Watch ice cream man

The Ice Cream Prince

Clint Howard’s performance defined the ice cream man as the perfect slasher. Playing a deranged nut-bar extremely well with vacant stares and gravel voiced one liners.

At conventions, Clint mentions drawing influence from his own hometown ice cream man. A crusty caricature that often swore at kids. During the filming of Ice Cream Man, Clint would scream at the top of his lungs while driving to the set every day. This helped him achieve the scratchy Tom Waits-esque voice.

The ice cream man slasher appeared in 2017’s Ice Cream Truck. A psychological thriller/horror featuring a stalking ice cream man with a 3-mile stare. The Ice Scream Horror Neighborhood series of mobile games by Keplerians introduces us to Rod Sullivan. A Leatherface reminiscent slasher that freezes the flesh of children to make ice cream. On a more supernatural level, Doug Jones was the perfect choice for the ice cream man abomination in Legion. Image comics publishes Ice Cream Man, a surreal horror anthology comic. Each issue is hosted by its namesake, an otherworldly vendor that feeds on suffering.

Even the ice cream truck itself has become a sub trope of horror. Stirring a sense of dread with the twinkling melody. A distant echo of doom, like the My-T Tas-T truck from Maximum Overdrive. Or the blissful carnage and fire power of the Sweet Tooth truck in the Twisted Metal game franchise. As well as Killer Klowns From Outer Space gave us the Terenzi Brothers trolling fornicating teenagers in their ice cream clown truck.

Watch Out For Children! The Ice Cream Man’s Horror Movie Origins

Norman Apstein (Paul Norman) was an independent filmmaker that fell into adult films out of financial necessity. Credited with directing 134 films, winner of 2 awards, and inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame in 1998. Aided in part by his connections, Ice Cream Man became his sole foray into mainstream cinema. Heavily inspired by movies like The Goonies, It, and The Monster Squad, Norman set out to create a horror movie for kids. The end result was more of a campy horror comedy. Amassing a cult following 25 years after its release.

Clint Howard plays Gregory Tudor, a few scoops short of a sundae. Witnessing The Ice Cream King gunned down, Gregory grows up in a mental hospital of the worst kind. As an adult he is the shadowy figure inside of the ice cream truck. Bringing happiness to the children and hiding secrets that would violate every health code.

When kids start going missing, the police (Jan-Michael Vincent and Lee Majors II) are no help. That’s when The Rocketeers decide to get involved. Seeking justice for the kidnapping of their friend, Small Paul, a Macaulay Culkin look-alike bookworm.

It’s weird to think that this film was intended as a kid’s movie, considering it was being produced by pornography. Ice Cream Man’s full crew had previously worked with Norman. The script itself was purposely raunchy, containing a subtle humor that reflected the director’s ties. Several extras and a few cameos were actually adult film stars.

It is also worth mentioning that this Ice Cream Man horror movie just so happened to be funded in part by the Converse shoe company. You might notice quite a few shots of All Star Chuck Taylors throughout the entire film.

The horror movie got swept up in the tail end of the direct-to-video slasher trend in 1995. The same year it got a theater premiere at Chicago’s Brew ’n View for the Clint Howard Film Festival… a triple feature with a few of his other films, Rock N Roll High School and Evil Speak.

This prototypical, straight-to-video 90s horror goes heavy on the cheese but skimps on substance beyond Clint Howard’s campy performance.

As I See It

I passed this VHS dozens of times at my local RKO Video. I probably picked the box up a handful of times to check out the screenshots on the back, meant to sell whoever was intrigued by the cover image but needed just a little bit more coaxing. It never worked for me. Along with Dr. Giggles (which I eventually caved to on DVD), Ice Cream Man seemed far too schlock for my taste. I wanted the horror. I wanted the chills and fright and the type of psyche damaging scenes that would keep me up at night.

I chose something else… until Blockbuster came in and sanitized the whole industry.

The charm of renting a movie because of its cover — which inevitably smelled like the mildew growing on the hand-built wooden shelving, and always rested on dirty carpeting that seemed to have just dried from the latest sewage leak — went out the door. In came 50 copies of the hottest new action film evenly spaced apart in eye-catching colored displays. You don’t get to bring that piece of cinematic art history home with you. You get the same, lame, blue and white and gold box if you rent the latest Die Hard movie or Peter Pan. Fuck outta here with that shit.

All you nostalgia hounds that shed tears with that Netflix documentary can kick rocks, too.

Blockbuster was the end of the video store. It operated in the corpse of a true movie experience like a Spirit Halloween crawling inside the cadaver of Geoffrey Giraffe.

Blockbuster was capitalism at its worst and least adaptive. But the one positive that came out of its back-breaking business model was I acquired a ton of VHS when my local store liquidated their inventory.

This brings us to Ice Cream Man: one of my acquisitions. I never watched it. Not until this past week. I had to dust off a VCR and lower my standards back to a time before I wore contact lenses and could tell how grainy and absolute shite the video looked.

I’ll pat my young self on the shoulder for passing on this now cult film, that could have been a ten-minute short without losing any exposition.

Famous Faces

Clint Howard (Gregory, the Ice Cream Prince) has enjoyed a long career and instant recognition — whether it be bit parts in his Brother Ron’s films (Apollo 13, etc.) or in seminal comedies like Austin Powers or Adam Sandler’s Little Nicky. But it’s his role as Eaglebauer in Rock and Roll High School that first introduced me to Clint.

David Warner is a guy who pops up everywhere for me! He’s the human equivalent of 11:11.

David Naughton plays Martin, and it’s nice to see his face didn’t lose its form after An American Werewolf in London, but his head didn’t stay attached for long in this one.

Of Gratuitous Nature

Though most of those involved in the production came from the adult film industry, it shows you can’t judge based on ill-conceived conceptions of old taboos, as they avoided the pitfalls of so many older films that involved some creepy purveyor of children’s treats. I still don’t like the film, but they’ve got that going for them.

Ripe for a Remake

Maybe it’s time to thaw out poor Gregory and give him another chance at bringing frozen treats and terror to the neighborhood kids.

Spawns

A Kickstarter was unsuccessful back in 2014 to raise $300k for a sequel. Raising less than five thousand dollars, the campaign was perhaps premature as in the seven years since many films and retro/nostalgic projects have grown wings thanks to the contrarian and ironic nature of a generation with “fuck it” money that is happy to sink a hundred bucks each for a t-shirt and their names in the special thanks section.

Where to Watch

Vinegar Syndrome has released a Blu-ray with very few copies left over at their site. Though this wasn’t the version I watched, as I had to break out the old VCR and watch what I’ve now discovered is a rather valuable VHS copy. You may also stream on Amazon Prime, Tubi, and Vudu.

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Not Every Day is a Happy Happy Happy Day

In an interview, Norman Apstein admitted that making Ice Cream Man kid-friendly was the kiss of death… wishing he had been able to do a straight on horror movie instead.

Clint and Norman had joked about doing a sequel over the years and started to get serious after two decades. The ending of the first film gave ample opportunity to continue the story. Clint Howard still talks fondly of the original film. “Lovely memories working on the movie,” Howard said for AV Club. “I still talk about it all the time. I still go to science fiction or horror conventions, and besides maybe Star Trek, the title that most people want to talk about is Ice Cream Man.”

To gauge interest, the pair launched a Kickstarter in October of 2014 to fund Ice Cream Man 2: Sundae Bloody Sunday, a sequel of Gregory’s revenge on the Rocketeers all grown up. The Kickstarter campaign closed later that same month, having underperformed its goal. But the project hasn’t been abandoned. Clint and Norman are still looking for alternative financing.

Ice Cream Man is a staple of summertime horror films. A video store gem, falling somewhere between the classical and self-referential eras of slasher. Deliberately tongue-in-cheek, this purveyor of frozen treats will lure you in with slapstick and gore.

— FOUNDATIONS OF HORROR —

Further explore these subgenres & tropes. more>>#Children’s horror | #Comedy horror | #Slasher horror

Last Updated on October 11, 2021.