LOS ANGELES, Aug 3 (UPI) — Writer/director Eli Roth said the young cast of his horror movie Ice Cream Man, in theaters Friday, embraced the extreme gore of his macabre comedy. Roth’s new film is about an ice cream man (Ari Millen) whose confections turn the children into murdering zombies.

In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Roth, 54, said he spoke to the young actors’ parents. Both the parents and children were already horror fans.

“It was a joyous set,” Roth said. “They’re like, ‘Hey, my daughter would love a fake head. Can you give my son an arm?’ The kids all wanted to be covered in blood.”

Charlie Zeltzer, Kiori Mirza Waldman and Shiloh O’Reilly play the kids who did not eat ice cream. As they try to escape their killer classmates, it was important to Roth that the trio not be too innocent.

“The kids are swearing and they’re talking like real kids,” Roth said. “They watch Stranger Things, they’ve seen It, they understand what having a great performance in a horror movie can do.”

Zeltzer’s character, Jared, has a teenage sister, Lizzie (Sarah Abbott). The siblings are at odds until they become the only young people under attack.

“I definitely was the annoying younger sister,” Abbott, 20, said of her real-life siblings. “Then when I went to play Lizzie, I feel like I understood her a little bit.”

For Roth, Ice Cream Man is part of a whole subgenre of “killer kid” films that include The Children and Who Can Kill a Child? Exploring taboos is a function of horror.

“I want to make a horror movie that is transgressive,” Roth said, “Like when I saw Re-Animator, you can’t believe what you’re watching or when I saw Evil Dead.”

Roth formed The Horror Section to produce his own movies, and allow fans to invest in the company. They are releasing Ice Cream Man unrated so Roth never had to edit any of the film’s gore to secure an R rating.

“Seeing what Terrifier 3 did unrated in theaters, now you can make a movie unrated and get a wide theatrical release,” Roth said. “I talked to all the theater chains. I said I’m going to go and make this movie and put it out fully unrated. They said, ‘No problem, we’ll support you.'”

This summer has been dominated by R-rated horror films Obsession and Backrooms, from Focus Features and A24 respectively. Roth is encouraged to see fans seek out horror movies in theaters.

“You can watch Coachella live or see it on your phone,” Roth said. “You’ve got to be there. So you’re seeing people going out and having a great time at the movies and it’s an incredible moment.”

Abbott discovered the two summer horror hits too, but admits her genre knowledge is limited.

“I appreciated horror films, but I was always really scared to watch them,” she said. “I’ve been putting myself out there. I just recently saw Backrooms and Obsession, which were phenomenal.”

Roth himself plays Jared and Lizzie’s father. Another adult in the film is a priest (Benjamin Byron Davis) who explains the origin of the ice cream man to the kids.

“The script puts a lot of exposition in his hands,” Davis, 54, joked. “I even took to calling him Father Exposition.”

Davis has worked with Roth since a 1999 animated series Chowdaheads, and 2023’s Thanksgiving. He prepared for his latest role by watching The Exorcist and The Pope’s Exorcist, but found more inspiration in Spencer Tracy’s Father Flanagan in Boys Town.

“Spencer Tracy gives such a magnificent warm performance,” Davis said. “That was the thing that really stuck out to me was to see if I could find that sort of warmth in this guy, particularly given that we find him in a freezer.”

The freezer scene was actually uncomfortably hot, Davis revealed. However, Davis felt the power of the costume, even though people on set knew he was an actor.

“Walking around with a collar, I did notice that people were very mindful of their Ps and Qs in my company,” Davis said. “So there is some power to that icon.”

Abbott has been acting since she was 8 and dancing since she was 6. She said her parents supported her performing ambitions, and still help her by recording Voicenotes to help her prepare for emotional scenes.

On the set of Ice Cream Man, villain Millen also shared some helpful advice with Abbott.

“He just reminded me to take my space, take my time to get to the emotional range that is needed,” she said. “He would just sit and talk with us and the other actors, but when he had to lock in and become the ice cream man, it was scary.”