This Geek In Netflix: We All Scream for Ice Cream
Introduction, introduction, catchy phrasing that looks good on Facebook when you share it, jerk off, jerk off, jerk off. OKAY, LET’S GO!
HOLY FUCK.
Apparently, there’s this show called Masters of Horror which is neither full of mastery or horrific, but I suppose one has to set goals. From what I can gather, it’s like Tales from the Crypt without the prerequiste Crypt Keeper but with the super low budget.
Normally, I would avoid such things. Or I’d try to avoid such things, watch a movie, and then realize that, shit, I just watched an episode of a show. Because this is a *movie* review column, not a television episode review column… thing.
But I saw the cover of this movie, “We All Scream for Ice Cream” with its little melty ice cream cone/clown head and read the description and I shouted, “Bring it!”… at my computer. Which was really kinda awkward, it being an inanimate object that has absolutely no chance in hell if we got into a fist fight because IT HAS NO FISTS.
You couldn’t say no to this level of awesome.
Quick actor rundown: we’ve got William Forsythe as Buster, the retarded stuttering clown, who you may know as Manny Horvitz from Boardwalk Empire (he does a good job being a retarded stuttering clown, FYI). Then we’ve got some little kids who were from Trick ‘r’ Treat which is one of the best Halloween movies ever. And then there’s Lee Tergesen playing Layne (who only has a retarded name and is not actually retarded like Buster), who you’ll know from a variety of TV shows like Army Wives (Officer Boone), Generation Kill (Evan ‘Scribe’ Wright), Wanted (US Marshal Eddie Drake), Oz (Tobias Beecher), and Weird Science (Chett Donnelly). That man loves his TV.
Wow, that paragraph was too long. Look at the size of that thing. Jeez. Fucking Lee Tergesen throwing off my rhythm.
Now, I know you’re sitting there going “Who cares about the actors, tell me about THE CLOWN!” and, first off, I want to let you know that it isn’t very nice to be so dismissive about their hard work. Secondly, THE CLOWN, fuck yes, I will tell you so much about THE CLOWN.
This movie opens with an older man, assumedly “Dad” talking to assumedly “son”, Kenny, trying to convince him not to eat the ice cream bar he’s holding. Kenny basically tells him to fuck off and bites the bar. The dad gurgles and melts into ice cream like dads tend to do. Kenny says, “You shouldn’t have grounded me,” and continues to munch.
Dad’s creamy filling.
Cut to: the funeral of the dead man who is now, you know, just melted ice cream. And what I want to know is how he’s staying in a coffin– shouldn’t he be in a large tupperware or maybe even an over-sized ziploc baggy? Where on earth were the ice cream containment consultants when the script was being written??
Anyhow, there’s some dialogue and the phrase “horse-pucky” gets worked in. In case you were counting the amount of times “horse-pucky” gets used in a movie.
Reason #38 as to why I’m never reproducing.
Then we move to Papa Joe’s Bar, where vaguely drunk, possibly Canadian guy (possibly only Canadian when drunk, which some of us are) informs bartender (Papa Joe) and friend of the deceased about how the death of some guy named “Skip” may not have been caused by what they all think. He informs the bartender that Skip’s supposedly totaled car was found, perfectly fine, with only Skip’s clothing inside it. Theories about nudity and covered-up murders ensue and Layne eventually enters the bar.
On his way home later that night, Layne sees children standing on the edge of the street holding quarters while a creepy voice chants about ice cream. AGAIN, WHERE’S THE REALISM?! Show me a fucking ice cream truck where the most basic of popsicles isn’t at least a dollar. WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE KIDS GOING TO BUY WITH A QUARTER?!
?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!!!!!!!!????!!!?!!!!!!
Anyhow, he pulls onto his street and his windows start rapidly icing up and he almost runs over his own kid, who also labors under the delusion that ice cream only costs a quarter.
Meanwhile, back on the route home from the bar, the drunk guy demands to have the car pulled over so he can run across the street, vault the fence, and vomit. Instead of, you know, just opening his car door and letting the highway take his bile. While he’s off vomiting in the woods, some unnamed and previously unseen kid bites the head off of an ice cream bar shaped like a human and the drunk guy starts… well, he’s either orgasming or someone installed a retarded hamster at the base of his brainstem.
It could honestly be either because, after a moment, all that’s left of him is creamy white… goodness(?).
As the movie-type-thing goes on, Layne has sex with his wife and, during post-sex confession booth time, he relates the story of Buster the clown, the retarded man who drove the Cheery Time Ice Cream Truck and would sell ice cream to all of the neighborhood kids, and how the local bully, Virgil, ripped off Buster’s nose and, eventually, with Layne’s assistance, accidentally killed him.
All he wanted was to get the high score on Burgertime! LIFE IS SO CRUEL!
After some very non-logical “detective work”, Layne realizes what is going on and sends his wife and kids off to grandma’s house so he can do a vague Home Alone-type battle with Buster.
This movie in sum: HOLY SHIT, THERE’S A RETARDED GHOST CLOWN ON THE LOOSE! HIDE YOUR WIVES, HIDE YOUR KIDS CUZ HE’S MELTING EVERYBODY UP IN HERE!
Dear out-dated cultural reference, I will continue to use you until someone pays me not to. (Email me at allison@geekscape.net if you want to arrange payment.)
He’s checked his Pyramid Head watch and determined its raping time in the hot tub.
Overall, this would have been a horrible movie, but as a Tales from the Crypt deal, it was exactly the quality you’d expect, and so it makes it okay. The plot is, as shown above, hysterical. The dialogue is colorful but iffy, as you can find some lovely “country” phrases in it like:
“It ain’t a stretch to think that one of his wild sperms got away.”
Yes, somewhere a lone bucking bronco of a sperm is racing wild through sun-filled desert valleys enjoying his freedom. Run free, wild sperm, run free.
That’s a severe amount of power lines. Jesus.
This sweet little number (HA!) is available on Netflix on Demand, and I suggest you watch it if you have a hankering for new cheesy horror material. I also suggest getting a gallon bucket of ice cream and sculpting little human-shaped dessert statues while staring creepily at your friends as it plays.
