There is something to be said of bad movies because no matter how terrible they might be, no matter how cheesy or ridiculous, they can still entertain the audience, just not in the way the director might have thought. Iced is like that.

While it was supposed to be a horror film, a slasher more pointedly, director Jeff Kwitny and writer Joseph Alan Johnson were more interested in making something more like Days of Our Lives than they were anything else. To that effect, a lot of melodrama takes place as the various characters try to figure out their lives at the opening of a ski resort. So and so is not getting as much sex as she used to, this person loves this person and that person no longer loves that person and so forth. Because of this, the film does tend to drag on for a bit as one waits for the murders to happen and yet, surprisingly, it is not all bad for who does not love a bit of inane gossip or girl talk or what have one? Still, it is almost as if the makers of this picture cannot decide what they want this movie to be and it is not until the last third of the entire affair that things finally begin to pick up.

Most of this film is pretty laughable at best, a film that many might have watched on some late-night cable channel when it was first released with the few bits of nudity cut out. Even seeing Lisa Loring wearing her birthday suit is not enough to save this movie from being just a passable excuse for a slasher. As for the villain who dresses up in a ski mask, they could have been a little more imposing and the kills which were quite uninspired aside from the icicle murder were nearly blood and gore-free. For all intents and purposes, this movie could have been made for TV and aired on ABC Sunday night where the whole family could have watched it. Calling this a slasher is almost a disservice to other slashers as it was so tame.  Wanting to fall asleep was a definite thought before most of the kills had even taken place as it took so long to really get going.

All of that being said, that soap opera sheen that the movie sports gives it a wee bit of charm, just enough to make the audience intrigued enough to see where it goes and while it was perhaps a bit overlong, before one notices, it is over. Iced could have been better if the story had been a little stronger as the setting was perfect and the actors had a modicum of talent to pull it off. As it is, it is what it is.

1.5 out of 5