Main cast: William Forsythe (Buster), Colin Cunningham (Virgil), Tim Henry (Papa Joe), Ingrid Tesch (Angela), Spencer Achtymichuk (Young Layne Banixter), Brett Kelly (Young Joe), Samuel Patrick Chu (Young Virgil), Cainan Wiebe (Young Toot), and Lee Tergesen (Layne Banixter)
Director: Tom Holland
Back when they were kids, Layne did a bad thing. Taunted by his friends, he released the brake of the ice cream fellow Buster’s van on a dare… and the van hit Buster, sending the clown straight to the afterlife. Now, the kids have all grown up with kids of their own, and Buster is back. What he does is to offer these men’s kids an ice cream shaped like those men, and when the kids go yum-yum-yum, the men melt into a puddle of ice cream goo. Really, the goo has cute colors and everything.
If you can get past this premise, We All Scream for Ice Cream (which is based on an actual short story by John Farris) is… well, nothing much, actually. As you can probably guess, Layne has his hands full trying to figure out what is happening even as invitations to the funerals of his childhood friends start to come on a regular basis, and then he has to somehow find a way to keep Buster away from his kids. But while the result is a pretty cute movie reminiscent of those 1980s low-budget horror flicks with clowns, this one has a head-scratching anticlimactic confrontation with Buster, plenty of cringe-causing bad acting from kids, and the melting-into-goo thing that makes me laugh for all the wrong reasons. But I suppose the bad special effects can be seen as part of the charm of this episode.
Oh, there is some full frontal nudity from Colin Cunningham – or so it seems. Hard to tell, really, and trust me, I’ve looked at that scene thoroughly.
The adult cast members are competent and Tom Holland’s direction is fine too. The pacing is okay, but in the end, I don’t know. This episode totters between campy fun and just plain bad, and I am still conflicted as to whether this one is so bad that it’s so good, or just plain yikes. I suppose three oogies would be a fair rating at the end of the day.
