In a black-and-white prologue, a young boy witnesses the murder of an ice cream man in a small town. Years later, the boy, named Gregory Tudor (Clint Howard), returns to the town to become an ice cream man himself. He has spent the intervening years in a mental hospital. He kills some people (and a dog), all while doing his duties as ice cream man, leading to suspicion from local kids and the police. The ice cream man even goes so far as to graphically mix parts of people he has killed into his frozen treats, making his customers unwitting cannibals.