Ice Cream Man (1995)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s on the Menu: So here’s the scoop, Clint Howard, blacklisted by his brother because he was jealous of his Hollywood good looks, sells ice cream and death.

Here are some of my observations as I dined:

• Back in the ’50s because it’s in black and white, an ice cream man is gunned down by street toughs. This used to happen all the time on my block, I don’t get what the big deal is.
• “Who’s gonna bring the ice cream, mommy?” A whiny little kid says next to the ice cream man’s corpse. I would assume this is Clint Howard, but his face isn’t quite weird enough.
• Now it’s modern day ’90s, and Clint Howard is the titular ice cream man, and naturally he’s as creepy as every other role he’s ever been in. His ice cream is full of roaches. Isn’t that how you’re supposed to eat it?
• I guess these four goober kids are our protagonists. One of them looks exactly like Macaulay Culkin with glasses. He probably should have done this movie instead of Richie Rich.
• Oh so there are two creepy assholes in this movie. Ice Cream Man and a guy picking up garbage in the park who tells the kids all about the Pied Piper and fortunately they run away before he can take any clothing off.
• The Ice Cream Man is offering something called “Fudge N’ Cream.” RUN AWAY KIDS.
• David Warner? Why would he do this? He the girl (Heather) of the group’s dad? What did he knock up her mom on his 80th birthday?
• Ice Cream Man has a knife in a push pop and kills a barking dog with it. From my experience a peanut butter jar works better.
• Earlier the kids were calling him the new ice cream man, but he goes up to the owner of the dog’s window to creepily talk to her and she knows him as the ice cream man and calls him Gregory. Maybe he made quite an impression on the townsfolk the first day on the job, even though it didn’t seem like he was really talking to anyone. Or she knows him from before, although it seems like he just escaped from a mental institution. Clint Howard, I mean.
• Wait she seems to know him from his childhood? She looks younger than he does.
• He grinds up the dog in like a woodchipper kind of thing. Is that part of his truck? Where could I get that?
• The leader of the goober kids’ (Billy) mom gets a call then asks Billy if he’s seen Roger Smith today because he didn’t come home. That’s a weird name for a dog.
• Also, apparently Billy’s brother’s girlfriend is Babe the Farmer’s Daughter from GLOW.
  
  

  Gorgeous Ladies Of Wafflecones!

• Holy shit that old lady is Olivia Hussey. I guess she was the nurse when he was in the nuthatch. And now she is also nuts because being around Clint Howard is contagious.
• DAVID NAUGHTON!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m makin’ it… to the end of this movie!
• He has an excessive amount of large stone obelisks on his desk, which is two.
• Jan-Michael Vincent! This movie is more star-studded than It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World or Cannonball Run II!
• The only part of this movie I remember is the cops (Jan-Michael Vincent is one of them) asking Ice Cream Man about the missing boy and Ice Cream Man asks, “Are there any leads?” and the non-Jan Michael Vincent cop says, “It’s classified, Ice Cream Man. It’s classified.” Hahaha! Although I recall Jan saying it and like, “That’s classified information, Ice Cream Man.” I guess that was a combo of Mandela Effect and me having donkey brains.
• Who the fuck calls ice cream “hard pack”? Seems like something one ice cream parlor in one county in South Dakota called it in the 1920s.
• Ice Cream Man has buckets of body parts in his truck’s freezer with white lab mice running around on top, which are not the wild kind of mice, unless he took them from a lab and put them there himself.
• Ice Cream Man gives the cop a hard pack of rocky road and puts a piece of eyeball in it. But they show a close up of the cone after and it’s a whole pupil, which he did not put in there. I guess he just gets off on watching people unknowingly eat human and/or dog meat? How would you not taste it?
• By the way, do you know why the ice cream truck blew a tire? It was a rocky road.
  
• Oh I was confused, Roger Smith isn’t the dog but the little boy from before who isn’t Billy the leader of the goobers but they look a lot alike and they were on the same playground. I don’t think that’s the last time I’ll be confused by this movie.
• A local floozy who looks a lot like Traci Lords asks Ice Cream Man to deliver his “hard pack” to her house. Seriously? Is she also insane?
• STOP CALLING IT HARD PACK WHAT THE FUCK JUST SAY ICE CREAM THE TITLE ISN’T FUCKING HARD PACK MAN!!!!!! … sorry I blacked out for a second. Where am I? What am I?
  
  

  Ohhh, maybe this is what they’re referring to. He’s selling the kids cigarettes. That makes more sense.

• Heather comes home and he mother is speaking in tongues and her dad David Warner is super into it. I guess everyone in town is crazy, kind of like Nightmare on Elm St. but with a much creepier villain.
• How much ice cream do these kids need to eat anyway? Their parents are going to go broke with them spending so much money on ice cream.
• Macaulay runs afoul of Ice Cream Man in an alley. It’s late at night and he accepts free ice cream from a stranger. Do his parents never talk to him whatsoever about anything?
• The fat goober, Tuna, catches Ice Cream Man putting Macaulay in the truck, and Ice Cream Man yells, “You little turds are gonna have to learn you can’t run from the Ice Cream Man!” That seems bad for business.
• Wait, Roger Smith has been hiding in the bushes for days and it turns out Ice Cream Man killed the old creep in the park instead. I guess there’s only room for one child stalker in this town.
• Hey, David Naughton’s wife is Valeria from Conan the Barbarian! What a cast!
  
• Where did Ice Cream Man learn to make ice cream? Sundae school!
  
• The Ice Cream Man is chasing Tuna in the supermarket but it couldn’t be more crowded if the Pope was visiting the frozen foods section.
• The fat kid is obviously wearing fat padding underneath his clothes. They couldn’t cast an actual fat kid? Horace from Monster Squad would have been happy to do it!
• Tuna tattles on the Ice Cream Man. Well, I guess that’s the end of the movie. That was quick.
• I love that the cops know his name is Gregory but they still call him Ice Cream Man.
• He lives at an ice cream store but only drives the truck? Why doesn’t he operate the store? I assume because he’s insane.
• The cops search through Ice Cream Man’s place but they use axes to destroy everything. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.
• Macaulay is being held in a back room in the ice cream shop. He’s not gagged or anything, so why didn’t he scream out when he heard all the noise?
• Oh David Warner’s a priest. That explains the weirdness.
• The goobers actually call themselves The Rocketeers (because they shoot rockets or eat rocket pops or something), and this movie came out four years before The Rocketeer. I smell a lawsuit!
• The Rocketeers have a grand plan to tape Ice Cream Man committing crimes. Heather sneaks into his truck and takes pictures of blood splattered everywhere while Billy goes back for Tuna because he’s too fat to keep up with their bikes. The boys tell the cops that she’s in the back of Ice Cream Man’s truck, so a cop goes to her house to check on her and David Warner says she’s asleep, and the cop says, “Damn…” Uh, isn’t it good she’s safe?
• Ice Cream Man waffles David Naughton’s face! He puts his head in a giant cone and presents it to Not Traci Lords, who he saw Naughton banging on a diving board. Why does he care about this?
  
  

  I guess he’s not makin’ it… to the end of this movie! … did I say that already?

• Macaulay has some serious Stockholm syndrome. He’s helping Ice Cream Man make ice cream now. There’s no way this doesn’t end with Ice Cream Man falling into the giant blades of this ice cream mixer and Macaulay growing up to become the new Ice Cream Man.
• Ice Cream Man processes Not Traci Lords’ body and filters out her earrings and diaphragm. That’s good eatin’.
• The cops investigate the nut house but it’s full of nuts running the place, like a good black walnut ice cream should be.
• Jan Michael Vincent is walking through this scene like this is the last place he wants to be, or he’s experienced this one too many times already.
• This seems to have been going on for a while, how would no one not notice? Is there no oversight in this nuthouse? Do these patients not have families?
• Ice Cream Man picks up Tuna because he bikes right beside his truck. Maybe swerve left next time, you portly dipshit.
• At least no one has said “hard pack” in a long time.
• How does Reese eat her ice cream? Witherspoon.
  
  
• Ice Cream Man stabs Babe the Farmer’s Daughter under the chin and says, “That’s what I call a brain freeze!” But that had nothing to do with her brain or freezing.
• Ice Cream Man uses the severed heads of cops as puppets and it’s pretty fantastic.
• Ice Cream Man jumps off the roof of his truck and lightly bonks Jan-Michael Vincent and his partner in their backs with ice cream scoops and it knocks them out cold. 
• Macaulay escapes from his easily escapable prison and with a picture of the old Ice Cream Man lures Ice Cream Man into… guess what? The giant ice cream mixer!
• Hahaha, Jan-Michael Vincent and his partner ended up having absolutely nothing to do with Ice Cream Man’s capture.
• The next scene is the kids meeting up, I have no idea how much time is supposed to have passed, couldn’t be too long, but Tuna has lost all his weight. I guess because he isn’t eating ice cream 19 times a day anymore.
• Hey, guess what? Macaulay is now in the nuthouse and he’s making ice cream because now he’s the new Ice Cream Man. Who could have seen that coming churning?

Is It Actually Palatable: If only for Clint Howard and his raw sexuality.

Scariest Entree: Depends if Clint Howard stalked you as a child, but that’s statistically only 31% of you.

Is It Raw and Bloody: Plenty of gore is served up and sprinkled throughout!

Any Mouth-Watering Nudity: None, and what’s weird about that is the director, Paul Norman (under the pseudonym Norman Apstein) was a porn director and this is the only mainstream picture of his. I guess he just wanted to totally get away from boobies and balls. Actually, Hard Pack sounds like one of his porno films.

Most Delectable Line: Well of course it’s, “That’s classified, Ice Cream Man. Classified.”

Most Delicious Scene: The theme song is amazing.

Most Flavorless Scene: Probably when Jan Michael Vincent is slowly walking through the nuthouse while the insanes get in his face and he couldn’t possibly be more bored out of his soft-served skull.

Overall: This movie is by no means good whatsoever, and is in fact pretty awful, but Clint Howard is great, the gore is good, and the random celebrity casting is fun. It’s a double scoop of cheesy mid-’90s hard pack with entrail sauce that you should check out if you like any of those words or have 48 hours to complete the filmography of Clint Howard before the device on your neck explodes. You may even love it, anything is popsicle.

Score: 5.5 Hard Packs (out of 10)