Ice Cream Man follows an idyllic summer town which descends into madness when an ice cream man serves kids sweet delights with horrifying results. Directed by Eli Roth (Hostel), the horror movie stars Ari Millen, Benjamin Byron Davis, Eli Roth, Karen Cliche, Dylan Hawco, Sarah Abbott, Shiloh O’reilly, Kiori Mirza Waldman, Charlie Zeltzer, and Charlie Storey.
The movie features original music by legendary Grammy-nominated rapper/actor Snoop Dogg and special makeup effects by Steve Newburn and Academy Award winner Adrien Morot, making Ice Cream Man one of the year's most unique horror outings.
Tickets are now on sale—and can be purchased here—and we recently had the good fortune to sit down with Benjamin Byron Davis (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3) to discuss his role as The Priest.
Reflecting on working with Roth, the movie's young cast and Ari Millen, who plays the titular Ice Cream Man, Davis shares plenty of fascinating insights into bringing this unique horror outing to life.
We also hear from the actor on his iconic role in Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption video games as Dutch van der Linde and whether the door is open to him returning as Rupert Thorne after voicing the villain in DC Studios' Creature Commandos.
You can check out the full interview with Benjamin on Ice Cream Man in the player below.
How’s it going, Benjamin?
Josh, it’s going very well. I love the Spider-Man comics behind you. I was a big Amazing Spider-Man collector in my day.
Oh, do you still have any of those issues hanging around, or are you regretting not holding on to them?
I got rid of them when I was 19, but I just went back to Boston to my old comic book store, Million-Year Picnic, and I picked up my favorite Spider-Man, which was 248. And now I have that on my wall over here. So that’s rather recently. But back in the day in high school, I had a ton of Spider-Man.
Oh, well that’s awesome. It's always a pleasure to speak to a fellow fan, and I’m a big fan of yours as well. And I’m a horror fan as well, and I love gore in my horror films. I’ve got to say when I sat down to watch this one, seeing what those kids do to their parents took me by surprise. What was your reaction when you watched this thing for the first time?
Well, I was a little more prepared than you because I’d read the script, so I knew what was kind of owed. But it’s one thing to read it and it’s quite another to see it. And it is spectacularly disgusting in all the best ways.
How did you come to be involved with the project? And when you got that script, was that your main reason for signing on? Obviously working with Eli Roth as well.
Well, Eli, every time Eli and I have had a chance to work together, I’ve jumped at it. I love working for Eli. It was a funny thing with this script. He sent it to me, and I read it thinking not at all that there was a part for me in it. I thought he was just getting feedback from folks. So I read it, loved it, didn’t know how you could make it, but it was engaging and terrifying, but also hysterically funny in a kind of really naughty sort of a way. And yeah, and I texted him. I said, 'I thought it’s fantastic.' And then he texted me back, and he said, 'What do you think of the priest?' And I said, 'I think it’s great.' And he said, 'No, playing it.' 'Yeah, I would be delighted.'
So we sorted it out, and about three weeks later I was on set. And the marching orders he gave me after he gave me the part was he told me about a film from Spain from 1976 called Who Can Kill a Child, which I don’t know if you’re familiar with. I’d never seen it before, but it is a remarkable film, with remarkable performances that, like Ice Cream Man, a very diabolical kind of a story. And it was pretty great to watch because it just let me understand what he wanted to do here. And so Ice Cream Man is a lot of fun. It is a blast, but it’s also a challenging film in its way too, I think.
You have a very pivotal scene with Charlie, Shiloh, and Kiori’s characters. So what was it like with three young rising stars like that to work with them? It was almost like seeing someone tell them a ghost story, I thought, with you relaying this information to them.
Oh, well, thanks for saying that, Josh. It was, you know, the adage is in Hollywood: don’t ever work with kids or animals. And I’ve worked with both. And I will say working with animals is challenging. But working with these three very fine actors—Kiori, Charlie, and Shiloh—they were extraordinary and so poised. And I got to set, I think right about the midpoint in production, and they were still so engaged, energetic, understood the material, were there for me exactly as I would expect from an actor twice their age with twice their experience. I think that these kids, when you see how well they carry this story… this trio is really something special and they anchor this film and provide a real counterweight to the magnificent performance Ari Millen gives.
I’m glad you mentioned Ari there because I’m dancing around spoilers, but The Priest does very briefly come face to face with the Ice Cream Man. What was that day like for you on set and to kind of see him in that character and inhabiting that kind of horror role that he does here?
Well, you know, so I met him walking to set, and I knew his role, but I also… here is this, like me, journeyman actor who was extraordinarily affable and pleasant. And the first time I saw him in Ice Cream Man mode… and what he is doing is so elegant and precise and surprising. It is quite a fearsome performance, and yet it is without flourish. It’s without spectacle. He’s doing really sophisticated work. And it was a delight to be attacked by him.
There are a lot of layers to your character. I think people are going to be surprised to see it unfurl as they watch this film. You’re wearing the priest’s uniform, so to speak. And does that help you as an actor, just being in a costume as simple as that to kind of better inhabit a character when you come on set on a project like this, especially when everything around you is so heightened and so crazy?
That’s a great point, Josh, and it absolutely is true. I mean, the costume does transform everything. And sometimes in my career it’ll be a very big change, a prosthetic change. This is just the iconography. And priests are icons in our childhood. Priests are also icons in cinema and certainly icons in horror. And so one of the things that I was… in the time preparing to go shoot in Canada, I studied… I watched a lot of films with priests in them.
You know, some as far-ranging as Phil Hoffman in Doubt, which it was wonderful to return to, does not have any bearing on Ice Cream Man. But the one that I was most surprised about that I had not seen before was Boys Town, which is Mickey Rooney and Father Flanagan played by Spencer Tracy. And he, in all of his work, Tracy was so warm. But as Father Flanagan in particular, he was so… there was such a comfort coming off of him that that was a quality that I hoped I could find in the material.
And so beyond that, I was also mindful, you know, Josh, I sort of called the guy 'Father Exposition' because it is… It’s also an iconic thing in a horror film to be the keeper of the lore, the one who knows the history of the town or the history of why Jason Voorhees is Jason Voorhees and whatever it is. So that was also quite exciting. But the long and short of it is when you put that collar on, it changes the way you feel. It also changes the way even just people working on the set behave around you. So there’s power in that imagery.
While I’ve got you, Benjamin, I’m listening to you speak, and I’m a big Red Dead Redemption fan, and I’m hearing Dutch. I can’t help it. The legacy of that franchise and that role. What does it mean to you to have been part of that game and the cultural impact it’s had even now?
It’s overwhelming. And yeah, Red Dead 2 came out seven or eight years ago, but I auditioned for Dutch in 2009. Red Dead 1 came out in 2010. So I’ve been with this guy for a very long time. And it’s remarkable. I mean, it’s a testament, I think, also to Rockstar Games. And you don’t, thank God, you don’t think about it while you’re working on the material, but they have such a global reach, and that’s the thing that sort of surprised me in the afterlife of this work. I mean, all of us working on that in secrecy for five years on the second game were really focused on the work and the impact of the work, the legacy of the work. No one, at least I could not imagine. I just came back from South Carolina. I was there this weekend, and there’s so much artwork that’s created, cosplay that’s inspired, camaraderie, community. The fans of that game are so spectacular to one another. And that I get to be a small part of this continuing legacy is really just the great honour of my career.
You’re also in Creature Commandos, reuniting with James Gunn in the DCU. Do you think we’re going to see more of you in that world? I know your character, Rupert Thorne, made a real impact.
You know, I certainly hope so. Things didn’t look too good for Rupert, but we never saw his body. And B, I’ve been, as you know, as we were saying at the beginning of our conversation, I’ve been reading comics a long time, and dead in comics is not always dead. But the quick answer is I have no idea. The last quick answer is if James and Peter ever have anything that they want from me, I am going to show up because working for those gentlemen is spectacular. James and I go back quite some ways. And I am delighted to be on his Rolodex because the work that he makes is so spectacular.
Ice Cream Man will be in theaters nationwide on August 7, 2026.