Ice Cream Man – 1995

Tonight’s movie is special in the same way accidentally drinking that solo cup of dip spit at a party is special. It is vile, unexpected, and you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy. That being said, however, this movie was recommended to me by Ryan Francis, of “Thankskilling” fame.

Thanks, dick.

There are several things wrong with this movie, let’s start with the plot.

The movie starts out with a child witnessing the death of the local Ice Cream Man. This begins a huge chain of events where the child enters therapy (the bad kind with injections, electric shocks, and clowns), grows up, becomes the Ice Cream Prince, and murders everyone.

I know what you’re thinking, “Well of course it makes sense. I mean, who would go through years of therapy and evil clowns and NOT become an Ice Cream Man?” The murder part is separate and just came naturally because the guy is a dick. I fully believe that even had the whole “ice cream man” thing not gone down, Clint Howard’s character would have gone on a murder spree regardless. I mean, Jesus, that’s Criminal Psychology 101, Chapter One type shit. “It is common for people who look like Clint Howard to try to kill everyone around them.”

“Shhh, I’m disgusting.”

So now we’ve got Clint Howard, all grown up, driving around in a filthy ice cream truck, murdering the shit out of people. Just like in real life, I would assume.

After a small boy ends up dead, a group of children called “The Rocketeers” decide to take the law into their own hands and catch whoever did this. The Rocketeers consist of “generic white boy”, “token female”, and a fat kid named “Tuna”. Tuna literally has a pillow stuffed under his shirt and the film crew does nothing to hide this. At one point Tuna drops his ice cream in the sand and just picks it up like nothing happened. I think they actually made the child-actor eat sand. The kids ride around on their bikes with front-mounted rockets and try to solve this mysteries like a coked out Encyclopedia Brown.

The rest of the movie is a back and forth of “oh my god the creepy ice cream man is murdering people” and “oh my god we have to stop the creepy ice cream man.” He does have some pretty great murder scenes, like when he uses two police officers’ heads for an impromptu puppet show. He also has a great scene where he puts a dog into a wood chipper and makes ice cream out of it. He gets a little weird with the ice cream though. It takes him 3 solid minutes to manhandle ice cream onto a cone. He serves ice cream the way I imagine Patrick Starr masturbates.

The only other scene worth mentioning is the Mental Hospital scene. Two police officers go there in hopes of learning more about the Ice Cream Man. After a brief discussion with the owner, they find themselves surrounded by patients out for blood. One officer reacts appropriately and runs out of the building, pushing people out of the way and jumping over barriers to get to his squad car. The second officer, however, is having none of that. He just starts walking towards the exit, and shooting over his shoulder every few seconds. It’s as if the actor just refused to run and no one called him out on his bullshit. He walks out of the hospital being followed by crazed murderers and calmly opens the door and drives away like nothing happened.

In the end, nothing extraordinary happens. The Ice Cream Man kidnaps a kid and instead of killing him, he teaches the boy how to make ice cream. The Ice Cream Man gets careless and lets his guard down, then the children push him into a giant blender and he dies. Basic stuff, really. The Shyamalan twist at the end shows the small boy making Ice Cream and smiling at the camera. Wait, is “Shyamalan” synonymous with “horrible”? If so, we’re good.

This movie is painful and wasn’t really funny or entertaining enough to suggest that you watch it even ironically.  However, if you watch this movie and pretend it’s a documentary on how Clint Howard actually lives, it’s much more enjoyable.

Ugh, why?