"Iced Crawlers" is a by-the-book creature feature.**SPOILERS**At a secret Antarctic base, teacher Ted Jacobson, (David Milbern) and students Curtis, (Allen Lee Haff) Arianna, (Karen Nieci) Tom, (Howard Holcomb) Kate, (Rebekah Ryan) and Update, (David Lenneman) arrive to do some extra credit work in each of their different fields. The project leaders, Nelson, (Gotz Otto) and Dr. Monica Kelsey, (Alexandra Kamp-Groeneveld) are upset about their lack of experience in the real world, but once their actual mission is revealed, they all express the desire to leave earlier. A strange series of deaths strikes the camp, keeping them trapped in the station. Finally getting a clue as to what's been behind the attacks, they band together to survive the creatures attacking the crew.The Good News: There is a few decent qualities to this film. First off, I actually enjoyed the creatures in here. It's a big improvement over the usual bugs and giant insect swarms that tend to dominate these kinds of films. Having the creature in here is a bit of a plus and gives it a slight degree of originality in a big sea of unoriginality. They even looked pretty decent, and came across quite well, especially the one at the end. It's a big shame it wasn't on more, it really looked impressive and quite nice looking. It even caused a few halfway nice sequences along the way. The easiest one to determine this was the mineshaft chase, a long chase through the bowels of the station and out into the hallways and down into an elevator, with the frequently-used suspense-building trick of the chased victim frantically pressing a button hoping it would close before it got to the door. Here's a great example of that, and it comes off quite nicely. Even though there isn't a lot of gore, the pretty decent sized body count is a little consolation, offering up some thrills here and there. These are the main things about it, though.The Bad News: This is just a plain, by-the-numbers creature feature affair. There's really nothing here to distinguish it from just about all the other monster films out there, except for the setting. There's generally no surprises and it plays itself out pretty straightforward, which makes this a pretty skip-able in the stakes and not really be out of the loop. All the plot points are there as well: the threat attacks a loner in the prologue, the introduction of the characters with barely a warning of who's who, the eventual study of the problem that discovers the threat, the discovery of the truth for the expedition, and the quick turnaround by a character previously thought to be bad. It's all been done before to much better results in the other section that this one might not be seen as a top priority much. It's all so predictable that it never even tries to change up the formula, which is what makes these movies fun. That's the biggest problem, but the ending, which not only is so rushed and over so quickly that it barely leaves an impression even after just viewing it, but it also stretches the laws of credibility to the point that it's just unbelievable. In no way would that scenario ever play out in a modern world, and it really doesn't work. An original but annoying trick right before a person is going to get killed where a couple of flashes of earlier scenes with the victim has potential, but it quickly wears old. There's a few more things wrong, but they don't need to be revealed here.The Final Verdict: This is just a little bit below decent fare for creature feature films, and might hold some interest for hardcore fans of the genre, but will more likely have more of an impact on those that love cheesy films or the low-grade entertainment.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Brief Nudity

Deep Freeze is set in 'Antartica' where we are informed that 'due to the current oil crisis Geotech Industries established GEO-1, a state of the art drilling facility. Two months ago, things started to go wrong...'. GEO-1 has a basic skeleton crew as it gears up for full operational status, supervisor Nelson (Gotz Otto) & scientist Dr. Monica Kelsey (Alexandra Kamp-Groeneveld) plus a few lowly drillers. The base has recently been suffering from earth tremors so Geotech does what any responsible company would do & sends a helicopter full of teenage graduate students out there to study the phenomena, do a bit of research & report back. However the unsuspecting students realise that the drilling has unleashed a Trilobyte type monster that scuttles around the place killing everyone for no apparent reason...Co-produced & directed by John Carl Buechler Deep Freeze is a pretty crap attempt at a monster film. The script by Robert Boris, Dennis A. Pratt & Matthew Jason Walsh is basically a cross between Alien (1979) & The Thing (1982) only without the scares, shocks, tension or atmosphere. For a start the film is needlessly populated by annoying teenagers, there really is no need whatsoever for these people to be stuck in the middle of the Antartica. I know the film veers off course into conspiracy theory territory but it just comes across as absurd & it spends far to long on dull boring exposition that is as entertaining as watching paint dry. The character's are clichéd, the hero, the good looking bird, the computer geek, the disposable teenagers, the evil scientist & a creature that kills for no reason. I mean I can't think of an animal in nature that just kills for the hell of it, animals eat, sleep & reproduce. They don't live to kill annoying teenagers, do they? None of the victims have been eaten, they don't use the bodies to lay their young in & these things which look like large beetles just crawl around & kill the odd person, that's it. Deep Freeze is incredibly slow & it doesn't come to life until the final 15 minutes which is far too little far too late, the climax also features one of the most pathetic looking 'giant' creatures seen in recent years. Deep Freeze sucks, period.Director Buechler really should stick to special make-up effects rather than directing, I suppose it's quite well made but it doesn't have much style. There is zero scares, tension or atmosphere which just kills Deep Freeze as a horror film. The creatures themselves look OK at best but they do look like rubber beetles more than anything else. Forget about any gore, I was disappointed at how tame & bloodless Deep Freeze was. There are one or two dead bodies, a gunshot wound & a cool bit when a creature is burrowing into a woman near the end but other than that there's not a drop of blood in the thing.Technically Deep Freeze is alright, it's competent but at the same time it's very bland & forgettable. The special effects vary, some are OK while other's especially during the climax are very poor. The acting was pretty bad & those annoying teenagers, urgh.Deep Freeze is trying to be a modern variation of The Thing, all the nonsense about ecology & it's teenage cast are very 'now'. Unfortunately this doesn't make for particularly good viewing, in fact it makes for awful viewing. Do yourself a favour & stay away from this piece of crap, really poor.

Awful film about an Antarctic (hang on...) research team (THAT sounds familiar) who have discovered a strange lifeform frozen in the ice (you guessed it). Said lifeform (a big flesh-eating bug) goes on the rampage. Terrible acting, trite script and poor ("poor" as in: "you will laugh with your friends and make fun of the film-makers who poisoned the world with this trash") special effects. It even goes as far as using unused footage from The Thing (shots of the camp from outside, and **PLOT SPOILER (not that you'll care)** when the camp blows up at the end PLOT Spoiler END (aren't you glad I warned you?)**)! Save your money and see The Thing instead, or perhaps hire a prostitute from your local escort agency - that's what the film-makers should have done. Or at least given the money spent on "Deep Freeze" to a script that deserved it.

A scientific group in the south pole find themselves being killed one by one by a monster . This premise is similar in many ways to THE THING but whereas John Carpenter had its strengths - Most notably its downbeat depressing atmosphere - DEEP FREEZE is an extremely dumb movie with very poor production values , the script is nothing you haven`t seen before , the acting is unconvincing but worst of all is the monster which resembles a big rubber beetle . If I remember correctly there`s a scene where someone is attacked and it`s obvious the actor`s holding onto a rubber prop while screaming . I might have a false memory of this scene because DEEP FREEZE is instantly forgettable . I can clearly remember a scene with footage of a real insect superimposed over the action though I`m curious as to how many reviewers on this page who`ve put the boot into DEEP FREEZE are fans of horror movies ? I`m not really a fan of the genre myself since most horror movies like this one suffer from a dumb script and substandard production values . If you don`t like that sort of thing you`ll certainly hate this movie . If you`re a horror die hard you may only dislike DEEP FREEZE