Bomb Pops

In the annals of history, one horror movie villain stands out as the most heinous, the most cruel, the most diabolical, the most... fattening?

No, today on Tropefest, we're talking about that perennial children's favorite person in the whole wide world on a hot, summer's day, the ice cream man.  A person so ubiquitous in our childhoods that it always comes as a shock when they're portrayed as anything other than peaches and cream, lily-white, "this-person-wouldn't-hurt-a-fly"-ness.

Oh, HELL, Naw!

We all know about the windowless, white van we're supposed to stay away from but in moves like Ice Cream Man, Maximum Overdrive, Legion and Killer Klowns from Outer Space, getting a Drumstick™ is going to take a lot more than cadging a buck off of your mom.

Now, the creepy ice cream truck isn't a new thing.  Well, it's newER since we needed delivery trucks to actually exist but as long as they've been around they've been a symbol of the corruption of innocence which, as we all know, is a popular theme in horror.  In the Masters of Horror episode  "I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream", the truck itself isn't evil, but the driver is a revenge story gone oh, so right because the driver is a ghost who's feeding the kids of his tormentors magic ice cream that melts their fathers.  Into sherbet-y goo.  It's hilarious.

EAT IT!

This also ties into people's fear of clowns since, y'know, a lot of horror movie ice cream men appear as them.

As a trope, though, this one can only take so much mileage even though the fear of having a child harmed weighs heavily on, well, everyone's mind.  Kids don't want to be kidnapped and parents don't want to hunt down good pictures to place on milk cartons.

Or end up in a waffle cone.

This is a silly trope and it knows it.  It relies on sight gags and puns and, while that's OK, they can get stale real fast.  There are very few instances of this trope in any kind of serious horror film and, y'know what?  I'm OK with that.  We all know how much I love my horror-comedies.

Now, I believe there was some mention of a sundae?