Introduction: Ice, Ice, Maybe
There are bad horror movies, there are boring horror movies, and then there’s The Flying Dutchman (aka Frozen in Fear), a film that manages to be both while also starring Eric Roberts, Catherine Oxenberg, and Rod Steiger—actors who all deserve hazard pay for participating. Directed by Robin P. Murray, this low-budget wax museum knockoff was released on streaming September 11, 2001, which tells you God Himself tried to bury it in the news cycle.
The result is a frigid mess that reimagines Mystery of the Wax Museum and House of Wax by replacing wax with ice, tension with yawns, and horror with accidental comedy.
The Setup: Seattle Art Scene Meets Frozen Psycho
Lacy Anderson (Catherine Oxenberg) is an art dealer in Seattle, where apparently business is booming for anyone willing to hang creepy lakeside art on their walls. She gets a tip about a painter named Sean (Eric Roberts), who lives in a Montana cabin so remote you half expect him to start muttering about Unabomber manifestos.
Of course, Lacy treks out to meet him, because nothing screams “trustworthy” like an isolated man with a tragic past who sculpts naked women into ice. Spoiler: she falls for him anyway. Because if horror movies have taught us anything, it’s that women with good jobs and nice apartments can’t resist a red flag the size of Montana.
Enter Sean: The Ice Man Cometh
Eric Roberts plays Sean, a tortured artist who saw his father murder his mother before killing himself. Rather than turn to therapy, Sean decided the best outlet was carving corpses into icy dioramas. It’s Frozen meets Silence of the Lambs, except with less singing and more confusion.
Sean’s pièce de résistance is the “Maternal Ice Tomb,” a freezer full of naked women arranged like a Calvin Klein ad from Hell. If you thought Vincent Price was campy in House of Wax, wait until you see Eric Roberts pouting in front of ice cubes like he’s selling freezer burn.
Supporting Cast: Academy of Confusion
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Rod Steiger as Ben: He plays a senile local who seems more bewildered by the script than the supernatural. He spends most of his screen time yelling and waving a gun around like Grandpa Simpson on bath salts.
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Joan Benedict as Moira: An old woman who sets the story in motion by selling paintings, then mostly lurks around like the movie’s unpaid chaperone.
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Scott Plank as Ethan: A man whose defining traits are “has a gun” and “has a missing girlfriend conveniently preserved in Sean’s icebox.”
Everyone else serves as disposable filler, or worse, hostages to the director’s idea of suspense.
The Horror: Colder Than the Audience’s Reaction
The scares are supposed to come from Sean’s sculptures of frozen corpses. Unfortunately, they look less like chilling tombs of horror and more like avant-garde art projects in a failing gallery. Every “reveal” feels like a high school haunted house: dim lighting, fake snow, actors trying not to laugh.
The tension? Nonexistent. The closest we get is a scene where Lacy is concussed while hiking and wakes up in Sean’s bed. Horror! Except no, she just looks mildly annoyed, like she missed her morning latte.
By the time the women are chained to tables or locked in the ice house, the tone isn’t terrifying—it’s tedious. Watching Roberts monologue about his pain while posing like a rejected GQ model makes you want to root for hypothermia.
The Plot Twists: Colder Still
The film flirts with supernatural elements when Sean’s body disappears after being shot, blood trails leading to the lake. Months later, Lacy gets one of his paintings delivered and even a phone call. Ooooh, spooky. Or it would be, if the whole thing didn’t feel like a soap opera cliffhanger. “Tune in next week to see if Eric Roberts is still haunting people via UPS Ground Shipping!”
The problem is the film can’t decide what it wants to be. Is Sean a tragic maniac sculptor? A supernatural revenant? Just Eric Roberts with too much time on his hands? By the end, the movie shrugs and says, “Who cares, he’ll call you anyway.”
The Performances: Freeze-Frame Follies
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Eric Roberts: Gives the role his all, which unfortunately means he oscillates between creepy charisma and looking like he’s auditioning for a Mentos commercial.
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Catherine Oxenberg: Spends most of the runtime staring blankly, as though wondering how her agent convinced her this was a career move.
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Rod Steiger: Clearly decided he’d rather chew scenery than dialogue, and the scenery here is about as edible as ice chips.
The chemistry between Oxenberg and Roberts is colder than Sean’s sculptures, and the attempts at dramatic gravitas collapse into melodrama faster than Steiger waving his gun.
The Atmosphere: Hallmark Movie of Horror
Shot in Montana, the film tries to make use of its wilderness setting but mostly looks like stock footage of snow and trees. The cabin is generic, the lake uninspired, the ice house more like a malfunctioning walk-in freezer at Costco.
The soundtrack doesn’t help, alternating between “thriller-lite strings” and “somebody’s Casio keyboard in demo mode.” You keep waiting for a real scare, but the film just trudges along like it’s stuck in snow up to its knees.
The Ending: Phone Calls From Beyond the Grave
After Sean is shot multiple times and apparently dies, he vanishes, leaving a blood trail to the lake. Lacy breathes a sigh of relief… until she receives a painting in the mail months later, followed by a phone call from Sean. Because nothing says enduring evil like long-distance charges.
It’s meant to set up an ominous, haunting finale. Instead, it feels like the director really wanted a sequel, but the only thing scarier than Sean’s ice sculptures is the idea of The Flying Dutchman 2: Frozen Harder.
The Legacy: Buried in Permafrost
Released on streaming the day of 9/11, the movie was instantly forgotten—a mercy for everyone involved. Occasionally rediscovered under its alternate title Frozen in Fear, it usually shows up on bargain-bin horror collections, sandwiched between Mosquito Man and Leprechaun 4: In Space.
As a reworking of Mystery of the Wax Museum and House of Wax, it manages to strip out everything fun, campy, or scary, leaving only slush. It is to horror what freezer burn is to cuisine: technically present, but no one wants it.
Final Verdict: Chilling, but Only in Runtime
The Flying Dutchman is a horror movie so devoid of warmth, tension, or originality that even its ice sculptures are embarrassed. With Eric Roberts overacting, Catherine Oxenberg under-acting, and Rod Steiger gun-waving, the film is less a thriller and more a cautionary tale about what happens when you give an artist too much freezer space.
Verdict: Not terrifying. Not thrilling. Just chilling—literally, because most viewers will fall asleep and wake up cold.
