Another one that’s been long overdue, and not because of any specific reason, besides resulting absurdly elusive to find so far, outside of buying a used import DVD of it on Ebay, which was also unbelievably expensive, hence the post-poning until eventual availability.
That did came when i found the thing uploaded on Youtube in full some months ago, glad i didn’t blow 40 bucks or something on just the US DVD copy. Without the box.
Especially for what is literally just a random SyFy dinosaur movie, Ice Road Terror is nothing more than that, and in hindsight it might sound like a mockbuster of that Liam Neeson starring film, The Ice Road, but that came out a decade later, in 2021, the title of this – apparently – its meant to reference a TV series i’ve never heard before, called Ice Road Truckers.
This movie too is about “ice road truckers”, as in a couple of truckers that are driving through Alaska’s frozen rivers in order to deliver some equipment to a remote diamond mine in the region.
But on arrival they encountered a prehistoric creature that had been long dormant in the ice.
Typical.
Notice i didn’t say “dinosaur”, because unlike the companies that pushed out the cover art for its DVD or Bluray/HD release, i’m not paid to lull people in with a poster art that at a glance looks like it’s featuring a T-Rex, but it’s actually not.
The creature is a big reptile, but it’s more like a varan than a t-rex, it’s dinosaur-ish, at best, and the token asian-looking character says it’s a monster from Inuit folklore, the Kenwhu/shu, which i wasn’t able to verify, so they might be talking bollocks or not.
The government scientist lady sent to the mining site to verify its enviromental damage says it’s a pliosaur (which are a sub-type of plesiosaurs), and cites a discovery made about those (which did actually happen, not in 2008, but still, the “Predator X” escavations did conclude the year this film was made).. but that is a marine dinosaur.
Whatever, i’m applying a level of thinking unneeded for a TV film about a “dinosaur adjacent reptile” emerging from a mine in Alaska and chasing truckers (whose hogs might have been cranked or not), i’m not gonna ask how the thing survived in the mine to begin with.
The plot it’s typical SyFy affair, what other way to spice up a disaster film about driving in dangerous icy roads? Dinosaurs. Sort of. Of course. Why not?
To be honest, dinosaur allegations aside, this is kinda of decent-ish enough for a SyFy creature feature TV movie, you get to see the killer reptile do stuff early on, the pacing is decent, there’s no wasting time in bullshit that doesn’t move the plot forward or doesn’t go the required workings for us to potentially give a shit about these cardboard characters, there’s no real stalling to pad out the runtime to 90 minutes, which is basically a given for these films, since the plots are paper thin.
… mostly anyway, halfway through they realized they were racing towards the finale, so time to stop the fucking plot (and truck), we still have 40 minutes (ish) to fill, a special effect bucket to finish on cheap practical gore (which is inconstintently censored in the versions i was able to get my hands on via Youtube), and a mildly detestable character to have the creature off, then have the showdown inside a house.
Again, because we need a climax and a runtime in the 90 minutes range.
So the second half is a bit of slog, but overall i kinda liked this one, not gonna lie.
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