The Iceman Seeneth!

I caught the movie Iceman on television the other day. I caught just at the beginning not really knowing what it was, but impressed by the scenario which presented as serious science fiction rooted in a very realistic if peculiar setting. The characters were offbeat and the dialogue seemed serious but still accessible, and gave a real sense of actual science being discussed.


The movie stars John Lone (who I most remember as the great villain Shiwan Khan in the 90's The Shadow movie) as a Neanderthal found frozen and taken to a pretty lavish and exceedingly well-equipped lab complex in the arctic wastes. It turns out he's alive through a means mysterious and one which invites a desire to cut him up to find his secret. An eccentric anthropologist played by Timothy Hutton tries to make contact with the displaced and terrified "Iceman" and that is the core of the story, how these two connect and begin to come to some accommodation about what is the right thing to do for a man disconnected from his world by perhaps forty thousand years.

One of the best things about this smart flick is that there are no "villains". There are competing interests in "Charlie" as they dub the Neanderthal, but none of the characters gets portrayed as venal baddie for the sake of simple melodrama. It's a clever script, and a smart bit of direction that makes the most of a very limited setting. Because no one is allowed to fall into any classic roles, the tension on the story is very high as the outcome is very unpredictable. I never saw it coming I have to say.


The movie that most quickly comes to mind in comparison is the outlandish Trog, a fave of mine. Where the movie Iceman tries to render a serious speculation about a "caveman" uprooted from his world and thrust into a 20th century one, Trog is a raving romp that gives its vibrant cast enough scene-chewing for any ten movies. When you have Joan Crawford and Michael Gough in the same scene it's hard to put enough stuff in it for them to munch on.


I'm convinced Trog was the inspiration for Michael Fliesher when he came up with Atlas-Seaboard's Brute comic book. The origins are exceedingly similar save that the Brute is a giant (of constantly varying proportions) and blue.

But while Trog is a stupid and guilty pleasure of mine, I'll have to add Iceman as a movie that takes the same themes and gives them an honest and compelling spin.

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