Yummy Death For Dessert

A bunch of socially snotty kids play a trick on Buster the Clown, a mentally-handicapped ice cream truck driver, and the clown goes down. In other words, he was made into an ice cream sandwich after the kids pop the brake on his Cheery Tyme truck and it squashes the dealer of non-room temperature treats. No word on whether or not any ice cream survived.

It’s now 20 years later and the snotty kids have all grown up with snotty children of their own. Time for some revenge, rocky road style. Buster T. Clown, now looking like he’s been through cold storage Hell, has come back from the dead and drives his truck through eerie fog, handing out treats at midnight to kids, who have fallen into a zombie-like state and are out doing a little sleepwalking. (Hey, at least they’re getting some exercise.)

The ice cream Buster gives them is shaped like people. Once a kid bites into it, their dad dies, dissolving into a big puddle of (wait for it) ice cream. The grown-up kids who killed Buster are themselves being eliminated, one by one, by the cold clown, melted into strawberry, vanilla and chocolate goo.

Buster can make your car windows frost over, and when you touch him, it’s like sticking your hands in a freezer for two hours, except the effect is instantaneous. (Buster would be handy to have around if there’s any warm beer in the house.)

Despite this, We All Scream For Ice Cream (2007) is pretty weak and a paint-by-numbers installment for the Masters of Horror series. Yeah, there’s a halfway decent face-melting scene. But it’s simply too stock to be of any social value. It’s enough to make you switch to frozen yogurt, which isn’t as yuck city as you’d think.

Hear’s To Horror

In the unusual but resonating Masters of Horror: Sounds Like (2007), a nine-to-five white collar schlub with the personality of an occasional pillow, Larry Pearce has the right last name as even the smallest of noises sound as loud as a heavy metal concert.

Wasn’t always that way for the supervisor at a software phone help line. One day while out sailing toy boats in a quiet lake, Larry hears his son’s innards laboring to do their job they were designed to do. A trip to the doctor reveals that the boy is beyond help and that there is NO HOPE. The grief of losing his son gives Larry superhuman hearing, which has its pluses and minuses. Mostly minuses.

As the sounds intensify, Larry flips out at work, comes home and starts bashing the place up with a baseball bat, because those light bulbs, dripping faucets and bubble-making fish in the tank are just too darn loud. His wife is sound asleep upstairs. Standing over her, the sound of her breathing and her eyes rolling around while dreaming are like cement mixer melodies to him. So Larry smothers her with a pillow. Problem solved.

The next week seems to be normal. The job’s going better. He’s getting some rest. The flies on the window don’t sound like 747s taking off. Life’s just peachy until…dang; Everything’s back to sounding like Metallica-brand™ jackhammers, drilling what’s left of his brain into sandpaper yogurt.

Nosy neighbors call the cops, who show up to see Larry’s place trashed. No Larry, but they find his wife, her face mostly eaten off by still-feasting maggots, that are clearly chewing with their mouths open. That’s just disgusting.

Larry’s outside, heading back to the calm and peaceful lake with a toy sailboat. His shirt is drenched in some sort of red fluid, probably ketchup.

Larry will no doubt get in legal trouble for all of this and have to go to a…hearing. Heh.

Space Virus and Yogurt

The Mir space station intercepts an alien hitchhiker in the guise of electric energy, and thinking it’s a lunar text message, mistakenly transmits said life-form to a satellite-tracking ship on this toilet earth. There it wipes out the Ruskies and their brewskis. Harshness abounds.

Meanwhile, a tugboat is tugging a precious cargo (beer, I theorize) across the ocean through a pissed off typhoon. Seeking shelter in the eye of the surly storm, the tug happens across the Russian boat. With salvage in mind to recoup their uninsured losses, the crew (with Jamie Lee Curtis as navigator) board the blood vessel and discover plentiful seagoing wrongness. I had no idea Jamie Lee Curtis knew how to navigate the ocean in addition to being a yogurt spokesperson. What a talent!

The alien is harvesting humans for usable parts (thirst buds) and creating a new half-machine/half-human species, not unlike a certain Borg. Just a typically standard “thing-onboard-trying-to-get-humans” plot. The effects, however, are outstandingly cool, exemplified with Donald Sutherland as the captain discovering the human rebuilding process (a sort of Radio Shack™ meets Black Angus™) while attempting to make a deal with the head mecha-monster that regards Earthers as germs with pants (hence, Virus/1998 the movie’s clever title).

Creative use of gore and limbs and Duracell™ batteries, but due to glaring lack of nudity, a so-so sci-fi flick with a yogurt covered ending at best.