If they brave screenings of the new horror film Ice Cream Man, parents may have second thoughts about letting their kids run after the ice cream truck. The film, directed by Eli Roth off a script he wrote with Noah Belson, opens in theaters on Friday, August 7, and offers a sadistic take on a summertime tradition.
If it’s any consolation, there’s no serial killer using ice cream to turn children against adults, as Ice Cream Man is not based on a true story… well, mostly. Here’s what we know about the film, including what’s fact and what’s fiction…
The film’s titular character offers sweet treats that turn children homicidal.
In Ice Cream Man, an “idyllic summer town descends into madness when an ice cream man serves kids sweet delights with horrifying results,” according to the official logline. And trailers for the film reveals those horrifying results, showing zombie-like kids killing adults in gruesome manners after coming into contact with Ari Millen’s ice cream man character.
The cast of Ice Cream Man includes Benjamin Byron Davis, Karen Cliche, Dylan Hawco, Sarah Abbott, Shiloh O’Reilly, Kiori Mirza Waldman, Charlie Zeltzer and Charlie Storey, and Roth himself. The filmmaker is releasing the film through his media company The Horror Section, which “super-serves horror fans by owning and controlling a premium intellectual property library of unhinged films, television series, and games.” Collaborators on the film include rappers Nas and Snoop Dogg — the former is an executive producer, the latter contributed music.
Ice Cream Man is based only on Eli Roth’s memories and imagination.
Roth explained to The Orange County Register that he came up with the idea for Ice Cream Man during a 2003 press tour for his previous film, Cabin Fever. “I saw an ice cream truck and the music just triggered these memories,” he recalled. “You start salivating and, like, running towards the ice cream truck.”
But with horror filmmaking on his mind, Roth turned that innocent memory into something nefarious. “I thought, ‘What if this person was a serial killer?’ Like, we just sort of trust ice cream men. Then the music was making me think of the Pied Piper, and, ‘What if the combination of the ice cream and the music could activate the children to just go and massacre all the adults? What if the ice cream is turning them crazier, and suddenly the kid apocalypse happens?’”
Roth wrote a draft for Ice Cream Man around that time, but revisited the idea recently after becoming a father, as he explained in a Times of India video. “All you think of is protecting your child as a parent,” he said. “That’s it. Every decision stems from that. And then the scary thing is that you know you can’t, no matter what. No matter what happens, something will get to your kid. All you can do is repair them, whether it’s something through a video or through the food. Some evil force coming into your neighborhood and turning them against you is such a terrifying thought that I sort of re-approached it … from the point of view of a parent.”
Iconic Events Releasing/Courtesy: Everett Collection
If you haven’t lost your appetite, there’s also a real-life ice cream tie-in.
To promote Ice Cream Man, Roth partnered with the San Francisco-based ice cream company Humphry Slocombe to create a limited-edition flavor called Brain Freeze. In another juxtaposition of childhood innocence turned stomach-turning, Brain Freeze is bubblegum-flavored ice cream shot through with strawberry jam.
“We wanted to create a flavor both sublime and scoopable, but also gruesome and gory,” Roth said in a statement, per Variety. “No matter what I suggested, their appetite for the red stuff not only matched mine but went above and beyond.”
If you have the stomach for it, Brain Freeze will be available throughout August at Humphry Slocombe’s eight Bay Area scoop shops and for nationwide delivery through Goldbelly.
Ice Cream Man, In Theaters, Friday, August 7