Flick Picks 28: Frozen In Fear

Hello, Streakers! Boog here once more, with another Flick Pick: A made for TV movie released in 2000, maybe 2001 called Frozen In Fear. Except at one point it was called The Flying Dutchman. SPOLIERS!!!!!
Which makes absolutely no sense because there isn't anything ghostlike, or nautical involved, but one character does have an obsession with the operatic work of the same name, so quality by association? Whatever. Because this was a made for TV movie, I can't call it the worst film I've ever seen. That lofty title is split three ways, between Superman IV: The Quest for Cash, Star Trek V: Shatner Nearly Kills A Franchise, and the subject of my second review, Shamalyan's take on The Last Airbender. But if this was a studio film, with a budget of more than $2 million, which, I'm sorry, but this doesn't even look like they spent half that, then it would right up there with those films. This thing is horrible, and I don't even know where to begin with this piece of garbage. If you're like me, and will sit through a train wreck of a film just to see how it can POSSIBLY get worse, follow after the jump.

 Alright, so lacking any real point to itself, this film isn't hard to rant on, but if I want to cover everything, I could writing this for weeks. So, let's get on with it, and start with the characters, and the actors/actresses playing them. The lead role is that Lacy, seriously, no last name, played TV movie and series veteran Catherine Oxenberg. Don't fret if you've never heard of her, her most recent work of note was the series Watch Over Me, but other than that, the only things she's been that WEREN'T a TV series or made for TV movie, is a uncredited bit part in Starship Troopers 3: Marauder, a starring role in the little known 1990 film Overexposed, which she landed because of her work on soap opera Dynasty, and a role in the one cult film Hugh Grant wishes he could live down, 1988's The Lair of The White Worm. Here, she's a gallery owner. One of her buyers has found a painting (style of which is exampled above), that sells almost immediately upon display. Intrigued with the thought of a giant payday, Lacy grabs her hapless and useless assistant Polly, and heads out into the Montana wilderness to find the mystery artist. Polly is played by Ellina McCormick, but as this is one of six roles she's ever had, and the first one I've seen, can't say she's all that great. She goes with Lacy to the town of Dark Hollow(yes, that is the town's real name, this film is too poor to afford subtlety), which is very much abandoned(no subtlety), except for four people, all of them them creepy, three of them to be useless red herrings. First we get introduced to Moira, played by Joan Benedict, a veteran actress of the 60s and 70s, here getting relegated to 'angry old cat lady', except she doesn't have any cats. Then comes Ethan, town sheriff, played by Scott Plank. He died in 2002, his final official film role being 2003's Holes, with Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, and Shia LaBeouf. There were two releases in 2005 with previously filmed footage of Plank, one of them a documentary short called The Last Days of Jonathon Perlo, the other a satirical comedy called Guns Before Butter. Here, he is called to play a man haunted by the past, driven to drink to chase away his own demons and inadequacies, but it just comes off as an angry, creepy drunk.

Next in the list of wasted talent is Rod Steiger, who also died in 2002. Steiger here plays Ben, father of Ethan, and adoptive father of the last resident, Sean. He's creepy, offputting, angry, and largely one note. A bad script given to an actor to held his own on screen against Marlon Brando to be nominated for an Oscar for 1954's On The Waterfront, and would later win an Oscar for 1967's In The Heat Of The Night. Sure, his work tapered down to more low rent stuff in the 90s, but he deserved far better than this. And now we come to the final character of the film, and my biggest problem with it. Sean, the mystery artist, played by Eric Roberts. For those who've seen a movie with Eric Roberts in it, you know this means he's the killer. He's the bad guy, in any film he's in that requires a bad guy that kills people. In this case, he's a painter, who occasionally kidnaps women and drags them to his cabin in the woods, where proceeds to kill them and freeze as part of an ice sculpture. Oh, and he listens to The Flying Dutchman on record when works, freezing or painting. Well, characters are taken care of, how about music? Other than the bits from The Flying Dutchman, it's either ear-rapingly bad stock music cues to let you know that someone is being creepy, or that Eric Roberts is the Killer,or this one song that, given it's tone(it's a blandish alternative number that gives off a vibe of devoted love), and it's placement in the film(it would have been far better as an end credits theme), comes off completely off base.
And the story? Hoo, boy. After coming to town, Polly gets a convenient reason to leave Lacy alone without a car, and does so until we need her again, at the end. Lacy, after meeting Sean, who's also mute(at least at first), all of three times, enacts her brilliant plan. She'll get Sean to sign a contract for her gallery, and set up a show, by sleeping with him as much as possible. I'm not kidding, we get two love scenes involving Roberts and Oxenberg, back to back. We also learn that Ethan and Sean are adoptive brothers, both raised by Ben. Moira, in turn, is Ben's sister, and it's implied there's an incestuous thing going on there. Eventually Polly decides she's been away from the plot for too long, and starts driving back to Dark Hollow. I swear, I will never get over that town's name. It is about this time, that Lacy, inbetween bouts of psychic visions of Sean's past, and bouts of fucking him, puts two and two together and figures out that a hitchhiking woman she saw four days ago, was in fact taken and killed by him. She gets away from Sean, only to pass Polly going in the opposite direction. She turns around to save her friend. Meanwhile, Ben has taken Ethan and Moira hostage at gunpoint, at we get closure to a subplot that does nothing, stating that Ethan hates Ben and Sean, as Sean was responsible was for the death of Ethan's fiance, and Ben found some way of covering it up. Not that it matters, as Ben blames himself for whatever it Sean has become, and shoots himself, letting Ethan and Moira escape with a gun.
Lacy gets back to town to find Polly's car abandoned, then does what she should have done, and goes straight to Sean's cabin. Here comes the only surprise in the movie: at first, I thought, because the girls are grabbed via plastic bags over their heads, they were dead by the time they got to Sean's cabin. Here, they prove me wrong, by having Polly not only alive, but struggling while chained to a table, naked. As in a slow panning shot, that while not actually showing anything that would move into XXX territory, comes damn close. Lacy and Sean fight, and Sean beats her handily at first. Lacy fights harder, and manages to wound Sean badly enough to give her enough time to unchain Polly, who quickly finds a sheet to cover up. Sean gets up for round two, only to be shot five times by Ethan, having just arrived. Ethan's shots, while perhaps influenced by whatever mental state having his father shoot himself in front of him would have left him in, are all still accurate, with a leg shot, a shoulder shot, two shots to the chest, and an arm shot, being the damage. Sean dies outside his studio, where Ethan and Moira go in to check on Polly and Lacy. Lacy and Polly go outside, to find no body there. The film ends with Lacy getting her gallery show of Sean's work, and her giant payday, having sold every single piece. Polly and Lacy, while talking, notice a piece that wasn't there before, that is obviously of a naked Lacy. She then gets a phone call, where Roberts taunts her over the phone, and we cut to credits.  None of these characters are well written, the story is so predictable you can guess it before you put the DVD in, the music is either horrible, or horribly out of place, oh, and the sound editing was shit, at least 35% of the mundane actions on screen, like the placement of cups on tables, gets a fucking reverb effect for no reason. This was director Robin P. Murray's third directorial outing, and, as he seems to wait about 6 or seven years between projects(his fourth, and perhaps, last one was in 2008), we're due for another shitstorm from him somewhere 2015 or so. In closing, don't be Frozen in Fear, pass up this shit if you get the chance.