Here’s another one I remember seeing on the TV listings a while back and procrastinating about actually watching it. Then it came up on Netflix, so I added it to my queue. And procrastinated again, long enough for Netflix to drop it from their streaming service. Great. I even heard the guys on the NLSS talking about it one day (I wanna say Nick thought the premise was intriguingly stupid, yet he may or may not have liked the film itself, I can’t remember), yet I still sat on my hands, so to speak. Of course, by the time I decided to add it to my Nightmare Fuel list, it was harder to find than it had any reason to be. I speak, naturally, of the startling (???) Blood Glacier.
An Austrian film, the film tells of a team of scientists gathered in the Austrian Alps to study climate change. While out amongst the peaks one day, a pair of scientists come across an odd sight: a red-colored glacier. The coloring comes from a liquid that seems to be reacting strangely with the local fauna, the animals changing into wild chimeric creatures. It’s all well and intellectually stimulating until these critters start to feast on human flesh.
Gotta say, this film didn’t make the greatest early impression on me. Things are going along fine until they find the titular glacier, which looks like a really obvious Photoshop job. Like, this isn’t just a poor effect, it’s painfully glaring, daring me to notice. Then, mere minutes later, the title card pops up. With a jump scare. Yeah. Dammit, jump scares and the movies that traffic in them are bad enough, but to come across a film that chucks its title card at you with a jump scare? That’s crossing the line, man!
The rest of the film was absolutely nothing noteworthy for me. The title and its possible ramifications are much more interesting than the mild creature feature you’re given here. Admittedly, I watched the dubbed version, so perhaps things turned out slightly better in the original German, but the script and the acting that brought it to life are just serviceable, the effects on the poorer side of things, and the frights few and far between (aside from the shock of the title card, obviously).
Honestly, what drew me to this film was the abject oddity hinted at with the title, and I was given something just plain mediocre. It happens a lot, especially in science fiction and horror. It’s nothing bad, really, I can’t completely diss the film (I mean, any more than I already have, I guess), but it’s nothing you should ever actively seek out. Should you passively encounter it in the wild somehow, though, there’s worse options out there.
Allusions of Grandeur 