Horror-movie directors are always looking for new ways to transgress. Eli Roth is a prime example — he once transgressed brilliantly, in “Hostel: Part II” (an eerily plausible movie about members of the elite paying huge sums to murder people in a warehouse in Slovakia), and he did it in an impish way in “Thanksgiving,” the holiday-horror expansion of his “Grindhouse” trailer. But with “Ice Cream Man,” Roth tries to go “over the line” in a way that’s shamelessly derivative, jaw-droppingly bare-bones basic as filmmaking, and way too ludicrous to scare you. The movie wants to be a lark, but it’s such a preeningly garish and ham-handed piece of shock theater that it makes “Thanksgiving” look like “Vampyr.”
In the picturesque town of Bayleen Bay, a sunny Little League game is followed by the arrival of the ice-cream man (Ari Millen), who drives up in a blue-and-white truck heralded by his jingling-bell theme music (which sounds like Eddie Cochran’s “C’mon Everybody”). All the kids rush over to get ice cream. But this ice-cream man is a sinister psycho creep. In his pristine 1950s ice-cream-parlor hat and suit, flashing a grin under a sardine mustache, he’s mute, like Art the Clown in the “Terrifier” films, and he gives off the pervy vibe of the shoe-store clerk in ZZ Top’s “Legs” video.
