Ice Cream Man (1995) Review

"You can't run from the ice cream man!"
-Gregory Tudor



When Gregory Tudor (Clint Howard) was a kid, he witnessed the brutal murder of the local ice cream man and spent years in a mental hospital.  Now released, Gregory is the new ice cream man, but likes to serve his treats with human body parts mixed in.  As people start to disappear, a group of kids decide to take on the ice cream man before they wind up in his next batch of ice cream.


What Works:

Clint Howard does a great job as the titular ice cream man.  He's very creepy, but you do feel some sympathy for him as you learn what happened to him at the hospital.  His performance is bonkers, but it is easily the best part of the movie.  His guardian and landlord is played by the fantastic Olivia Hussey who also does a great job as the somewhat unstable Nurse Wharton.

A lot of the kills in Ice Cream Man happen off screen, but there are a few that don't.  They are pretty zany, but also have some solid gore.  We get even more disgusting gore whenever we go inside Gregory's ice cream truck.  There is some gnarly stuff in there and we get one of the grossest things I've ever seen when Gregory puts a human eyeball into the ice cream cone of a detective.  I have an eyeball-phobia and I could barely watch.  I rarely get squeamish when watching movies, so props to this one for getting to me.

Finally, there are some sequences that are just utterly bizarre.  When the detectives go to the mental hospital, we get the weirdest scene of the movie.  The inmates are running the asylum and we get the slowest foot-chase ever captured on film.  It's totally bizarre, but completely engaging.


What Sucks:

The first half of the movie is pretty dull.  Gregory only kills one person and it happens off-screen.  It takes awhile for the film to get somewhat interesting.

A lot of the humor doesn't land.  There's a lot of 90's slapstick comedy, which isn't at all my cup of tea.  Gregory does use some decapitated heads as puppets, which is great, but it goes on for far too long and gets pretty old.

There aren't nearly enough on-screen deaths.  The ones we do get are solid, but we could have used a lot more of that.  Also, no kids get killed in the entire movie.  If your movie is about a killer ice cream man, at least have a few kids get killed.


Verdict:

Ice Cream Man certainly had some moments with some solid gore, a few bizarre sequences, and a couple of fun performances, but a lot of the movie is boring, most of the humor doesn't land, and there aren't nearly enough on-screen kills.  It had potential, but doesn't do enough to warrant a recommendation from me.

 4/10: Bad  

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