The Ice Pirates

Yes. Four stars. This movie is magnificent madness the likes of which I’ve never seen. It defies logic. It never stops throwing you new weird ideas, even in the last fifteen minutes. I’m just gonna paint in some broad strokes and let you assemble this Voltron of insanity in your head. Imagine the movie you’d get if you combined Space Mutiny, The Apple (without the music), Battlestar Galactica (the 70’s version), a buddy cop movie, and the screwball comedy of 80’s R-rated comedies. Imagine this combination of movies played straight but also for comedy, but never with a wink and a nudge. Imagine a cast with Robert Urich playing Han Solo by way of Mahoney from Police Academy, with Thomas Jefferson’s hair, Angelica Huston, Ron Perlman, Bruce Vilanch, and former football player John Matuszak. Imagine sets so cheap, they use fog machines to cover the design. Imagine sound and visual effects shamelessly taken from other movies. Imagine a robot pimp selling hookers from a TV on its chest and talking like a blaxploitation movie character. Imagine city matte paintings that look like if Roger Dean made his version of Vegas. Imagine a sex scene that actually cuts to stock footage of crashing waves, and an old man in a fight actually saying “I’m getting too old for this”. Imagine a ragtag bunch of interstellar water pirates that also have an elderly French maid that looks like Charlotte Rae from The Facts Of Life. Now, douse this all in enough cocaine to make the coca plant extinct. You’ve now got a rough sketch of The Ice Pirates. Stop whatever you’re doing and watch it. Don’t add it to a list. Don’t sleep on this. Watch it NOW, for all that is good in this world. You need this kind of light in your life.