This 80s -criminal film film has one of the strangest rooms of all time

The concept for James Lorinz 'proposed crime film “Swirlee” ensures a strange elevator field. Do you remember Mister Softhee? Children on the east coast probably know something about him. He was the smiling mascot of a local ice wagon company, a man with a gigantic soft egg ice cone for a head. What if Mister Softhee were a real person whose ice cream head was the result of a rare disease? What if he were deeply able with the mob? Like Martin Scorseses, it's deeply personal darling “mean” streets, but with an ice cream-head man! It practically writes itself! The title? “SWIRLEE!”

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That was the idea of ​​the actor and filmmaker James Lorinz at the end of the 1980s. Lorinz may be best known to play Jeffrey Franken, the main character in “Basket Case”, Frank Henenlotter's pioneering classic “Frankenhooker”. He also played a porter in the repulsive cult film “Street Trash” and the figure of Freddy in Uli Edels “Last Exit to Brooklyn”. After Lorinz performed in films such as “Robocop 3” and “The Jerky Boys”, she switched to television programs such as “Brooklyn South” and “Becker”. He even worked with Steven Spielberg on “Bridge of Spies” and Scorsese at “The Irish” before performing “Crash the System” in the 2024 mini series.

However, fans of Lost Media know him for “Swirlee”, which is often referred to as the strangest film. Lorinz wrote a full length feature script for “Swirlee” (he could not get the right to use the name of the Mister Softhee) and even filmed a 15-minute short film as a proof-of-concept role that he was able to show studios. Lorinz played Mister Softhee (moved as “Mr. Softy” and spent hours of hours and $ 5,000 in his bizarre, oversized make-up with ice herb head. David Caruso played his short-lived roommate Tony, while Tony Darrow played the foul-gangster Don Tofutti.

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The script for “Swirlee”, written by Lorinz and Rocco Simonelli (author of “The Substaltute”), made the round through Hollywood and many knew about its existence. Simonelli once offered it free of charge on his website, but it was recently removed. For years nobody could find the short film that Lorinz had made, but it was finally leaked online, and an inferior version (clearly by several generations of VHS duping) can be found easily enough.

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The short film sees Mr. Softy greeted a sex worker in his grubby New York apartment and offers her a glass of champagne. The apartment freezes because Mr. Softy has to remain frozen to survive. He does not drink alcohol, but puts in a beautiful 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 insulted him because he spent money on a sex worker when he knows that they are owe. “Children always looked up at you,” he screams. “I want to be like everyone else,” ask. “You are not like everyone else! You are ice cream!”

Mr. Softy then visits Don Tofutti (Tofutti was an ice cream-like pleasure based on Tofu, which was announced in the late 1980s) to get some work. Don Tofutti seems to have resumed Mr. Softy's ice cream wagon years ago and leave the Ice Cream Man. However, he refuses to give Mr. Softy every work because his old creaminess is no longer considered healthy. Mr. Softy is depressed.

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In fact, Mr. Softy is addressed on the way home and feels so desperate that he decides to end his own life through a long, hot bath. Tony bursts in when Mr. Softy melts and saves him. There is something that can be done. Tony and Mr. Softhee then broke hiding place with weapons in Don Tofutti and carry it out. The feature film would have followed Mr. Softy when he got back on his feet.

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Lorinz wanted to set up “Swirlee” as a gravel crime/cop drama with a surrealistic arch. It clearly came after “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, another film that took carefree children's icons and compared them with a coarse -grained film Noir story. It was not as far as it may seem at first glance. Lorinz played “Swirlee” in Hollywood when “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” was made, so that bizarre stories about mutants were fashionable. Some in the Lost Media Archive have shown that certain studio heads were interested in making “swirlee”, but hoping to transform it into a little more like “Ninja Turtles”. Lorinz and Simonelli were then asked to rewrite the film as a child -friendly adventure comedy, but they rejected. So her coarse -grained version of “Swirlee” was thrown aside.

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Some other rumors market that Lorinz had tried to implement “Swirlee” as an outcast drama a la in the late 1980s -TV series “Beauty and the Beast”. However, this is unfounded. Instead, we only have one fragment: a short film of 10,000 US dollars that should lead to a little more. The world will never see “Swirlee” as Lorinz intended, and even if it were, it would still be a cult curiosity. But damn it, the world needs as many cultural mes as it can avoid.