BLOOD GLACIER aka THE STATION (2013)

Directed by Marvin Kren, Starring: Gerhard Liebmann, Edita Malovcic, Brigitte Kren, Horror, Austria, 2013, 96mins, cert 15.

The hills are alive - with the sound of mutated Ibex...

At a climate research base located 3500 meters up in the Alps, a group of scientists monitoring glacial erosion stumble upon a blood-red slab of melting glacial ice. The ‘blood glacier’ water contains micro-organisms which when drunk by the local wildlife, incubates within the hosts DNA and combines with whatever else the critter has digested to form random hybrids. This discovery couldn’t have come at a worse time for the 3 scientists, the grouchy technician Janek and his hound-dog Tinnitus. A high-ranking government minister and her entourage (including Janek’s ex, Tanja) are scheduled to visit the facility and having been helicoptered in as near as possible are currently on route across the mountain terrain... 

Originally shown at the FrightFest Halloween all-nighter, Austrian director Marvin Kren’s follow up to his well-received hour-long 2010 zombie essay RAMMBOCK is an enjoyable mutant creature-feature. Its own DNA appears to have been created from combining John Carpenter’s THE THING (1982) with environmentally conscious nature nightmares such as John Frankenheimer’s PROPHECY (1979).

The creature effects are (refreshingly) largely practical and infinitely preferable to low-budget CGI. These hybrid creations are intriguing but clearly of basic puppeteering origin and director Kren wisely plays coy with the audience by only giving partial glimpses and quick cuts of the monstrous mutations.

As for the cast, Gerhard Liebmann’s grumpy technician Janek and his ex-girlfriend Tanja (Edita Malovcic) have the only genuine story arc (which culminates in an audaciously bizarre, yet strangely logical dénouement). If there was an Academy Award category for best animal performance, then Janek’s mournful Pointer pooch Tinnitus (real-name: Santos), would surely be a cast-iron certainty for a statuette. But stealing the show right from under Santos’s wet-nose is Minister Bodicek, played by the director’s mother Brigitte Kren. When the mutant sh*t really begins to hit the fan, she rolls up her sleeves and takes extreme crowd-pleasing measures to combat the mutating menace; and finding time in amongst the frenetic gory mayhem to deliver arguably the most memorably obscure line in cinema to date: “Stop eating that banana while you’re crying!”

Combining a largely 80’s approach to effects with a contemporary ecological inspiration, BLOOD GLACIER is one cool creative hybrid creature. 

**** (out of 5*)

Paul Worts

This review was originally published on the FrightFest website.