I missed this back in the early 70s when it played my local drive-in under the reissue title LOVE IN COLD BLOOD. Now, through the magic of home video, I've finally seen it. In fact, I saw it about five years ago, hated it, and put it away. Recently, I dug it out again to see if it was indeed as bad as I remember it. YES is the answer. I'm kind of surprised that Stuart McGowan, a man with solid b-movie credits going back decades, could have been involved with a film that is so poorly made and so sleazy. This aspires to be some kind of mystery and also a Freudian psycho-killer film, but it fails miserably on both counts. Jim Davis and Scott Brady are highly billed, but have one-day cameos--and they lend the only professionalism the film contains. They were actually worked much better into their Al Adamson films than they are here. The Story brothers make Lou Ferrigno seem like Olivier--even though they are different people playing different characters, they are such bad actors that they SEEM like one person badly playing two roles in the same manner. They are completely uninteresting AND unsympathetic. Of course, the wonderful SABRINA is as charming and seductive as she was in the three films I've seen her in, but she is not in the film that much. More of her would have been welcome. Although I don't see his name on the IMDB credits, I was also sorry to see one-time western star Russell Hayden as an assistant director on this sleazy dog. Although it may have been interesting for drunken, hormone-filled teenage boys to see the crude Story brothers paw and rip the clothes off of women two or three times in the film in a 1970 drive-in, this film really has little to offer the drive-in film fan, the sleaze fan, or especially the mystery fan. Thankfully, this was not Stuart McGowan's final directorial effort-- he made two OK Tim Conway comedies in the late 70's, so he went out on a positive note. Once again, this is NOT bad enough to be a camp classic or sleazy enough to be interesting--it's just boring and stupid and not worth renting let alone buying!
Review of The Ice House
