Ice Scream (The Remix) 2008

Directed by John Darbonne
Starring Bobbi Billard, Akira Lane, Shastina Eloff, Gelusa Zaripova
Unrated
USA

"Vicky, what are you doing working here?"
"I'm saving. I want to get double Ds."

Way back in 1997, screenwriter Derek Zemrak and a couple of his pals bought a camcorder, liquored up Ed Wood cohort Conrad Brooks, and made an hour-long Z-flick about a guy who owns a sexy ice cream shop and the box-headed killer that ruins his day. It was called Ice Scream, and it really did exist, if the VHS repro on IMDB is any evidence. Unfortunately, it did not make a huge splash on the world of underground film. And then? Who knows what happened. Time flew. Zemrak, sensing that perhaps the world had finally caught up with his singular vision of eyeball-ridden ice cream cones, remade (or, as they like to call it, 'remixed') Ice Scream with a (very slightly) bigger budget, more tits, and no Conrad Brooks to speak of. Further confusing matters, the 2008-lensed film has been released under two different titles: depending on where you pick up your copy, it may also be called Hot Blood Sundae. Apparently, that version is slightly different. Dunno how. If you do, fill me in. This is what awaits you in the Remix, at any rate.

Ricky (veteran soap actor Richard Van Vleet) owns a failing ice cream shop staffed by Wes (Ryan Click, who seems to be channeling Jim Carrey's fire marshall Bill character, for some reason), a semi-retarded kid with a too-long neck, and a quartet of teenage cuties in candy striper outfits led by busty blonde Vicki (Bobbi Billard). One day he comes up with an idea to save the store - he renames it Scoopettes, and gets his employees to wear tiny t-shirts and mini-skirts. A solid plan, and before you know it, rubes are lining up to buy scoops full of "Oral orange" and Virgin vanilla" ice cream from his scantily-clad servers.

Things go pretty swimmingly until one night when Paula (Shastina Eloff), on her way to take out the trash, wanders into a dimly lit room to find body parts and blood strewn everywhere. She's attacked by an unseen assailant who drags her across the floor and then strangles her to death with a plastic bag. So that's the end of Paula.

Mindy (Akira Lane) and Desiree (Russian-born Gelusa Zaripova, whose accent is as awesome as her name) discover her in the freezer the next day. They assume she killed herself because she didn't like the skimpy outfits. This would not explain why she was wrapped in plastic, but these are not the brightest bulbs in the novelty ice cream business.

A portly fellow in what looks like a UPS outfit and a girl dressed in lingerie and wearing a cop hat show up to investigate. Sexy policewoman wheels the frozen-stiff Paula out on a hand-dolly while the UPS guy/detective grills/comforts Desiree. And then everybody splits.

Jodi (Nova Conner) is the last one to leave for the night, so she takes a shower in the back room, because that's naturally what you'd do. However, before she can even get her bra and panties off, she's axe-murdered by a dude with a festive box/upside-down ice cream bucket on his head.

Despite that two of their own have been murdered on the premises, the remaining Scoopettes return to work, undaunted. In fact, they wear even less clothes than before, preferring string bikinis. The deaths have done nothing to dampen their sense of fun and frolic either, so they spend a good five or so minutes stripping topless and slathering each other with whipped cream.

Comic antics ensue when a gay guy shows up asking for "Penis pistachio" and then a midget tries to barge in, but playtime is over when the girls discover a human eyeball in the "Cherry Forever" ice cream.

The cops show up again and they discover Jodi in the dumpster, so that pretty much ruins the evening.

The next day, our surviving Scoopettes float around topless in a pool, which is awesomely gratuitous. Wes drops by and the girls tease him until he freaks out and bails. Later on, Mindy shows up for work and gets summarily executed by Boxhead in a jarringly Saw-esque scene shot in stark gray and crimson.

The standard slasher movie finale ensues, as the cops battle the Boxhead killer while Vicki and Desiree alternately cower and go about their daily business of posing in bikinis and suggestively licking ice cream. It ends, as you would expect from an ice-cream themed movie to do, with a twist, albeit a fairly obvious one.

Oh, and there's an end-credits booty-shaking sequence that's pretty much worth the price of admission.

Clip: Playboy's The Girls of McDonalds promo

Director Darbonne has worked mostly as a cinematographer for National Lampoon garbage like Adam and Eve (2005) and low-level Playboy TV segments ("The Girls of McDonalds"!). This becomes pretty obvious whenever he launches into yet another bout of whipped cream smearing or lite-lesbo titty-rubs. He also seems intent on directing a dark and very bloody horror flick someday, as Ice Scream is a fairly grisly affair, especially for the consistently light tone the girls keep in the shop. While the kill scenes are not necessarily at odds with the rest of the film, they do seem less jokey than they ought to, and if you wanted, you could edit out an effectively nightmarish stalk n' slash reel from the more serious moments here.

Buckets of blood aside, Ice Scream is a satisfying bit of no-budget fluff anchored by the Russ Meyer-esque charms of final girl Billard. Prior to her role here, the Texan-born beauty starred as 'Summer' on the syndicated Women of Wrestling TV series in 2000, and is a well-known internet model, with over a million Myspace friends. That's a lot of buds. Imagine what her Christmas card list is like.

Anyway, you have either already seen a lot of her, or you will in the future. Like Mary Carey, she has real B-queen potential.

Clip: Ice Scream the Remix trailer.

- Ken McIntyre