Text and Subtext 24: The Ice Cream Man

Remember last week how I said there’s subtext in almost every movie, even if there’s no intention? That lots of time subtext is just a thematic by-product of characterization?

Forgot about that, with The Ice Cream Man. It’s just…glorious 90s WTF IS HAPPENING CHEESY HORROR.

The story is this: the local ice cream man is killed right in front of a kid, in a…mob hit? Anyhoo, the kid sits down on the curb, grabs the ice cream cone dropped by the now gut-shot ice cream man, eats it, and goes away into his Happy Place in his head. Ergo, he goes nuts.

Fast-forward 30 years, and that kid - after spending time in an exceptionally loony loony-bid - is now the local ice cream man, filling in for the ice cream man he’d apparently idolized back in the day. Played by schlock icon Clint Howard with his usual enthusiastic madness, our new ice cream man has got a lot more than dairy goodness in his ice cream truck. A lot more.

Maybe there’s something in here about PTSD…but not a whole lot. Basically it’s Clint Howard giving his as-usual entertaining performance, with Jan-Michael Vincent (looking pretty good, so this was probably before cocaine destroyed him and his health), as a detective, walking around scowling like a bargain-rate David Caruso years before CSI: MIAMI.

Anyway. Good for a laugh on a slow day. Watch it on Tubi today.