There is so much wrong with this film, make 3 years before "Space Balls". Angelica Huston probably wanted to buy up and burn all the copies! Water not oxygen is such a scarce commodity and "The Templars" have a virtual monopoly on it. The Ice Pirates are a rag-tag band of water thieves. There are the usual cliché cast members including a beautiful princess (Mary Crosby) plus a quest for the 7th planet where water exists in great abundance. Much potty humor. A "castration machine" to turn prisoners into mindless slaves. Reused sets including a recycled matte from "Logan's Run". A bodyless being with Amazonian guards. A silly space herpes monster. Robots that act like The 3 Stooges. A beheading in the Alien Pirate Bar. Minor racist comments. A cheaply-made "Mad Max" desert car chase. Simulated (just lots of moaning) sex. The cheap costumes: pirates, King Arthur chainmail, Vikings, black leather. This started out as a serious film and lost its way. Fairly decent spaceship special effects but shoddy Atari displays. A great cast totally wasted. The time travel climax is very confusing but cleverly done. All the men grow long white beards like Moses. The Space Pirates fight the Templars "to the death" with swords and lasers. The hero's baby boy grows up before our eyes and saves-the-day. Then everything returns back to normal? It's tasteless yet occasionally funny, in spite of itself! After all the new "Star Wars" films of late, we need another space spoof. The working title: "Darth Vader Go Home!"

"The Ice Pirates" is a pretty engaging off kilter comedy spoofing both space adventures and swashbucklers, with enough verbal and visual gags to make it pleasant, and impossible to truly dislike. It's clearly not aiming to be something particularly memorable or special, just an irreverent diversion on lazy afternoons. It's played enthusiastically by an interestingly chosen cast that helps it to have a cult-film sort of appeal. The script, co-written by director Stewart Raffill ("The Philadelphia Experiment", "Mac and Me"), has a muddled story but a disarming sense of humour. Not all of its scenes work that well, but it's sure to have its viewers smiling if not laughing out loud.TV stars Robert Urich ('Vega$') and Mary Crosby ('Dallas') headline a cast also featuring Michael D. Roberts, Ron Perlman, Anjelica Huston, John Matuszak, Bruce Vilanch, and a too briefly seen John Carradine. Urich plays Jason, the leader of the title characters in a galaxy where water is the most precious commodity. After their latest escapades, they're captured by the baddies - dubbed Templars - and then acquired by princess Karina (Crosby) so they can help in a quest to find her father.Reasonably good visuals and a decent score by Bruce Broughton help in the enjoyment of this little bit of escapism, as well as a fairly clever finale taking place inside a time warp where our heroes steadily age while fighting the bad guys. There are also a variety of interesting and likable characters, human, robot, and otherwise, with actors and actresses such as Natalie Core, Jeremy West, Alan Caillou, Marcia Lewis, Robert Symonds, Rockne Tarkington, Ian Abercrombie, Hank Worden, and Carmen Filpi in various small roles. Perlman is particularly funny as one of Jasons' comrades, while Huston gets to be a total badass.This would make a decent double feature with another off the wall cult genre effort from the same year, "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension".Six out of 10.

And this really wasn't. I think they tried to find jokes that reminded you of Star Wars and Alien, but they just didn't work. Most of the jokes fell flat, like the "Space Herpe". (Remember in the 1980's when were were all afraid of Herpes?) The plot is that water is a rare commodity in the future. (Again, if you want to write GOOD science fiction, you have to understand science!) So this Evil Empire called the Templars controls all the water, except for Ice Pirates who steal it, (probably inspired by some hack California screenwriter who was told he couldn't turn on his sprinkler during a drought.) You had a bunch of actors essentially committing career suicide here. Mary Crosby, fresh off her stint on "Dallas", was never heard from again. Neither were most of the cast, except for Ron Perlman and Robert Urich, who got new chances to crash their careers...The special effects were cheesy looking, which is probably the movie's main problem.

Some people would call this a type of movie vehicle riding the star wars wave. I see it as a template that might of ended up influencing such series as Fire fly, Cowboy Bebop, and many other space themed western films after. Its funny and has its moments.Most people would be turned off by the plot. They are pirates that steal ice cause of the galaxies limited supply of water. Not really spectacular but the comedy and witty dialog make up for the movie flaws. Robert urich is always cool as ever and the rest of his cast looked like they were having a good time with their characters.They first get captured and sent to a factory that turns prisoners into unichs. They manage to escape with the help of a woman they first held hostage. Through out the story the dashing heroes are looking for her father who holds the secrets to a planet that has a limited supply of water. The bad guys wanna stop them so the Ice pirates break into action and you get that whole cat and mouse thing. its worth it though cuz I always give points to movies that have a good way of not taking themselves seriously and letting the audience in on the laugh.