Blood Glacier (2013)

Running Time: 98 minutes

Release Date: September 6, 2013 (TIFF) & May 2, 2014 (US limited release)

Review by: Stacey

Blood Glacier.  The name alone reeks of cheesy B-grade horror.  I've been hearing the name float around in the horror community the last few weeks but surprisingly, didn't hear many reviews on it.  I imagined it was a movie about a killer glacier so I tried to distance myself as much as possible from it.  Then I saw it was put up on Netflix and decided to bite that bullet and sit down for a watch.  Wait, researchers (in a desolate, cold wasteland known as the Austrian Alps, fighting off otherworldly monsters that use humans or anything it lands on, really, as incubators?  Wait a minute...did John Carpenter make this?

 

The group of researchers were led by Janek (Gerhard Liebmann), who made my mind confused because he was all good looking and bearded when his beanie was on but the second he took it off he was like your middle school janitor - totally balding and just not someone you want to bed.  But that didn't stop the writers of Blood Glacier from pairing him and way-out-of-his-league Tanja (Edita Malovcic) together, complete with rocky past and abortion storyline.  I guess I've seen uglier dudes bag hot chicks before.  

 

Written by Benjamin Hessler and directed by Marvin Kren, Blood Glacier's low budget seemed like it helped and hindered the film.  The practical effects were actually pretty cool in regards to the hybrid creatures.  It was rad to get that old 80's creature feature feel again from a movie, considering most rely on heavy CGI effects for their monsters nowadays.  Shot in Italy, the film gave some pretty beautiful landscape in what long shots of it were shown.  On the flip side, the English dubbing was fucking horrible.  Did the voice actors even TRY?  Because everything was totally flat, especially during tense moments or dramatic scenes- no emotions.

 

Oh, oh, I can't even forget about some of the cheesiest dialogue I've heard from a movie that was supposed to be totally serious.  Top competitors for cheesiest lines: "It's one less person to fart holes into the climate" and (my personal favorite) "Stop eating that banana while you're crying!!"  Yes, those lines were spoken.  And they were meant to be serious.  I just like to think that something got lost in translation between the original German language and the English dubbing.  Yeah, that's it.

As alluded to in the first paragraph, this movie was heeeeavily inspired by John Carpenter's 1982 classic, The Thing.  No really, like, they weren't even subtle about it at all.  It didn't so much feel like a rip-off (as if it could ever be) as it did an ode to the film.  

Blood Glacier boasted some okay enough acting (I'd probably suggest watching a copy with subtitles to get the real deal, though) cool animal effects.  If you're looking to enjoy a sci-fi flick with a B-movie feel, then watch away, it's entertaining enough.  Oh, there's a dog in the movie that's a way better actor than everyone else in the film, so there's that.  Don't go into the film thinking you're going to get anything amazing out of it other than a goofy ass, fun, hour and a half time-waster.

2.5/5 fart holes in the ozone layer

Don't believe me?  See for yourself now on Netflix!