpersonal drama between the group of friends that feels as though it could have been plucked from an episode of an '80s soap opera.

Obviously this will not appeal to all tastes, and the film does suffer from some choppy editing that really shows its budgetary restrictions. The performances are also shaky at best, but the ski-suited killer makes some menacing appearances throughout, and the despite the slow-burn nature of the first hour, things do ramp up into full-blown slasher territory in the last thirty minutes, when the bodies start to fall.

Ultimately, the reveal is predictable and the killer's logic stilted at best, but genre fans don't seek out these types of films for nuance. "Iced" is a delirious good time, and an amusing relic of its era. For a no-budget slasher, it stands as a decent shot-on-video facsimile of more polished films. 6/10.

Maybe it was the beer talking, but Iced was a perpetual favorite amongst my friends and I during our college days. A poorly-made skiing-themed slasher with virtually no gore, the film somehow managed to entertain time and time again.

From the Rockadiles t-shirt to Debra Deliso's workout using a rolling pin, this baby is is pure, unfettered bad fun. We've got the most painfully inept man on Earth trying to escape a snowplow. There's some hilariously unintentional homo-erotic moments between two male friends as they lie in the snow together. We've got piles of cocaine you could go sledding on, a killer who leaves messages in puffy paint, and gratuitous Wednesday Addams nudity.

The score, which I find myself humming at least a few times a year, is so bad, its great... and the ending? Wooo baby. If you haven't seen how this delicious piece of cheese ends, then you haven't seen jack.

Iced is a wonderful film. Sure, its wonderfully bad, but that won't stop be from loving every last moment of it.

Now where's my DVD?!