Ice Cream Man

A friend and I were down and needed a good 80s horror movie to perk us up. Ice Cream Man appeared to fulfill our needs down at the video store, esp. since our store only carried the version that lacked the blood on the outer box.

This movie was exactly what we expected, but better, a cheesey, histarically 80s horror movie with our favorite washed up stars, including Rebecca from Passions and the Proffesor from Teanage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2.

The only scary part of the movie was what we found out about it on imdb.com : 1) The movie was made in '95 although the entire thing is right out of the 80s, just look at what they are all wearing and the size of thier hair.

2) The director Paul Norman has directed over 100 films, with Ice Cream Man being the only film that was not pornographic.

All in all this is a great movie if you need a laugh, you will get more than one.

Here's a film that will chill you to the bone, or maybe just leave you cold. Ice Cream Man is two scoops of scary fun from the good old days when R-rated movies were marketed to children. When kids hear this ice cream truck coming, they run...for their lives! It may not be the cream of the crop but could leave you frozen with fear.

Ron Howard's brother plays an overtly creepy Ice Cream Man. From behind the barred windows of his ice cream truck, he doles out ice cream from bloody, pest ridden tubs and commits the occasional murder. Soon his antics attract the attention of the neighborhood kids as well as two police detectives played by Jean Michael Vincent and Lee Majors II. Will the ice cream man's dreams of having a shop of his own melt away under the heat of his own un-cone-trollable killing sprees?

Clint Howard is well cast as a murderous creep. He inhabits the role the way a hand inhabits a mitten. Similar in style to Peewee's Big Adventure and Serial Mom: upright and proper suburban facades concealing abnormality, the way my t-shirt hides a dark underbelly. Violent scenes are few and not very explicit. If anything it's worth watching just to see Clint Howard hamming it up.

85 Minutes Campy Horror 4.5/10 flavors of slow-churned, creamy murder

Even after 25 years, This movie is Watchable and also interesting.

Yes, this movie was complete crap. But I'm not sure if it was meant to be crap or not. But I sho did love it. Probably the funniest movie of all time, for these reasons:

1. It has a fat kid named Tuna in it...and he's actually not fat in real life, but they made him wear some sort of fat suit. As if they couldn't find some kid who was actually fat! Brilliant.

2. The Miami Vice police duo. One has the stoic presence you could only see in Don Johnson while the other is always confused. A great rag-tag team, lemme tell ya!

3. The scene where the police team (not Don Johnson and confused guy) go through the ice cream man's ice cream "factory" and break all of the stuff and then leave, not finding any evidence though it would be easy to find at least one eyeball somewhere.

4. Fake sunflowers.

5. The mental institution scene. The police must investigate. So they go to the mental institution where everyone is insanely happy. Of course, the head guy there starts dancing while the police are being attacked by all of the loonies. The best part comes when they're both leaving the place and Don Johnson seems not at all scared or worried but casually pushes or slugs the crazies that are bugging him. The other guy, on the other hand, at least tries to look scared. They sure could have used more extras, by the way. The massive uprising looked pretty weak. But oh, was it funny!

6. The head in the ice cream cone. Talk about genius.

As a child, Gregory Tudor (Clint Howard) had witnessed his beloved ice cream truck driver getting gunned down. He grows up to be a very warped individual, not helped by his stay in one of the wackiest ever mental institutions in a movie. Now he himself is an ice cream man. He's determined to spread cheer to children, but there's no shortage of unappreciative tots and sleazy adults to be punished and potentially turned into ingredients for his frozen treats.

Most anybody would agree that this is a crap movie, but the filmmakers know it and just have fun with their premise. The result is a goofy 84 minute diversion, more a dark comedy than a true out-and-out horror film. It successfully goes for the gross out on a few occasions, especially when the camera prowls around the interior of the ice cream truck and shows roaches and rats crawling around in the ice cream. There's some gore, but not a large amount (director Paul Norman and company were originally going for a PG-13 rating), and sex appeal in the form of Wanda (Andrea Evans), though no nudity or sex.

Clearly, some fun was had with the casting decisions. Howard has one of the nuttiest lead roles of his acting career, and he makes the most of it, speaking in an affected growl that's a real hoot. Other familiar faces include Sandahl Bergman ("Conan the Barbarian" '82) and David Naughton ("An American Werewolf in London") as a married couple, Jan-Michael Vincent ('Airwolf') as an investigating detective, Olivia Hussey ("Black Christmas" '74) as a kooky nurse turned landlady, David Warner ("The Omen" '76) as the local reverend, and Doug Llewelyn ('The People's Court') as a store manager. The kids (Justin Isfeld as Johnny, Anndi McAfee as Heather, JoJo Adams as "Tuna", Mikey LeBeau as "Small Paul", Zachary Benjamin as Roger) are all quite appealing.

The highlight (or low point, depending on ones' tastes and sensibilities) is seeing a bored and very unconcerned Vincent unhurriedly walk away from a gaggle of encroaching but not very threatening mental inmates.

Five out of 10.