The Ice Pirates (1984) - MGM chaos results in space nonsense

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Several merits of Stewart Raffill's The Ice Pirates are pointed out in tiny lettering on this teen-targeting poster for it

A 'space pirate' knocks out a farting alien.

 

The Ice Pirates is written by Stanford Sherman (Shalimar (1978)) and co-writer/director Stewart Raffill (The Tender Warrior (1971)).

The purple outline above gives a sense of the small and bewildering plot of The Ice Pirates, which is hard to recount as something that makes sense, (probably because it doesn't), but which also includes such elements as a factory that castrates men, an evil, fat dictator who is surrounded by women in bikinis, a beheading, (and the head then tickled under his nose with a feather.) Also a sort of sex scene with the line spoken; "It's so stiff. Your belt I mean". 

Popular sci-fi originals Mad Max (1979), Alien (1979) and Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) are here attempted copied in a haphazard way without much in the way of ideas or skills involved, and the result is the (colorful, sure, but little else) disaster that is The Ice Pirates. 

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 9 mil. $

Box office: 14.2 mil. $ (North America alone); projected 19.2 mil. $ total gross

= Uncertain but likely a flop (projected return of 2.13 times its cost)

[The Ice Pirates was released 16 March (USA) and runs 91 minutes. It was reportedly envisioned first as a serious sci-fi movie with a 20 mil. $ budget. The indebted studio lowered this to 8 mil. $ (apparently it went over-budget by a million), and it was turned into a sci-fi comedy. Shooting took place around March 1983 in California, including in Los Angeles. The film opened #3, behind holdover hits Splash and Footloose, to a 4.3 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent one more weekend in the top 5 (#4), grossing 14.2 mil. $. Its performance in a small list of foreign markets that only counts West Germany, Spain and Australia is not listed online and may likely have been limited, perhaps to 5 mil. $, which would result in a total gross of 19.2 mil. $, which would make the film a flop. Raffill returned with The Philadelphia Experiment (1984). Robert Urich (Clover Bend (2002)) returned in 4 TV credits prior to his theatrical return in Turk 182 (1985); Mary Crosby (Queen of the Lot (2010)) in 12 TV credits prior to her theatrical return in Johann Strauss: The King Without a Crown/Johann Strauss - Der König ohne Krone (1987). The Ice Pirates is rotten at 17 % with a 4.50/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of The Ice Pirates? 

Any Which Way You Can (1980) or, More Monkey Business!

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Clint Eastwood looks most ornery on this very 1970's colored (brown) poster for Buddy Van Horn's Any Which Way You Can

Trucker Philo Beddoe agrees to a lucrative fist fight with Jack Wilson from the East Coast, but when the two realize that it's going to be a life-threatening ordeal, they try to get out of the arrangement. - With gangsters and rockers in pursuit!

For a film about a defecating monkey and a motorcycle gang with wigs, (among other things), Any Which Way You Can is a formidable film. It is the very lowbrow action comedy follow-up to the big hit, James Fargo's Every Which Way But Loose (1978), also about Clint Eastwood (Pale Rider (1985)) as Beddoe and his buddy Clyde the orangutan, and it is of exactly the same quality as the first film.
Any Which Way is a film with lots of funny gags and silliness, irreverence and a down-to-earth entertainment style that I don't know where's gone today. Back in 1980, bikers, truckers, an orangutan, Eastwood and plenty of jawbreakers were all you needed for a huge commercial hit.
A bit of trivia: Clyde the orangutan from the original had gotten too big and possibly dangerous to star in the sequel, and the new Clyde died two weeks after shooting the film due to a cerebral hemorrhage, which a rumor says stemmed from cruelty by its trainer.
The film is written by Stanford Sherman (The Ice Pirates (1984)) and directed by debuting Buddy Van Horn (Cadillac (1989)), previously a stunt man and second-unit director.  

Related post:

Buddy Van Horn: The Dead Pool (1988) - The highly entertaining last Dirty Harry movie

Watch a short TV trailer for the film here

Cost: 15 mil. $
Box office: 70.6 mil. $ (North America alone)
=Big hit (returned more than 4.70 times its cost)
[Any Which Way You Can was released 17 December (USA) and runs 116 minutes. Shooting took place in and around May 1980 in California, including Los Angeles, asl well as in Wyoming and New York. It opened #1 to an 8 mil. $ first weekend in North America. The first weekend gross was down from the first film's 10.2 mil. $; its final North America gross down from 85.1 mil. $ but still huge. The film's foreign results are regrettably not reported online. Glen Campbell's title tune was a Top 10 on the country music charts. Roger Ebert gave the film a 2/4 star review, translating to a notch harder than this one. Van Horn returned with The Dead Pool (1988), Eastwood's final Dirty Harry movie, working as a stuntman and stunt coordinator in the 8 years between the two directing gigs. Eastwood returned in Firefox (1982). Any Which Way You Can is rotten at 20 % with no critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Any Which Way You Can?