Reviews
[REVIEW] The Skiing Slasher ‘Iced’ (1988) Provides Chills, If Not Thrills
Hell hath frozen over here at Horror Press, and as one of the world’s premiere 1980s slasher obsessives, I thought this might be the perfect time to crack into my unwatched VHS of the 1988 skiing slasher Iced. Here’s the gist. Four years after their friend Jeff (Dan Smith) dies in a skiing accident, a group of friends (Doug Stevenson, Debra De Liso, John C. Cooke, Elizabeth Gorcey, Michael Picardi, Ron Kologie, and the original Wednesday Addams, Lisa Loring) is invited to the swanky Snow Peak skiing community for a vacation. Isolated and surrounded by snow, they begin to be hunted by a killer wearing Jeff’s cracked ski mask, who blames them for the accident. Is it Jeff? Or is it someone else seeking revenge?
Hell hath frozen over here at Horror Press, and as one of the world’s premiere 1980s slasher obsessives, I thought this might be the perfect time to crack into my unwatched VHS of the 1988 skiing slasher Iced. Here’s the gist. Four years after their friend Jeff (Dan Smith) dies in a skiing accident, a group of friends (Doug Stevenson, Debra De Liso, John C. Cooke, Elizabeth Gorcey, Michael Picardi, Ron Kologie, and the original Wednesday Addams, Lisa Loring) is invited to the swanky Snow Peak skiing community for a vacation. Isolated and surrounded by snow, they begin to be hunted by a killer wearing Jeff’s cracked ski mask, who blames them for the accident. Is it Jeff? Or is it someone else seeking revenge?
Is Iced a Good Slasher Movie?
Unfortunately, like many meat-and-potatoes slasher movies of the late 1980s, Iced does not have much to offer the seasoned horror fan. The acting ranges from competent (hi, Lisa Loring) to absolutely abysmal, averaging out much closer to abysmal than not. The real estate agent Alex Bourne (played by the movie’s screenwriter, Joseph Alan Johnson), in particular, is a disastrously beige nonentity.
The movie’s pacing and structure are also baffling. There are almost no murders beyond the opening kill for a good half of Iced’s runtime, forcing you to spend time watching this group of people have a mediocre ski vacation where they’re constantly sniping at one another and not doing much else. When the kills do come, they zip past you at a too-rapid clip, hardly giving you time to pay proper attention to them, like chocolates on the conveyor belt in I Love Lucy.
There is next to no tension-building in the movie because of this, just a lurching sort of stop-start motion that will make you seasick. By far, the most exciting and visceral moment of the movie is a scene where a character is wandering around in the dark and bangs his shin on a coffee table.
Tragically, the skiing is also not that thrilling to watch. While it’s competently shot, enough to be legible, it seems to be beyond the limits of director Jeff Kwitney to turn it into something propulsive and exciting. Thankfully, the movie pretty much forgets about skiing after the first act, anyway.
What Does Iced Do Well?
Although the sum of its parts is pure blandness, there is plenty that Iced does quite well. For instance, the movie was shot in Utah and thus comes by its iciness naturally (sorry, Jack Frost, California doesn’t quite cut it), crafting a unique setting for a late-period slasher with a frigid, moody atmosphere. I’m also a sucker for themed kills, and the use of a ski pole, an icicle, a snowplow, and a hot tub do a lot to spice up the proceedings.
For the gorehounds in the audience, only one of the kills is particularly bloody, though they are nearly all well-rendered by their own standards (there’s an electrocution that relies on performance rather than effects, for instance, and does stick the landing). And even the offscreen or underwhelming kills end up being useful in the Final Girl sequence, when their frozen bodies provide a gruesome and effectively bleak tableau.
Exploitation and Progressive Elements in Iced
As far as exploitation movies go, Iced also has quite a bit to offer on that front. Nearly every member of the cast takes off all their clothes at one point or another, chilliness be damned, and there is a reasonably equitable division of male and female characters wandering around bare-chested, which always feels shockingly progressive when you’re watching a 1980s slasher. Plus, the sequence that is the most undignified (a topless corpse is seen with snow piled on her breasts) actually works for the tone, as the indignity makes her death feel that much more tragic, while the piled snow emphasizes how impossibly long the character has been exposed to the elements.
What else is good? Well… The killer’s POV is depicted by showing a view through the cracks in Jeff’s visor, which provides a neat new image for a type of shot that is otherwise pretty standard for a slasher movie.
However, Iced ultimately exists in this nether space between interesting and boring where it never particularly feels like a slog, but is oh-so withholding when it comes to meting out exciting moments. I’ve seen dozens of slashers that are much, much worse, so it’s hard to get angry about what this 1988 entry is bringing to the table. That said, this one is only for die-hard fans of the subgenre, or for people who desperately need a snowy horror fix and have already seen everything else from The Shining to Wind Chill.
Score: 4/10
Most people find that stretching their dollar still barely gets them by in today’s economy. I am very particular about what I spend my spare money on regarding extracurriculars. And no one likes to feel like their money is wasted. Madame Morbid Trolley Tours wasn’t an experience I had been familiar with. Maybe that’s because I’m chronically offline for most of my life. So this leads to the perfect question: in today’s turbulent economy, is Madame Morbid Trolley Tours worth the price? The short answer is unquestionably, yes. But it’s more than just a simple yes.
My wife and I arrived at the designated meeting point 15 minutes before the scheduled departure time. A handful of minutes later, a gorgeous, e-candle-lit trolley pulled up to the side of the road. We were greeted by impeccably on-brand Allison Chase, our tour guide, and trolley driver ‘Mad’ Matt Zaller. The wonderfully cheery duo invited us on the trolley, and the tour was set to begin.
400 Years of Death, Destruction, and Infrastructure
After a welcoming video intro from someone who knows a thing or two about busting ghosts, we set off on the inaugural Madame Morbid Trolley Tour in its ninth year of operation. From the Brooklyn Naval Yard all the way to Dumbo, and more, this tour magnificently chronicles 400 years of history, the good and the bad, expertly. No matter how much you think you may know about Brooklyn history, I can bet there will be something new learned within the first 15 minutes of the tour. From the first-ever plane crash to one of the worst theater fires in history, this tour covers tragedies that the greatest horror writers couldn’t conceive.
The Deadly [Charming] Docent
Allison Chase led the fascinating tour in character from the moment we stepped on the trolley until our departure. But Allison’s character was not forced or fake; you could feel Allison’s passion for not just morbid history, but the accuracy of it. Some of the stories we heard were steeped in historical context, and it was not boring for a single second. The Madame Morbid Trolley Tour is not your standard full-talking tour. It’s a mixed-media adventure of some of Brooklyn’s darkest moments.
During “downtime” (the times between locations), we were edutained by mini documentaries (that were quite funny). Some of the “downtime” was filled with traffic trivia (I won a needle pen!). And other times were show-and-tell-like, with objects passed around for us to examine. But there was never a moment of silence that wasn’t purposeful. All in all, Allison’s knowledge and passion shone like the luminosity of a full moon.
Is Madame Morbid Trolley Tours Worth It?
The Madame Morbid Trolley Tour was not just a fun night out for my wife and me, but it was a delightfully dark night of edutainment. It should also be noted that ‘Mad’ Matt’s driving skills were fantastic. There was a time when I had become enamored with how Matt handled the narrow streets of Brooklyn before realizing that I needed to refocus my attention on Allison. The Madame Morbid Trolley Tour is an exceptionally fun evening of horror and history that will make you think twice next time you walk down the streets of Brooklyn. It is worth the money, and then some. There’s no better activity for a cold, dark October night than the Madame Morbid Trolley Tour.
For more information on Madame Morbid Trolley Tours, and to get your tickets, click here!
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I should have watched the Stephen King adaptation Cujo a million years ago. First of all, I was a voracious King reader in middle school. The other thing I was obsessed with during those years was Friends. You know, the show that hinges a major episode’s subplot on Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) watching Cujo for the first time. Whatever the reason was, I never got around to it, but I’m rectifying that oversight now.
What is Cujo About?
Cujo tells a relatively simple story. Donna Trenton’s (Dee Wallace) a housewife who’s cheating on her husband Vic (Daniel Hugh-Kelly) with local handyman Steve (Christopher Stone). There’s no accounting for taste, because Vic is 10 times hotter and Steve doesn’t own a bed frame. Look, Donna. I know Vic has that awful David Hasselhoff hair, but I promise the 1980s will end sooner or later. It’ll be OK.
Donna’s attempted termination of this affair ultimately leads to its discovery. Amid this drama, her car breaks down at a mechanic’s isolated farmhouse, trapping her and her son, Tad (Danny Pintauro). You see, the mechanic’s dog, Cujo, freshly christened with rabies, is patrolling the area and attacking everything in sight.
Dee Wallace Is Cujo’s Not-So-Secret Weapon
It would be impossible to start a worthwhile review of Cujo without praising Dee Wallace. The woman is a genre icon, naturally. Think about this: She had only appeared in seven theatrical movies before starring in Cujo. Four of those movies are The Stepford Wives, The Hills Have Eyes, E.T., and The Howling. But this woman didn’t become an icon simply by accidentally stumbling into some iconic titles. She is simply terrific as Donna, using her darting eyes and taut expression to deliver oodles of subtext. You instantly get the sense of how trapped she feels by marriage and motherhood without her uttering a single word.
A good performance is vital, here. Because there’s a hell of a lot of drama to get through before she’s trapped in that damn car. But Wallace instantly shoves you into Donna’s perspective, whether you like it or not. This makes it all the more potent when she is menaced by Cujo. Her desperate attempts for survival, also impeccably performed, have true weight because she seems like a real person. She is also given an incredible scene partner in Danny Pintauro. The future Who’s the Boss? star, who was only six when shooting Cujo, has a perfect everychild quality. His innocence heightens the peril. But so does that fact that he is just as irritating as every six-year-old you’ve ever met.
This movie truly captures how annoying it must be to be stuck in a life-and-death situation with a child. This is a compliment, I swear! Donna is worn down by every aspect of the situation, including her own son’s inability to cope with it. And this ratchets up the tension even further, to an almost unbearable degree.
Cujo Is a Mixed Bag, But Worthwhile Overall
The movie doesn’t work if Cujo himself doesn’t work, and at first I was real worried that he wouldn’t. In the first half, the St. Bernards that play Cujo onscreen are often shown to be wagging their tails in delight. Which kind of undercuts the reality of the situation, I’d say. But the editing and the special effects step in to fix what animal training couldn’t. The attack scenes in the second half are constructed with quick cuts that never let you get too much purchase. It’s a good approach for keeping viewers off-kilter.
Also, Cujo becomes less and less recognizable as a cuddly canine the further the movie gets. It’s a simple trick, really. He ends up getting coated with more and more slime. Saliva, pus, blood, and what have you. This is good for making him feel like a true movie monster. Plus, it’s a good mirror for the sliminess inside the car as it gets covered in sweat, blood, and grime.
The second half of the movie ultimately works like gangbusters. It’s a shame that Cujo is too cowardly to get Donna and Tad in the car before the halfway point. This decision is somewhat faithful to the book’s structure as I remember it. However, it diminishes the weight of the long days that they spend in the car. We really need to feel that crushing stretch of time, and we don’t. When Tad is suffering from dehydration, it’s not a gut punch. Honestly, I just found myself asking, “Already?” It’s good that they gave the movie a happier ending, because the classic grimdark Stephen King finale wouldn’t have landed.
Is Cujo Worth Watching in 2026?
At the end of the day, Cujo is a solid movie and I’m glad I finally watched it. However, it’s not such a stone-cold classic that I’m not at least a little intrigued by that upcoming Netflix remake…
