A collaboration between director Tom Holland (Fright Night, Child’s Play) and writer David Schow (The Crow) would rightly have many horror aficionados on the edge of
their seats in anticipation, but We All
Scream for Ice Cream comes across chiefly as a half-melted case of what might have
been.
The Devil’s Rejects) stars
as Buster, a simpleminded ice cream man in a clown costume who rides around in
his van selling “Cheery Tyme Ice Cream.” When the young neighborhood punk eggs
on other kids into pulling a prank on Buster, however, things go terribly, fatally
wrong, and Buster is killed. One night 20 years later, Buster returns from the
grave (in full clown makeup, naturally) to seek revenge against the now-adult neighborhood
kids who let him die, as well as their children. Tracking down these kids, he
does this by serving up poisonously spiked ice cream cones which cause the kids’
parents to disintegrate and melt away. Standing in the way of Buster’s evil
scheme is the remorseful Layne (Lee Tergesen).
Forsythe is an understandable favorite of director Rob
Zombie and other horror/cult directors dwelling on the genre fringe, mainly
because he’s a fiercely committed actor who never bristled at the suggestion of
“more.” So his work gives We All Scream for
Ice Cream an anchored center, to be sure. The premise, too — which comes
across as part It, and part old-school
throwback to something like Nightmare on
Elm Street — is creepy and unnerving, trading more effectively in morality-play
mood than a lot of recent Masters of Horror titles, of which this film is an
entry. Schow’s story, though, leans heavily on a few predictable plot devices,
and the film ultimately never finds an extra gear that moves it past the level
of mere goosing entertainment.
Housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a
cardboard slipcover with an absolutely great cover, We All Scream For
Ice Cream is, like every episode in the aforementioned series so far, presented in a
1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, with solid flesh tones, deep and
consistent blacks and only a few mild problems with compression artifacts. Well-produced
Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and Dolby digital 2.0 stereo tracks anchor the
audio presentations. Animated menus give way to the most substantial bonus
feature — an audio commentary track from Holland and Schow, in which the pair somewhat
gruffly talk a good bit about the sacrifices that are made, both in budget and
time, on the Masters of Horror flicks, and how less compression would have
allowed for different potential interpretations, tangents and/or inclusions. Other
supplemental materials include brief featurettes on the movie’s visual effects work
and a more generalized making-of overview, with interview clips from Forsythe (who
says he actually once worked an ice cream truck driver) and others. Rounding things
out are a scrollable photo gallery, trailers for other episodes in the series, a
DVD-ROM version of the movie’s script and a brief biography of