We All Scream for Ice Cream—Masters of Horror:We All Scream for Ice Cream (2007)

Directed by: Tom Holland | 57 minutes | horror | Actors: Brent Sheppard, Maxwell Neck, Tim Henry, Lee Tergesen, Laura Drummond, Colin Cunningham, Ingrid Tesch, Quinn Lord, Lyle St. Goddard, William Forsythe, Kevan Kase, Spencer Achtymichuk, Cainan Wiebe, Brett Kelly, Diego Martinez-Tau

Thematically, this episode from the ‘Masters of Horror’ series follows roughly the same pattern as films such as ‘It’ or ‘Child’s Play’, a film that is not coincidentally also directed by Tom Holland. In ‘Child’s Play’ it was a so-called Good Guy doll that became possessed by the ghost of serial killer Charles Lee Ray, in this film, just like in ‘It’, a clown is the source of evil.

Initially, the ice-selling clown Buster is a roguish childhood friend, but after he dies in a botched prank by a group of children, he returns years later to take revenge on the now grown men who were responsible for his untimely death. The way Buster takes revenge on his killers is very similar to an alternative form of voodoo, except that the ice cream clown uses ice creams that represent his victims instead of cloth dolls.

Unfortunately, ‘We All Scream for Ice Cream’ did not become a great film. For example, the film is too much of a repetition of moves. Virtually all of the clown’s victims meet their end in almost exactly the same way. This makes it all too predictable and you as a viewer lose a bit of attention. Also the undoubtedly terrifying scene in which Buster’s ice cream truck in the dark of night – surrounded by mysterious patches of fog – makes the neighborhood unsafe, is reused so often that the menacing effect of this segment is eventually largely nullified. The accompanying song that Buster sings every time even becomes irritating over time and gets on the nerves.

The striking thematic and story-technical similarities that this film shows with Stephen King’s masterpiece ‘It’ also ensure that the film (probably) unintentionally makes a somewhat plagiarized impression from time to time. Yet it is not all doom and gloom. At times Tom Holland shows a glimpse of his qualities that guaranteed genre gems like ‘Child’s Play’ and ‘Fright Night’. The film also contains a few (for those who are interested) nice scenes, including a part that is strongly reminiscent of a scene from Paul Verhoeven’s ‘RoboCop’ in which one of the criminals gets a heavy dose of chemical waste. Yet across the board this is too little to disguise the weaknesses of this print. ‘We All Scream for Ice Cream’ is too predictable and rarely really scary. Only people who suffer from an obsessive phobia of clowns will be seriously thrown out of their element by this horror film.