Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Cool As Ice (Kino Lorber) Blu-ray Review

Collapse
X
Collapse
  •  
    Ian Jane
    Administrator

  • Cool As Ice (Kino Lorber) Blu-ray Review



    Released by: Kino Lorber
    Released on: May 4th, 2021.
    Director: David Kellogg
    Cast: Vanilla Ice, Kristin Minter, Michael Gross, Candy Clark, Deezer D
    Year: 1991
    Purchase From Amazon

    Cool As Ice - Movie Review:

    David Kellogg's 1991 film, Cool As Ice, opens at a club where Naomi Campbell sings and a bunch of people dance as the opening credits roll. This gives us a pretty good idea of what we're in for, as there's a lot of dancing in this movie.

    Anyway, Vanilla Ice plays Johnny. He's a rebellious type who runs with a crew of bikers. Not the classic, tough kind of bikers, but the early nineties rapper kind of bikers - that's an important distinction to make. They decide to do a road trip but not too long into it Johnny can't help but notice a pretty girl riding a horse. He decides to jump over the fence on his bike so that he can make her acquaintance, which, shockingly, upsets the horse to the point where the young woman is knocked off of it. She's understandably pissed at him but he doesn't seem to get it.

    We learn that this lady is named Kathy (Kristin Minter) but then one of Johnny's friends, Jazz (Deezer D), has a bike failure. This eventually causes a bit of a traffic jam. They find a garage eventually, and it's located conveniently close to Kathy's place. This shop was clearly decorated by a lunatic, presumably its owner, Roscoe (Sydney Lassick). Johnny spies her and moves in on her, much to the dismay of a guy named Nick (John Newton). One thing leads to another and it comes out that Kathy and her family are in the witness protection program. When her family winds up on the news, which is not a good thing to happen to people in the witness protection program, some of the bad dudes that her dad (Michael Gross from Family Ties!!) was once affiliated with figure out where they're at. Meanwhile, Johnny and his crew show off their fly moves at a dance club. He and Kathy dance, and Nick gets pissed! He and his pals mess up a bike belonging to Sir D (Kevin Hicks), another member of Johnny's crew, and a fight breaks out. Later, Johnny puts a piece of ice down Kathy's throat, and that's weird. She falls in love with him and the go to a construction site for some reason. Her dad, however, thinks for reasons never clearly explained, that Johnny has ties to the bad guys, the same bad guys who aren't even close to being finished with their bad guy stuff yet...

    “When a girl has a heart of stone, there's only one way to melt it. Just add Ice.”

    This is a very silly movie, advertised with a very silly tagline that doesn't even make any sense. You can't melt stone with ice. At one point Johnny tells Kathy, regarding Nick, to “Drop that zero and get with the hero.” As a showcase for Vanilla Ice's acting abilities, the movie… something. It's definitely something. Full of inane dialogue that makes you wonder how on Earth the script from David Stenn could have ever been given a green light and highlighted by some of the most obnoxious early nineties fashions, hairstyles (Ice has some weird stuff shaved into his head) and set design you could ever hope to see, the movie is fairly nuts. It's partially a romance, partially a really long music video and it also borrows liberally from movies like Rebel Without A Cause and The Wild One without having any of the quality that those two movies had working in their favor. Cool As Ice, however, does have cinematography from Oscar winner Janusz Kaminski (the man who shot Schindler's List!), and that counts for something.

    Lots of things happen in the movie for no real reason other than to just let Ice act 'cool.' These scenes are frequently very funny. The movie does definitely drag in spots though. The scenes involving Kathy and her father tend to go on far too long and while Michael Gross is a naturally likeable guy but he's just kind of a boring stick in the mud here. A subplot involving her brother, Tommy (Victor DiMattia), idolizing Johnny is amusing as it results in the kid shaving weird stuff into his head as well, but the whole family dynamic doesn't work very well.

    But still, you've got to love a movie where the lead character says, with a completely straight face “I'm gonna go across the street and, uh, schling a schlong.”

    Cool As Ice - Blu-ray Review:

    Cool As Ice comes to Blu-ray from Kino Lorber framed at 1.85.1 in AVC encoded 1080p high definition taking up 20.7GBS of space on the 25GB disc. This looks to have been sourced from an older, existing master rather than a new scan, as detail isn't quite at the level you'd hope for. Still, it looks decent, if never mind blowing. Grain doesn't always resolve perfectly and it can look a little clump in spots and there are moments where there's some noticeable trailing but colors are generally well defined and black levels are pretty strong. The image is clean, there's very little print damage here and while this certainly could have looked better, so too could it have looked a whole lot worse.

    Audio options are provided in 16-bit English DTS-HD 2.0 Stereo with optional subtitles offered up in English only. The audio quality on the disc is quite good. The music sounds pretty strong here and the mix is clean and balanced with the dialogue always easy to understand and follow.

    The main extra on the disc is a new audio commentary by film Historians Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Joshua Nelson that, as you'd imagine, covers a lot of ground regarding the film's history. We get plenty of background on Vanilla Ice as well as insight into how his career took off to the point where it made sense to cast him in a film. There are details here about David Kellogg's career as a director and filmmaker, lots of info on the supporting cast and crew and more. It's quite detailed and nicely researched.

    Aside from that, the disc includes a theatrical trailer for the feature, bonus trailers for a few other Kino Lorber releases (CB4, The Allnighter, Hard To Hold), menus and chapter selection.

    Cool As Ice - The Final Word:

    Cool As Ice is every bit as goofy as it sounds and while it is oh-so-definitely a product of its era, there's definitely some nostalgic entertainment value to be had from it, particularly if you grew up as part of the MTV generation. Kino's Blu-ray looks okay, sounds quite good and offers up a solid commentary as its main extra feature.

    Click on the images below for full sized Cool As Ice Blu-ray screen caps!








































    • Scott
      #5
      Scott
      Intellectual Carrot
      Scott commented
      Editing a comment
      Originally posted by Gary Banks
      You'd have to pay me to watch this. And it would have to be several thousand dollars.
      It's been over 20 years since I last watched it but at the time me and my friends thought it was a riot. It's far from the worse movie I've ever seen. Very far. It's fully aware of how absurd it is.

    • jimpickens
      #6
      jimpickens
      Junior Member
      jimpickens commented
      Editing a comment
      Good MSTK3000 material that's for sure

    • Jason C
      #7
      Jason C
      Senior Member
      Jason C commented
      Editing a comment
      The review is dead on. It drags in spots but it can be wildly entertaining in a WTF kinda way at times. There are some scenes that are "must see". Ice crawling into a girl's window was something... I remember the Rifftrax being a nice compliment to the viewing experience. Probably works best with a friend.
    Posting comments is disabled.

Latest Articles

Collapse

  • Hot Spur (Severin Films) Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Severin Films
    Released on: April 30th, 2024.
    Director: Lee Frost
    Cast: Joseph Mascolo, Virginia Goodman, John Alderman
    Year: 1969
    Purchase From Amazon

    Hot Spur – Movie Review:

    Director Lee Frost and Producer Bob Cresse's film, Hot Spur, opens in Texas in 1869 with a scene where a pair of cowboys wanders into a bar where they call over a pretty Mexican waitress and coerce her into dancing for them. She obliges, but
    ...
    03-22-2024, 11:53 AM
  • Death Squad (Mondo Macabro) Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Mondo Macabro
    Released on: April 9th, 2024.
    Director: Max Pecas
    Cast: Thierry de Carbonnières, Jean-Marc Maurel, Denis Karvil, Lillemour Jonsson
    Year: 1985
    Purchase From Amazon

    Death Squad – Movie Review:

    Also known as Brigade Of Death, French sleaze auteur Max Pecas’ 1985 film, Death Squad, opens with a night time scene outside of Paris in the Bois de Boulogne Forest where cars pass by a small gang of transsexual
    ...
    03-22-2024, 11:46 AM
  • Roommates (Quality X) Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Quality X
    Released on: February 28th, 2024.
    Director: Chuck Vincent
    Cast: Samantha Fox, Vernoica Hart, Kelly Nichols, Jerry Butler, Jamie Gillis
    Year: 1982
    Purchase From Amazon

    Roommates – Movie Review:

    Directed by Chuck Vincent and released in 1982, Roommates opens with a scene where a young woman named Joan Harmon (Veronica Hart) gets a hotel room with an older man named Ken (Don Peterson, credited as Phil Smith),
    ...
    03-15-2024, 01:10 PM
  • Night Of The Blood Monster (Blue Underground) UHD/Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Blue Underground
    Released on: March 26th, 2024.
    Director: Jess Franco
    Cast: Christopher Lee, Maria Rohm, Dennis Price
    Year: 1970
    Purchase From Amazon

    Night Of The Blood Monster – Movie Review:

    Directed by Jess Franco, The Bloody Judge (or, Night Of The Blood Monster, as it is going by on this new release from Blue Underground) isn't quite the salacious exercise in Eurotrash you might expect it to be, and while it
    ...
    03-15-2024, 01:07 PM
  • Phase IV (Vinegar Syndrome) UHD/Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Vinegar Syndrome
    Released on: March 26th, 2024.
    Director: Saul Bass
    Cast: Nigel Davenport, Michael Murphy, Lynne Frederick, Alan Gifford, Robert Henderson, Helen Horton
    Year: 1974
    Purchase From Amazon

    Phase IV – Movie Review:

    Saul Bass’ 1974 sci-fi/thriller Phase IV is an interesting blend of nature run amuck stereotypes and Natural Geographic style nature footage mixed into one delicious cocktail of suspense and
    ...
    03-15-2024, 01:02 PM
  • The Bounty Hunter Trilogy (Radiance Films) Blu-ray Review
    Ian Jane
    Administrator
    by Ian Jane


    Released by: Radiance Films
    Released on: March 26th, 2024.
    Director: Shigehiro Ozawa, Eiichi Kudo
    Cast: Tomisaburo Wakayama, Minoru Ôki, Arashi Kanjuro, Bin Amatsu, Chiezo Kataoka
    Year: 1969-1972
    Purchase From Amazon

    The Bounty Hunter Trilogy – Movie Review:

    Radiance Films gathers together the three films in Toie Studios’ Bounty Hunter Trilogy, starring the inimitable Tomisaburo Wakayama. Here’s how the three movies in this
    ...
    03-13-2024, 11:30 AM
Working...
X