Episode 4

Cool as Ice (1991)

Published on: 12th August, 2022

A story about forbidden love, casual breaking and entering, random dancing, and Dutch angles.

Listen in as me and new guest, Ben, pull on our patchwork pants and overly embroidered jackets to revisit this abomination of a cinematic vehicle meant to launch Vanilla Ice into movie stardom. Luckily for society it was a spectacular failure.

Directed by David Kellogg (Inspector Gadget, Lusty Liaisons II) and written by David Stenn (Girl 27, She Was Marked for Murder), the Washington Post called the film "a cross between an after-school special and MTV video," while TV Guide said the film's "premise is utterly insupportable and [Kellogg's] direction renders the choices flat." Did I watch the same movie? These reviews, though low on the Metacritic score, seem kind. This film was a dumpster fire of epic proportions, and I will die on that hill.

It tells the story of a kind-of-a-jerk rapper named Johnny (Vanilla Ice) getting stuck in a small town and pursuing a local girl named Kathy (Kristin Minter, Home Alone) who is already dating a definite jerk named Nick (John Newton, Alive, Melrose Place). Ice, erm-I mean Johnny, ambles around the town chasing after the freshly-graduated from high school Kathy, while his crew deals with a kooky elderly couple who try to fix a broken motorcycle. There is random dancing, Ice rapping, a backstory involving witness protection, and a kidnapping. It's a bit of a roaming mess. Get stoned and watch this one.

The film is currently available on Prime Video if you feel like burning some cash.

Find and follow Ben on Instagram: @benschyan

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About the Podcast

Subversive Cinema
The show about the weird, whacky, and downright wrong entries in cinema history.
There are a lot of films out there, so it's only natural that a decent amount of strange content exists. These are the films we examine.

Each week, I sit down with a guest and we take a look a one of these weird, whacky, or downright wrong cinematic entries. Each of them has something about it that makes it special — I call it the "Subversive Sauce" — and that is recipe we try to break down.

Is it scientific? Absolutely not. Will you learn things you didn't know? Maybe. Might you hear about films worth checking out? Most definitely.

Tune in and see what the subversion is all about!
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About your host

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Art Hall

Art started in the podcasting ecosphere back in 2007 with the outrageous, yet short lived, scripted variety show "WBKR: Buckwilde Radio," which claimed listeners from over 20 different countries. After hanging up his headphones and heading west to move to Los Angeles, he kept podcasting in his heart but only made appearances rather than producing or hosting. It only took a global pandemic, boredom, and the pleading from his buddy, Joe, to get back into the mic booth.