Overview of Cool as Ice w/ Brian Huskey & Vanilla Ice
This How Did This Get Made? classic episode dissects the 1991 Vanilla Ice vehicle Cool as Ice, with Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, Jason Mantzoukas, and guest Brian Huskey tearing apart its surreal logic, music-video aesthetics, and baffling plot. The conversation centers on how the movie feels less like a conventional narrative and more like a dream state powered by 90s styling, motorcycles, and random montage energy—until Vanilla Ice himself joins near the end to offer his perspective.
Main Takeaways
- The hosts are stunned by how much of the movie plays like an extended music video rather than a structured feature.
- They repeatedly call out the film’s lack of clear geography, time, and character motivation.
- The opening is criticized as a six-minute credit sequence that already announces the movie’s weird priorities.
- The film’s visual style is compared to Tim Burton, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and a dreamlike version of Rebel Without a Cause.
- The group is especially confused by:
- the motorcycle crew’s arrival in a rural town,
- the bizarre “magic house” they stay in,
- the witness-protection/cop subplot,
- and the abrupt shifts between romance, danger, and dance numbers.
Plot and Scene-by-Scene Commentary
The motorcycle crew and the mysterious town
- Vanilla Ice and his crew ride through the countryside and arrive in a strange small town, prompting intense reactions from locals.
- The hosts joke that the film never explains who these people are, where they came from, or what their actual job is.
- One recurring theory is that the movie treats them like nomads or a touring rap gang moving from city to city.
The weird house
- The crew ends up staying in a bizarre, whimsical house occupied by a strange older couple who repair motorcycles.
- The hosts are obsessed with the house’s bizarre decor and its “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” energy.
- They question why this location exists in the film at all and whether it was a real house dressed up for the movie.
Romance with Kathy
- Vanilla Ice meets Kathy, played by Kristin Minter, and immediately begins a surreal courtship.
- The hosts highlight the absurdity of:
- him waking up in her bed,
- feeding her ice,
- and casually becoming romantic without any normal setup.
- They also note that Kathy seems oddly receptive to him despite the movie giving her little reason to be.
The black book / organizer
- A repeated gag is the movie’s obsession with Kathy’s “organizer” or “black book,” which Vanilla Ice keeps returning to her.
- The hosts find the repeated references hilarious and confusing, especially because the organizer functions as a weird romantic plot device.
The family drama / witness protection subplot
- Michael Gross plays Kathy’s father, who is in witness protection because he turned against corrupt cops.
- The hosts are baffled by how thin and under-explained this storyline is.
- The villains show up with vague demands for money, and the film seems to expect the audience to track a conspiracy that is never clearly laid out.
- The kidnapped little brother plot escalates the tension, but the hosts think the emotional stakes are oddly flat.
The Sugar Shack and dance sequences
- One of the most discussed scenes is the Sugar Shack, a teen hangout with a terrible band.
- Vanilla Ice arrives, takes over, and launches into a dance/rap performance.
- The hosts love how the whole place seems to instantly reconfigure around him.
- They also note that the crowd, extras, and even side characters are constantly dancing, as if the movie shot enough B-roll to make everyone move at all times.
Montage-heavy romance
- The romance is driven almost entirely by montages:
- construction site date,
- desert riding,
- horse-riding scenes,
- and close-ups of the two flirting while music swells.
- The hosts argue that these sequences feel like a training montage from a sports movie mixed with a love story.
What Brian Husky and the Hosts Liked Most
- Brian Husky and the hosts are genuinely entertained by how committed the movie is to its own ridiculous tone.
- They praise Vanilla Ice for having actual charisma and screen presence.
- June and Brian especially enjoy how the film’s strange sincerity makes it memorable even when it makes no sense.
- They also appreciate the movie as a time capsule of early-90s fashion, music-video filmmaking, and over-stylized youth culture.
Vanilla Ice’s Guest Appearance
Vanilla Ice joins near the end and comes across as surprisingly self-aware and good-natured. He reflects on the movie as a cult classic and says:
- He was allowed to improvise and “be himself” in some scenes.
- He helped shape parts of the story, especially the motorcycle-heavy elements.
- He did many of his own stunts.
- The motorcycle crew were intentionally written as drifters/nomads.
- The weird house was a set, not a random real house.
- He was about 19 years old when he made the film.
- He says the movie’s cult status has become something he now embraces.
- He connects the film era to his later work, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.
Notable Quotes and Running Jokes
- “Drop that zero and get with the hero.”
- “What’s it like to have parents?”
- “Cool as ice, man.”
- The hosts repeatedly joke about:
- whether Vanilla Ice is a detective,
- whether the movie is a dream,
- and whether everyone in it is secretly on drugs.
- June’s idea of the movie as a “Tree of Life”-style hallucination becomes one of the episode’s funniest running bits.
Final Verdict
The episode lands on the idea that Cool as Ice is not merely “bad in a fun way,” but genuinely bizarre, singular, and worth seeing. The movie’s fractured storytelling, strange visual language, and total commitment to 90s style make it a cult object the hosts think everyone should experience at least once.