Trailer
Plot summary
Water is scarce in a distant galaxy, where it serves as both commodity and currency. The Templars of Mithra control the supply, destroying worlds with natural water, while pirates raid ice from cargo ships to survive. Jason leads one such band. They board a Templar cruiser, find Princess Karina asleep in a stasis pod, and Jason decides to kidnap her. The raid alarms the Templars, and their ships give chase. Jason lets Maida and Zeno escape, but he and Roscoe are captured. Before they can be redesigned into slaves, Karina purchases them. She hires Jason to find her father, who disappeared while searching for the Seventh World, a legendary planet said to hold vast water reserves. The Supreme Commander sends Zorn after Karina, hoping the Templars can find that world first.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Ice Pirates (1984)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was originally budgeted at $20 million at MGM, but the studio's bankers, reacting to MGM's financial troubles, capped every film's budget at $8 million, forcing a much cheaper production.
- Director Stewart Raffill and producer John Foreman said their main inspiration was old pirate movies like The Crimson Pirate, and that they deliberately avoided watching Star Wars while making the film.
- Robert Urich got the lead only because MGM was contractually obligated to place him in a project, Anjelica Huston was cast because producer John Foreman was personally friends with her, and John Matuszak was hired simply because one of the film's financiers liked him.
- To fit the low budget, the crew built the film's spaceship look out of molds cast from real car engine and gearing parts to get a deliberately funky, improvised look, and shot scenes at a disused power plant in Playa del Rey and a Budweiser factory in Van Nuys.
- Director Stewart Raffill said the production became a fiasco when MGM brought in a new studio head during a management shake-up who was later found to be stealing from the company, clashed with producer John Foreman, and tried to sabotage the film by pulling its funding, though the crew managed to finish it anyway.
- Raffill said producer John Foreman, a close friend of actor Paul Newman, punched the new studio head after the executive made a derogatory remark about Newman's wife.
SPOILER
Raffill said the studio head cut the film's original ending, which showed the crew flying over the beaches of Malibu with people swimming, without ever telling the director it had been removed.
