A waste of 90 minutes of my life

A Brilliant Conflict

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

So far...as I watch the Masters of Horror episodes in no particular order or without regard to Season One or the second season, this episode "We All Scream for Ice Cream" is easily one of the weakest(only slightly better than "The V- Word." What did I like: the opening about a creepy ice cream truck, the scary clown(played wonderfully and almost anonymously by William Forsythe), and the story about a gang of not-so-tough-looking youths and a stuttering clown who sold ice cream. The first half of the episode is gripping enough and has plenty of atmosphere but as the tale unfolds one sees how barren the script is with logic until the very illogical, unsuspenseful, lame ending. The way people are killed, how Buster came back, and that ludicrous thing at the end with the strawberry ice cream made me laugh in a "wow! this is pretty bad!" way. Look, the acting is engaging. Colin Cunningham plays a crazy guy well, and I must confess the bathtub scene is disturbing and way over-the-top. Lee Tergesen(of Werd Science fame) plays the lead well-enough. His wife is attractive and decent, and the kids are all acceptable except in the flashback where we just get some ludicrous story from the past. The line, "It will be bitchin" had me rolling as it came from the lips of a kid who looked softer than the the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Buster the Clown is worth seeing the episode. Forsythe is so genial in the flashbacks and so pernicious in the "present" as a Ghost/Clown from who knows where. The line from the ice cream truck is used throughout to the point of ad nauseum. What about all that temperature freezing stuff? Did anyone else notice it? And how were two bodies buried when there were no bodies left. No investigation either? maybe I am over-analyzing here. But this episode had room to delve into these things by getting rid of all the repetitive stuff. Admittedly, this is a fun episode, but is it great or even good - NO WAY! Director Tom Holland, I guess, deserves his title if for nothing else than Fright Night, but he shows himself to be more of a novice than a master here.

I have seen almost all episodes of the generally great "Masters Of Horror" series, and the episodes sure differ in quality. Some episodes (such as "Pelts", "Imprint", "The Black Cat" or "The Washingtonians") are downright brilliant, most others are highly entertaining, and some episodes disappoint. Tom Holland's "We All Scream For Ice Cream" is one of the disappointing episodes, or, more precisely, pretty much the worst episode after Ernest R. Dickerson's terrible "V-Word". Holland deserves respect for "Child's Play" and "Fright Night", but his MoH episode is sadly quite a failure. It is not necessarily the director's fault that "We All Scream For Ice Cream" doesn't work, however, since the script and the whole idea are just so plain stupid that only a genius could have made something decent out of it. I usually don't mind movies being silly, since I can enjoy them as long as they're entertaining. Horror movies furthermore don't necessarily have to be "realistic", but they should have a certain logic. "We All Scream For Ice Cream" is just a bit too flat to be enjoyable. I am a fan of odd ideas in Horror films, but this one's premise is just too stupid to be scary or entertaining. At least the V-Word had Michael Ironside.SPOILERS! - The vengeful ghost of an ice cream selling clown comes back from the dead. He doesn't simply haunt or murder those who have once done him wrong, however. No, this villainous guy sells some mysterious Ice Cream to the kids of those he means to punish. Then, when the kids eat the ice cream, the parents melt - like ice cream. Wow! The idiocy of this storyline has yet to find an equal. One of the evil Clown's victims-to-be, is wise enough to tell his wife to get the kids out of town. It's quite unfortunate that his wife is an idiot who doesn't get the kids out of town because she thinks it's 'crazy' (in spite of the fact that people constantly melt in her lovely hometown)..."We All Scream For Ice Cream" may have some qualities (very few, to be honest). The performances are OK. William Forsythe delivers a decent performance as Buster, the Clown who comes back as an evil ghost. It must also be appreciated when a child actor manages to seem evil or cruel, and it must therefore be mentioned that Samuel Patrick Chu does a very good job being a truly sadistic little bastard in a flashback sequence. Other than acceptable performances and decent CGI (sigh), "We All Scream For Ice Cream" has little to offer. It's simply too flat, too silly, and (at least in my opinion) it was not scary at all. My advice: Switch this one (as well as "The V-Word), and watch the other episodes.

This episode was wholly disappointing. Besides the decent effects work on the hot tub melting scene, the entire episode had the tension-level and overall cheesiness of Nickelodeon's old show. While it was sad to see Buster die, this could have been written to show a much creepier edginess that other Masters of Horror have done well, such as "Pelts." This episode ranks as low, if not lower, than "Valerie on the Stairs." Especially due to the downright horrible ending. Crappy lines for the stale characters (minus Buster, who was great until he died). Cue up the distant growling of Buster to finish the episode...even though you've already killed him, and you can't find the time or energy to think up a truly creepy ending. This is what really brings down the series as a whole. Can't Mick Garris screen most of these ep's for quality before they're aired? Oh wait, it doesn't help that all of the episodes Garris has directed are quite mundane also. Hopefully the last three of the season are much scarier and better than this load o' poo.

So as I suffer from insomnia and was perfectly willing to be subjected to the normal Sunday night/Monday morning line up B-rated porn on my local movie channel, imagine my surprise to a bunch zombie-ish children standing outside waiting an ice cream man, who couldn't be just some normal evil character, no, heaven forbid we do normal, it had to be a FROGGIN STUPID SCARY PSYCHO FLIPPIN CLOWN! Which then prompted and almost asleep insomniac to be awake for the next 4 hrs. F a bunch of this bull crap little episode. Stupid clowns need to rot in hell! It's not as if things such as IT aren't scary enough but you have make the ice cream a clown, seriously can we not think of something more standard, no we have strike fear into the heart of kids, by making something that should be nice and sweet into this psychopathic thing that eats kids! UNACCEPTABLE! Frickin Hate Clowns!