After releasing multiple amazing episodes (”Family,” “The Black Cat”) of the Showtime horror anthology series “Masters of Horror” onto DVD, it looks like Anchor Bay has begun to scrape the bottom of the barrel of Season Two. The latest episode to hit DVD “We All Scream for Ice Cream” has none of the nudity or excessive gore that has made “Masters” a fan favorite. Fans might be quick to point out that neither did Stuart Gordon’s prior episode that showcased his take on Poe’s “The Black Cat.” Which is true, but that episode succeeded on the strength of his directorial skills and an excellent script. “Ice Cream Man,” however, arrives from the director of such memorable films as “The Temp” and possibly the worst Stephen King adaptation of all time, “The Langoliers.” With a script adapted from a John Farris short story by the guy who wrote the two worst “Texas Chainsaw” films and the two worst “Critters” films, why would I have expected anything else?
“We All Scream for Ice Cream” follows Layne (Lee Tergesen), a father who has returned with his family to his hometown just in time to attend the funeral of one of his childhood friends. Like most adults returning to their old stomping grounds, every corner has a story and every street brings back a memory. By and large, for most people these are cherished moments stolen from a childhood-long thought forgotten and will always be remembered fondly from that point on. But in Layne’s case the same terrible memory keeps appearing inside his mind’s eye: The time he and his friends killed Buster (William Forsythe), a beloved retard that dressed up like a clown and sold ice cream to the neighborhood children. Kids, they do the darndest things.
Layne and his group of friends kept the exploits of that incident from everyone they know and a secret like that festers inside you and changes you forever. As the friends got older, some of them turned to drink, others to religion, and some turned completely insane. As more of Layne’s friends keep turning up dead, he goes in search of their missing friend Virgil (Colin Cunningham), who most people assume is behind the killings, but as crazy as he is, this is one crime he is innocent of. For while it is somebody from their past who is exacting vengeance upon this dwindling group of compatriots, it’s the last person they would suspect. It’s somebody whose body went cold a long time ago, as cold as ice…cream.
The main problem with “We All Scream for Ice Cream” is its inability to make Buster’s return from the dead even remotely fearful. This is no fault of Forsythe; if anything his inspired performance is what keeps the episode from being unwatchable camp. The failure rests completely on the shoulders of the episode’s director, Tom Holland, who hasn’t been a significant voice in horror since “Child’s Play” and “Fright Night” left theaters backing the mid eighties. The entire episode feels forced and rushed, as if Holland simply couldn’t work with the notoriously short shooting schedule episodes that “Masters” adheres to.
While this episode has some of the best actors ever assembled under the roof of a single “Masters” chapter, David J. Schow’s sloppy and uninspired script gives them nothing to work with. While Forsythe shines in the Buster role (particularly in pre-death flashbacks), wonderful character actors like Tergesen, Tim Henry, and Brett Kelly are squandered on this insipid script.
A “Masters of Horror” episode like “We All Scream for Ice Cream” proves that Anchor Bay needed to release this show as season-length sets. This is not an episode worth buying solo; it’s one that should be forced upon people as an inclusion of a multidisc set. Perhaps with Lionsgate taking over for season three of “Masters,” we’ll finally get the DVD sets we wanted the first time around, instead of trying to trick us into buying them again once they stick a season’s worth of shows into a cool box with some minor extra footage slapped onto a “bonus disc.”
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