Long ago, a group of young kids bullied and tormented a local ice cream delivery man, dressed like a clown, which eventually led to his death. Fast-forward to present time and those kids are now all grown up and have families of their own. But the clown is back for revenge and uses the children to get to the adults.
I was actually pretty excited to get to see We All Scream For Ice Cream since it was directed by Tom Holland who gave us Child's Play and Fright Night among others. But while those two mentioned films were both pretty good, this episode did not fully satisfy.. or even satisfy for that matter. Apparently the film was based on a short story called "I Scream, You Scream, We all Scream, for Ice Cream" by John Farris, but unfortunately this film will not make you scream.. at least not in a good way. I never expected scares from Holland, rather that he would make the movie a bit comical, but it's just not really working on either ends. What is a bit sad is that Holland disappeared from the scene for a good ten year or so and I would've just liked to seen a better "come-back" than this.
So this guy Buster (played by William Forsythe) works as an ice cream man - a very sweet guy who makes the younger kids laugh, but who's also slightly retarded. Some kids play a prank on the poor guy, they let the brake go on his truck and he ends up dead (that's one helluva "prank" and some sadistic bunch of kids.) Well, the kids grow up to become adults and have families of their own, and the ice cream man comes back from the dead to get revenge. It's not really a bad horror story and I gotta admit that I was a bit intrigued early on and curious to where the story was going, but unfortunately sweet turned to sour pretty fast.
Lee Tergesen ('Toby' Beecher in OZ) plays Layne Bannixter who we get to follow and who is trying to solve the mystery with the evil clown. When the so-called horror actually kicked in, it felt like a horror movie for kids. Not that I ever thought it would be scary, but the horror was just way too simple and similar things have been done like a billion times before and predictable is the word. The final show-down was the greatest mess of this episode when Layne "battles" the clown Buster, but at that point I had already lost the little interest that I had before.
After last week's awesome episode that was Right To Die, watching this felt like getting smacked over the head. I'm sorry but it just didn't cut it at all. Thing is that we're supposed to be watching the very Masters of Horror's work here - now think about that for a while. A master is someone who have mastered something, meaning that person is not just good at it, but he or she pretty much rules when it comes to their thing. I think they should be way more selective with this series because some episodes are just, simply put, not that impressive at all. I'm a horror fan, but if this is what people consider to be the work of a master, well, then I better find myself a new hobby.
Tom Holland have made some cool stuff in the past, but this was an ugly flick, not worthy to put a Master stamp on at all. I don't think this would work even if you're one of those who are scared of clowns. Hope next week's episode will be a lot better, because it's episodes like this that makes you lose faith in the show.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: We All Scream For Ice Cream
MOVIE YEAR: 2007
DIRECTOR: Tom Holland
WRITING CREDITS: David J. Schow
GENRE: Horror
CAST: William Forsythe, Lee Tergesen, Colin Cunningham
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 58 min
RATING: 2/10
Masters of Horror (S02E10): We All Scream For.. Website/IMDB Click here
Masters of Horror (S02E10): We All Scream For.. Trailer Click here
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