ICED (1988)

 "HOT BLOODED COUPLES FALL PREY TO A COLD BLOODED MANIAC!" 

Whoa Nellie, you want 80's, you got 80's on steroids here, folks!  A group of yuppies go skiing.  A guy named Jeff thinks he has a girlfriend (Trina) but he's wrong about that; she's boinking another guy (Cory).  Jeff goes off in a huff (and a ski jacket and tinted ski visor) and goes for a night ski.  I'm still not sure if his intention was to go off a ski jump and crash through the window of the room where the other two are boinking or not but, unfortunately for Jeff, he careens off a ski jump and lands with a big rock to the chest.  One dead Jeff.  Four years later, the same 'other two' are now married and they and the group of friends are invited by a real estate guy to a new ski resort.  One of the group, a guy named Ed, has car trouble on the snowy road.  He gets out and is promptly ground down into blood jam under the wheels of a snow plow.  The killer wears a ski outfit and a tinted visor (which is jaggedly smashed horizontally across the eyes) and we get POV shots from the killer's shattered visor all through the film.  This is good. 

Uh oh...Ed's gonna be a road smear in a minute...

Ed is the boyfriend of Jeanette -- one of the group -- who all have arrived at the ski cabin.  Jeanette is worried because Ed hasn't shown up yet. 

But not SO worried that she doesn't throw herself at the real estate guy.  Jeanette is played by Lisa Loring; most famous for playing Wednesday Addams on THE ADDAMS FAMILY television programme.  Yes, she gets naked.  Yes, she recently died.  Do with that what your conscience will.  In fact, there is quite a lot of bathtub-frolicking in the first hour of the film.  In fact, there's very little else besides this and some recreational drug use and some bickering and some 80's fashions paraded around.  Besides the aforementioned ground-into-the-asphalt Ed sequence, there is absolutely no killing or slashing or horror hijinx at all.  And this is only an 86 minute movie.  However, after sitting through an hour of absolute 80's cheeziness and Cinemax-style naked bodies grinding against one another, the kills are actually worth waiting for.  Does it make slogging through an hour of dopey nonsense with a heavy 80s vibe?  Well, that kinda depends on your tolerance of dopey nonsense with a heavy 80's vibe.  For me, it was all so ridiculous and hokey that I was OK with it.  And there is the hint that dead ole Jeff has come back from the grave as either a ghost or a revenant to exact revenge so there's that going for it. 

Look!  There's even an icicle stabbing!!!

But mostly, what ICED really has going for it is that final half hour when the over-the-top kills and bonkers ending makes it all worthwhile.  For the life of me, I can't understand why Vinegar Syndrome hasn't released a 4k/blu ray with slipcover of this movie because it's right up their street!  Lisa Loring is the only 'known' actor in the cast, really, but there are a couple others you might recognize from other horror flicks:  there's Debra De Liso and Joseph Alan Johnson who were both in SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE,  Doug Stevenson was in THE PROWLER and Elizabeth Gorcey from TEEN WOLF.  The only real standout is Debra De Liso as Trina, who does a really nice job of acting in the final reel.  I've also gotta hand it to her; De Liso spends a lot of time running around in the snow wearing nothing but a shirt and white jacket on her top half and a pair of panties on her bottom half.  I hope she got a pay raise for that!  So yeah, all in all, I ain't mad at this one.  The first hour is a patience-tester but the end payoff made it OK for me.