Fire and Ice: Revisited Ralph Bakshi’s Animated Epic
Animation and fantasy go hand in hand. In the 80s, there was a boom of fantasy epics in the land of cartoons that had nothing to do with the House of Mouse and everything to do with adult content. This was helped along from the previous decade by creator Ralph Bakshi, who had started things off with Fritz the Cat and would be the first to do a feature-length version of Lord of The Rings with his animated film and the trippy flick Wizards (and later – the cult film Cool World).
During our fave decade, Anime would find a welcoming home in the US with several classics that would be released during that time. Canada would also get into the mix with Heavy Metal (which we’ll get to.) But Ralph Bakshi decided to join forces with one of the biggest names in fantasy art for a new entry into the world of adult animated films. That name was Frank Frazetta, and he and Bakshi created a story in a land of both Fire and Ice.
Today on Fantasizing About Fantasy Films, we’re about to get really animated about the genre we all love as we take a look at the classic Fire and Ice.
Coming off the heels of the successful Lord of the Rings animated film, Ralph Bakshi was inspired to work with another icon of art, Frank Frazetta. Bakshi and Frazetta came from the same part of the country and had become good friends over the years.
In the early 80s Barbarian films and fantasy flicks were taking off (as you all know if you’ve watched this series) and Bakshi wanted to see what partnering with Frazetta could add to this trend.
Frazetta had become a legend at this point with his fantasy art. His paintings and work were beautiful, almost hyper realistic affairs with defined musculature on the humans represented. The landscapes were alien and surreal, with creatures that were as gorgeously rendered as the human subjects.
Bakshi, who had already had some feature-length animated films under his belt besides Lord of the Rings, which included the notorious Fritz The Cat and the psychedelic sci/fi and fantasy hybrid Wizards, had just finished the musical animated American Pop. The movie featured a ridiculous soundtrack with music from Pat Benatar, The Doors, Sam Cooke, and more. While it received great reviews, it barely covered back its 5-million-dollar budget at the box office, where the far more successful Lord of the Rings garnered a return of over 30 million on a 4-million-dollar budget.
So Bakshi returned to the fantasy realm. He and Frazetta worked together on the creation of the characters, with this being the first and only time Frazetta’s actual art would be seen in an animated version of itself. 20th Century Fox would distribute the film after having worked with Bakshi previously.
The films script would be written by two names who Fantasizing About Fantasy Films viewers should recognize now, Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas. The two writers who had helped bring to life in comic form Conan and Red Sonja. So they both knew the ropes when it came to a sword and sorcery story.
Fire and Ice starts with a brief introduction to the story’s setting and then quickly moves into the action. The tale takes place in a world filled with large, monstrous creatures and magic. The evil sorcerer Nekron (his name Nekron, what do you think he’d be) is a master of ice magic and is slowly taking over the world with massive ice glaciers he controls, it would seem, with his own body and will. The glaciers destroy everything in their path. His mother, Juliana, urges her son in his conquest. Nekron is as icy cold as his method of destruction, pale nearly blue skin and white hair. They live in a stronghold known as Icepeak (Fire and Ice is not subtle in any way.)
The glaciers destroy yet another village as they make their way to Firekeep (again, it’s not subtle.) There’s one lone survivor from the attack, a pony tailed warrior named Larn. Larn manages to kill a number of Nekron’s subhuman warriors as he escapes.
While Larn is on the run, Juliana sends her minions in a ruse to “negotiate” with King Jarol of Firekeep while more of the subhumans take his beautiful and scantily clad daughter Teegra prisoner after killing her pet panther and smacking down her companion.
Larn and Teegra cross paths and become friendly. Teegra is captured and escapes a lot in this movie…you’ll see the pattern. She and Larn manage to survive in the weird wilds of the forest while the Nekron’s minions search for them. Juliana isn’t happy about Teegra getting away and she soon shows she’s powerful and just as merciless as her son, much to the detriment of the submhumans health.
Larn and Teegra are attacked by a massive squid like creature with Larn nearly dying as Teegra is once again captured (again, this is a pattern.) She’s again captured (yes pattern) by a big, lumbering red headed creature who takes her to…we’re led to believe it’s his mother. The creature is Otwa, and his mother is Roleil, a witch who at first is really pissed off Teegra is wanted by Nekron. Then she decides to heck with it…we’ll use her to curry favor. She soon learns this isn’t a good idea as Otwa is killed by the subhumans and so is she, as they once again take Teegra away.
Larn is found by my personal favorite character of this movie, the badass and mighty Darkwolf, a man who deserves his own god damn heavy metal soundtrack theme song everytime he appears on screen. Don’t judge me, it’s true.
Darkwolf nurses Larn (who really is a bit of an idiot) back to health while Teegra is taken to Nekron who absolutely has no interest in her at all and is actually pretty pissed off his mother would even bother with her. While Teegra makes a rather beautiful offer of peace to Nekron, he spurns her, laughing manically. Much to the chagrin of his mother who probably hoped this would tame her son down or at least give her another heir she could more easily control. As it is, Nekron has Teegra thrown into a pit and tells mommy he’s had enough of her whores (you have to wonder how many times this has gone down with Nekron before.)
While this is going on Larn and Darkwolf have had a run in with the subhumans where Larn runs off and Darkwolf kicks ass like a god damn champion. You’ll soon realize this is an ongoing routine with these two. Larn runs into what is left of the creepy witch in the burned down remains of her hut and she tells him where to go to find Teegra before creepy dying completely.
Realizing that he’s not going to get his daughter back, at least easily, and his kingdom is about to be turned into the land of Dairy Queen, Jarol sends his son Prince Taro off with some of his soldiers to try and get Teegra back. He’s also on the verge of releasing the lava flows from his volcanic home in a last-ditch effort to stop Nekron. Larn gets on board the ship they are using to make his way to Nekron.
Things go about as well as you would expect with Taro and Nekron, with the insane ice magician making all of his soldiers kill each other and eventually Taro himself. Larn meanwhile, screws up again and doesn’t find Teegra and is, once again, saved by Darkwolf after he’s toyed with by Nekron.
The duo go to King Jarol who’s about to go full volcano on everything. Darkwolf and Larn convince him to let them take their dragon hawks (aka Pterodactyls) into battle to fight Nekron and get Teegra back. This goes about as well as you would expect for the poor dragon hawks (collateral damage seems to not be a concern for Larn) but Darkwolf isn’t going to be dissuaded and manages to at last reach Nekron.
Darkwolf is nearly stopped by the wizards power but as I said, Darkwolf deserves that god damn heavy metal theme song for a reason. He slices and dices Nekron to death which causes the dying wizards last act to be pushing his ice wall past the threshold of Firekeep. This causes Jarol to release the lava which obliterates all of the subhumans, Juliana, the wall of ice, and you would seemingly think everything.
But this is a fantasy flick and an animated one at that. The ice wall is stopped, Larn and Teegra push a dying dragon hawk to its limit (literally grinning and hugging nearby its corpse) and Darkwolf grins, astride his big black bad ass battle horse having somehow lived as well.
Fire and Ice was done using the rotoscope technique that Bakshi had utilized in the past for some of his films. It’s a neat process (which was done strikingly in the last couple of decades with A Scanner Darkly) but here it makes the animation very smooth and flowing. It’s really like seeing a comic book come to life as one reviewer stated upon release.
This also meant that the scenes had to be shot in real life before the animation could be done over the body actors. I say body actors because not all the characters were voiced by the actors who were the basis for their appearance.
For example, Teegra’s body was based on Cynthia Leake. This included her costume too…which she wore and had to move around in while being filmed (Frazetta’s daughters have images from behind the scenes they posted of the reference shots for that stretching scene Teegra does next to her panther.)
The casting for the body actors was done based on Frazetta’s work. Even then though, Teegra wasn’t quite “enough” for Frazetta who “enhanced” her animation. Teegra’s voice however was actress Maggie Roswell. Roswell had a healthy TV appearance list before Fire and Ice, but the irony I’ve been coming to terms with after discovering it…she would go on to voice Maude Flanders on The Simpsons. Honestly what would Ned say?
Larn’s body model was actor Randy Norton, but he was voiced by William Ostrander, who would also be the voice of Taro. Ostrander may be more well known to you pop culture junkies like myself as the bully Buddy in Christine.
Juliana’s body actor was Eileen O’Neill, but that voice coming from her and also narrating the opening could be no one else by the legendary Susan Tyrrell.
Darkwolf, my fave dude, would be one of the few characters who would have the same voice and body actor for their role. Steve Sandor was the hunky Lars in the original Star Trek series and had been a part of a number of westerns on TV as well as a variety of different shows like The A-Team and Knight Rider. He was also a part of the William Peter Blatty film The Ninth Configuration.
The behind-the-scenes video of the actors who played the Subhumans fighting what looks like construction equipment in place of what would eventually become the giant lizard is amazing. Also amazing was the amount of talent besides Frazetta and Bakshi’s which were a part of the animation process. Peter Chung would go on to create Aeon Flux. James Gurney would make the beautiful book series Dinotopia. Steve Gordon would work on numerous animated projects as well, including Titan A.E. (a highly underrated animated sci-fi flick) and X-Men Evolution.
Fire and Ice, while having a massive amount of talent behind it wasn’t a hit when it was released. With a budget of just over a million dollars it only garnered 860K back in box office. And while I love the film, I can see the issues with it as well.
While it may have done new and beautiful things with animation, the story within Fire and Ice is very, very basic. This is one of the major drawbacks of the movie which doesn’t try to do anything particularly new within the realms of fantasy. And in one way I suppose that’s the point as the film was inspired by all of those classic fantasy epics that came before it. Still…it would have been nice to see Bakshi, who had already blown the idea of cartoons as only being for kids out of the water, to expand upon Frazetta’s visuals and bring a deeper story to what was on screen.
That being said, Fire and Ice would undoubtedly inspire several other films and works. It’s hard not to be amused at how similar the characters in this are to He-Man, which would hit TV screens only a few months later (the names Teegra and Teela??), and how Larn and He-Man look a whole heck alike. Then there’s the Ice Wall and Dragons scenario, which we would really see played out in live-action a few decades later with Game of Thrones.
The film would be released in 1983 on VHS and would find it’s cult following not long after, eventually getting a release on blu ray. Since then it’s gotten a bit of a come back thanks to streaming which you can do currently on Amazon Prime.
Robert Rodriguez, much as he’d said he was going to do with Red Sonja, had begun planning a remake for a live action version of the film. As of right now, nothing has been heard of this happening nor any casting ideas…though I’m putting my money on Jason Mamoa for Darkwolf. I’ve spoken.
In 2022 Dynamite comics announced that for the 40th anniversary of the film (which is this year btw) they would release a prequel comic book series based on the world of the film. This would show us the characters before the events that would decimate their lands. The first comic in the series was released in August of this year with some amazing art and a story approved by both the Frazetta family and Bakshi.
I love Fire and Ice. Like I said, it doesn’t do anything really new, but it doesn’t have to. It’s a celebration of classic fantasy with the art of a legend like Frank Frazetta. If you go back through Frazetta’s work, you will see some of his previous paintings being brought to a beautiful life in the animation cells on your screen. The Egyptian Queen that he created in 1969 is there within Teegra. The almighty Death Dealer with his axe and war horse is in every inch of Darkwolf.
It’s a classic and it’s a testament to Frazetta and Bakshi, two pioneers in art that came together to make something about magic that actually was magic.
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