“Business is business. Fun time comes later.”

Drake’s rating: One and a half angora sweaters

Drake’s review: The very first scene of Hot Ice tells you what kind of movie this is going to be. Winford and Charlotte Farthington are in their hotel room celebrating the success of their latest crime when they’re interrupted by the arrival of an INTERPOL agent intent on arresting them. Fortunately for the Farthingtons, the agent isn’t too bright and is tricked into being shut into their coat closet. Then Charlotte grabs one of those collapsible director’s chairs that was so popular in the ‘70s, the kind that’s made of light metal tubing and canvas, and just sets it in front of the door. She doesn’t even try to jam the chair under the door handle, which it’s too short to reach anyway, she just puts it in front of the door as if that will magically force it to keep closed.

Amazingly, it does. And that’s when you know for sure that Ed Wood had something to do with this movie.

He does, of course, since this is a Stephen C. Apostolof flick and the two had teamed together steadily throughout the 1970s. But the sexploitation market that the pair worked in was losing steam by the latter part of the decade, and Apostolof knew it. Even though the director had built his film career on such fare since 1965’s Orgy of the Dead, he knew a change of genre was in order if he was going to continue making movies. So Apostolof pivoted into heist movie territory, brought along Wood as assistant director*, and gathered up stock footage from his 1972 film The Snow Bunnies since Hot Ice would be sending Winford and Charlotte off to the Matterhorn Ski Lodge.

Of course if we’re going to have a heist movie, then there needs to be some merch to heist. Luckily for the Farthingtons, a popular musician named Diamond Jim is performing at the resort, and Diamond Jim lives up to his stage name by covering himself in jewelry. And even more luckily, he’s keeping all those glittering baubles in the safe at the ski lodge, where they’re just waiting for a pair of enterprising thieves to break in and steal them away.

Hot Ice has a decent premise, but that’s where the promise of this movie ends. Eschewing the main plot of the heist for long periods of time in favor of stock skiing footage taken from Apostolof’s own The Snow Bunnies, unfunny comedy hijinks and musical performances that wouldn’t even make the Top 40 lists of the performers’ own mothers, Hot Ice quickly mires itself in a quagmire and never really finds its way out. Apostolof’s career in cheap exploitation fare leaves him ill-prepared to make the attempted jump into the mainstream, and the finale of this flick signaled the end of his career.

Hot Ice was Ed Wood’s last film as well, and after watching it I’m still very curious how large his contribution to it was. He isn’t one of the writers, even though the stilted dialogue has that Ed Wood touch, and his role as assistant director is nebulous at best, inferring second unit work while Apostoloif was busy with the main cast.

Still, while Apostolof gathered up the cast and crew to do some location shooting at a resort located near California’s popular Mammoth Mountain, the majority of the indoor scenes were obviously shot on sets. It’s quite possible that Wood was filming at least some those scenes in Los Angles while his boss was up north playing in the snow. Again, that opening scene just feels like pure Ed Wood, from the dialogue and wooden acting right down to the collapsible chair acting as some sort of immovable object, and there are other scenes that have that tone as well. Certainly Apostolof may have picked up similar habits from his long-time associate, but it’s just as likely that Wood himself directed at least a decent portion of Hot Ice.

We’ll probably never find out if that was the case, of course, but we do know that the failure of Hot Ice was the final nail in Wood’s movie career. It’s not the worst flick that either he or Apostolof had ever done, but its uneven tone, flawed direction and meager budget still make Hot Ice a chore to watch. If you’re fresh out of Ed Wood flicks and need some clunky dialogue and wooden acting to get you through the day, this might do the trick.

But honestly, in my opinion you’re better off with questionable classics like Jail Bait or The Sinister Urge. Wood’s view of the 1950s might have been warped and weird, but it was still miles ahead of his take on the ‘70s.

*Wood was supposed to have an on-screen part as well, but was too inebriated to appear on-camera.

Intermission!

• The Matterhorn Ski Lodge has its own oompah music.
• Charlotte has some serious Farrah hair.
• There’s a whole foot thing going on and I think Quentin Tarrantino may have seen this at an impressionable age
• Warning: 1970s white people dancing! Prepare for pain!
• And now there’s topless dancing, because Apostolof isn’t going to stray too far from his true passion.
• They’re using torches to find the missing person because it’s 1977 and flashlights weren’t invented yet. Hey, wait a minute…
• Diamond Jim’s hit song seems to be… “Diamond Jim?”
• This move really needed a Yeti. Or a Tor Johnson. Or Tor playing a Yeti.