This '80s Crime Movie Spoof Has One Of The Strangest Premises Of All Time

The concept for James Lorinz's proposed crime movie "Swirlee" makes for a strange elevator pitch. Do you remember Mister Softee? Kids on the East coast likely know about him. He was the smiling mascot of a local ice cream truck company, a man with a gigantic soft-serve ice cream cone for a head. Well, what if Mister Softee was a real human being whose ice-cream-head was the result of a rare medical condition? Also, what if he was in deep with the mob? It's like Martin Scorsese's deeply personal fave "Mean Streets," but with an ice-cream-head man! It practically writes itself! The title? "Swirlee!"

That was the thought of actor and filmmaker James Lorinz in the late 1980s. Lorinz may be best known for playing Jeffrey Franken, the lead character in "Basket Case" director Frank Henenlotter's seminal classic "Frankenhooker." He also played a doorman in the revolting cult movie "Street Trash" and the character of Freddy in Uli Edel's "Last Exit to Brooklyn." After appearing in films like "RoboCop 3" and "The Jerky Boys," Lorinz moved on to TV shows like "Brooklyn South" and "Becker." He even worked with Steven Spielberg on "Bridge of Spies" and Scorsese on "The Irishman" prior to appearing in the 2024 miniseries "Crash the System." 

Fans of lost media, however, know him for "Swirlee," which is often cited as the oddest film never made. Lorinz wrote a full-length feature script for "Swirlee" (he couldn't get the rights to use the Mister Softee name) and even filmed a 15-minute short film as a proof-of-concept reel he could show to studios. Lorinz played Mister Softee (re-spelled as "Mr. Softy") and spent hours — and $5,000 — getting into his bizarre, outsize ice-cream-head makeup. David Caruso played his short-tempered roommate Tony, while Tony Darrow played the foulmouthed gangster Don Tofutti.

The script for "Swirlee," penned by Lorinz and Rocco Simonelli (writer of "The Substitute"), made the rounds through Hollywood, and many knew of its existence. Simonelli once offered it for free on his website, but it has more recently been removed. For years, no one could locate the short film that Lorinz had made, but it was eventually leaked online, and a low-quality version (clearly made through several generations of VHS duping) can be found easily enough.

The short sees Mr. Softy welcoming a sex worker into his dingy New York apartment, offering her a glass of champagne. The apartment is freezing, as Mr. Softy needs to stay frozen to survive. He doesn't drink booze but does tuck into a nice glass of Bosco. The sex worker is too shocked by his ice-cream-head to have sex with him, and she storms out. Mr. Softy is very, very lonely. His roommate, Tony, then comes home and berates him for spending money on a sex worker when he knows that they're in debt. "Kids used to look up to you," he yells. "I wanna be like everybody else," Mr. Softy pleas. "You're not like everybody else! You're ice cream!"

Mr. Softy then goes to see Don Tofutti (Tofutti was a tofu-based ice-cream-like treat that was hip in the late '80s) about getting some work. Don Tofutti seems to have repossessed Mr. Softy's ice cream trucks years earlier, leaving the ice cream man destitute. He refuses to give Mr. Softy any work, though, because his old-timey creaminess isn't considered healthy anymore. Mr. Softy is depressed.

Indeed, Mr. Softy is accosted on the way home and feels such despair that he decides to end his own life by taking a long, hot bath. Tony bursts in as Mr. Softy is melting and saves him. There is something that can be done. Tony and Mr. Softee then burst into Don Tofutti's lair with guns and execute him. The feature film would have followed Mr. Softy as he got back on his feet.

Lorinz wanted to pitch "Swirlee" as a gritty crime/cop drama, just with a surrealist bent. It clearly came in the wake of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," another film that took lighthearted children's icons and juxtaposed them with a gritty film noir story. It wasn't as far-fetched as it might seem at first glance. Lorinz was pitching "Swirlee" around Hollywood right when "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" was being made, so whimsical stories about mutants were in vogue. Some on the Lost Media Archive have revealed that certain studio heads expressed interest in making "Swirlee" but hoped to transform it into something more like "Ninja Turtles." Lorinz and Simonelli were then asked to re-write the movie as a kid-friendly adventure comedy, but they refused. Thus, their gritty version of "Swirlee" was cast aside.

Some other rumors proliferated that Lorinz had tried to retool "Swirlee" as an outcast drama, a la the late 1980s "Beauty and the Beast" TV series. That, however, is unsubstantiated. Instead, all we have is a fragment: A $10,000 short film that was meant to lead to something more. The world will never see "Swirlee" the way Lorinz intended, and even if it had, it would still be a cult oddity. But, darn it, the world needs as many cult oddities as it can handle.