In a just and fair world, this year would see the release of a seventh or eighth installment in the Ice Cream Man franchise. Alas, this is a cold and dark world that requires great perseverance and we are left with but one Ice Cream Man movie, a twisted 1995 horror film that sports one of the few Clint Howard lead performances out there.
If you want to know why Howard is a favorite among directors like Rob Zombie (Halloween, 3 From Hell, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto), Uwe Boll (Bloodrayne: The Third Reich, Blubberella), and, of course, his brother Ron (pretty much everything), then you need only check out Ice Cream Man, the rare movie that takes full advantage of Howard’s one-of-a-kind energy.
Ice Cream Man follows Gregory (Howard), a man who spent years in a questionable mental institution after witnessing the murder of his local ice cream man, someone he regarded as a hero. Gregory returns to his hometown as an adult to take over the position of ice cream man…but his interests lie far beyond merely dishing out the flavors of the week.
As kids begin to go missing, the police start looking into Gregory and a group of local children also start to spy on the mysterious man.
Clint Howard has had plenty of scene-stealing moments in bit roles throughout his long career, but Ice Cream Man really gave him a chance to shine. Howard brings both sympathy and downright creepiness to his character, managing to show off sides to himself he hasn’t quite had the room to show in other flicks. The actor has admitted that he was deeply committed to the role of the Ice Cream Man; he told Joe Bob Briggs on an episode of “MonsterVision” in 1999 that he would scream at the top of his lungs on his way to the set every day, which led to his raspy voice in the movie. Clearly, he relished the chance to finally create his own horror icon.
The premise for Ice Cream Man is, of course, ridiculous and that’s something that Howard and the filmmakers smartly embraced. The film is often so over the top at times that it’s clear the filmmakers are going for laughs. “We had our tongues firmly planted in our cheeks,” Howard told Joe Bob Briggs about the film.
In one scene, Howard’s Gregory goes to visit a local woman who has been flirting with him. He shows up with a giant ice cream cone topped with a man’s head. It’s his way of courting her. The scene is so over-the-top that the folks over at RiffTrax recently pondered in a commentary for the movie where Gregory would have gotten such a big ice cream cone for the head. A fair question, but such details hardly matter in a movie that’s having so much fun with itself.
Other hilariously out-there scenes include everything from people stuffed in freezers to gooey body parts being mixed into ice cream.
No matter how one feels about Ice Cream Man and its bizarre way of telling its wild story, Howard’s creation is at least undeniable. The actor deserved a few more goes at this character, and he almost had that chance several years back. Ice Cream Man has built such a cult following over the years that there was almost a sequel put into production in 2014. A Kickstarter campaign was initiated to get funding for a sequel, but their goal was never reached; just $4,000 of a $300,000 goal was raised.
Not everyone may agree, but if you’re asking me Ice Cream Man deserves another chapter. Its unique nature has helped keep it alive over the years and Howard’s performance is one that should have cemented his place next to folks like Tony Todd and Robert Englund. There’s still a chance someone comes out of nowhere and decides to finance a sequel but for now, we have but one movie to appreciate the weird delight that is Clint Howard’s Ice Cream Man.
Considering how wonderfully deranged, uproariously funny, and downright unique that movie is, maybe it is a just and fair world after all.
