The film opens with the statement: "Long ago, at the end of the last great Ice Age, there arose in the North a powerful queen. Her name was Juliana, and her ambition was to extend her realm to all the regions of the known world."
       The 9 Feb 1981 DV advertised auditions held by director-producer Ralph Bakshi for a young actress to appear in his upcoming film with the working title, Sword & Sorcery, to be produced in Spain. Applicants were required to be of small stature with considerable athletic ability. On 26 Feb 1981, DV production charts announced that production would begin 8 Jun 1981 in Los Angeles, CA, under the film’s official title, Fire and Ice. According to the 23 Mar 1981 HR, Mark Damon, head of Producers Sales Organization (PSO), pre-sold the film to foreign markets at the 1981 American Film Market (AFM), with a projected release in Dec 1982. No U.S. release was scheduled at the time. Damon later arranged for forty representatives of the Japanese press to observe the production in progress at Bakshi’s animation studio, as reported in the 6 Aug 1981 HR.
       The 9 Jul 1981 DV and the 24 Jul 1981 LAT stated that actress-model Carole Mallory was cast in the role of “Juliana.” She was to be photographed in action sequences, which would then be recreated as animated images. Mallory was later replaced by actress Eileen O’Neill. According to production notes in AMPAS library files, the film was photographed twice: first as live action, and then with animated characters traced over the actors. Because the live action footage would not be included in the final edit, no special lighting or sets were needed, only the physical movements of the actors. Items such as trees could be substituted with lengths of pipe, or a scaffold could stand in for the face of a cliff. In fight scenes, actors were outfitted with harmless rolled-up newspapers in place of weapons, resulting in more realistic battle sequences.
       Bakshi and his fellow producer, renowned fantasy illustrator Frank Frazetta, chose actors based on their physical agility, as well as for their appearance. This proved to be a difficult process, especially in the casting of “Teegra,” who Frazetta described as “the ultimate dream girl.” After hundreds of actresses auditioned alongside a “life size rendering” of the character, Frazetta realized that “Teegra” was more an idealization than a reality. Having no previous experience with animation, Frazetta discovered that a person with an extraordinary physique seemed “less than ordinary” when traced on a rotoscope, and required artistic embellishment.
       Once the live-action footage was edited into a completed film, each frame was enlarged to an eight by ten inch image, from which Backshi’s 200 artists created the animated feature. Frazetta supplied figure studies of his characters, and, in some cases, three-dimensional busts. He and Bakshi worked closely with their artists and animators, assuring that their high quality standards were maintained. Since no live-action counterpart existed, Frazetta personally animated his “fantasy beasts,” such as the giant swamp lizard and the flying “Dragonhawks.”
       The 18 Jan 1983 HR announced that Fire and Ice would premiere that week at the Avoriaz Film Festival in Avoriaz, France. Frazetta would accompany the $10 million picture to the festival, and stated that the entire production took two years from concept to completion, including the story and characters he and Bakshi created. The artist was reportedly pleased with the finished film, though he found the animation process “far too time consuming.” However, Frazetta told the Nov 1983 Moviegoer that he would have preferred a more classic adventure story, such as King Kong (1933, see entry). A general release in France was planned for Mar 1983.
       The 19 Aug 1983 U.S. opening of Fire and Ice was heralded on 4 Aug 1983 in DV and HR. The announcement was made by the film’s recently-acquired distributor, Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp.
       The picture opened to mixed reviews. While the 31 Aug 1983 Var projected a profitable run based on the popularity of both Frazetta’s and Bakshi’s previous work, the 27 Aug 1983 LAHExam suggested that its primary appeal was to “white adolescent males of an extremely conservative bent,” citing the villains in the film as “women in positions of authority, homosexuals and non-white males.” According to the Nov 1983 Box, Fire and Ice earned $750,000 at sixty theaters over a seventeen-day period.
       On 27 Feb 1987, HR reported that actress Emma Samms sued photographer Kathryn Ammermas for $1 million, in connection with a series of semi-nude photographs taken of the actress when she auditioned for the film, nearly six years earlier. Although Ammermas claimed that the photographs had been destroyed, an article in the National Enquirer stated that they still existed, prompting Samms to file the lawsuit, along with an injunction to prevent the pictures from being released to the public. The outcome of the case could not be determined as of the writing of this Note.