The Gingerdead Man

Sometimes you've just gotta watch a stinker, and this undoubtedly fits that bill. It's the brief (but not quite brief enough) saga of a cold-blooded killer who's put to death, then somehow returns to life as a stabbin', laughin', wise-crackin', foot-tall slab of holiday confectionery. As if that premise needed a little extra kick, this monstrous devil-cookie also happens to be voiced by Gary Busey. The concept itself is hilarious for all of ten minutes, but burns out quickly as the plot tries, courageously but hopelessly, to make us care about his victims. It's atrociously acted of course, the equivalent of D-grade porn stars who keep their clothes on, so those misguided storytelling efforts don't even have a fighting chance. A moment rarely passes without some manner of absurd stupidity. If it isn't a particularly bad pun, a wickedly awful special effect or a pathetic dash of vacant dialog, surely there's a glaringly obvious editing mistake in view. We're talking night-becomes-day-becomes-night, several times in the same scene. Removing a baking pan from the oven with bare hands, commenting on how its contents are freshly scorched, then casually setting it aside. Firing seventeen times from a six-shooter. Though it runs for just an hour and ten minutes, that seems about twice as long as it should've. I had almost as much fun glancing at the cover art as I did watching the entire thing.

I went into this expecting something similar to Jack Frost, the killer snowman movie. While Jack Frost was obviously a low-budget slasher flick, it was very funny. The humor was the point. In this flick, I'm quite confused as to what the point is. The story is terrible, and major plot points are plodded through just because something had to be explained.

The Gingerdead Man character lacks any humor, and the few attempts come up short. In addition, almost the entire movie takes place inside a small bakery. How much hiding, running, and action can play out here without anyone getting away? This movie had lots of potential. The premise was great, but it needed more development and better writing.

This man turns into an indescribable mess everything he touches. And "The Gingerdead Man" is the proof. The proof that Band finally lost it. He no longer makes movies, he unmakes them. He demolishes, maims, mauls, distorts, destroys and deforms everything that a movie is. How can this be a movie: it has NO logical plot, in fact, it has no plot at all, it has NO acting, even Busey's acting was shameful, it has NOTHING that makes it a movie. And what genre is it anyway? Comedy? Horror (I doubt it)? Sci-Fi? Trash? Garbage? I tell you: it is a new genre that Band invented: WASTED TIME: LIFE-SUCKING BRAINWASHING ULTRA DULL SENSELESS NOTHINGNESS. People will enjoy Band's movies when he will stop making them. But I cannot blame him anymore, the man is just making a living, hell, at least he made something out of him. But seriously, Charles, if you're reading this, for the love of God, stop. Please, stop. It is enough. You tried and you failed. You are no director, you are no writer. Stick to producing, doll-making or whatever you do. Don't destroy young minds. Don't waste your and our time. And leave Gary Busey alone.

Before I get blasted, I want to acknowledge that I am familiar with Full Moon films and have seen quite a few over the years (the 'Trancers' series is among my favorites), but 'The Gingerdead Man' was an unfortunate mess. There are pros and cons, though... and believe it or not, the killer cookie (looking very much like it's made of rubber) is the best part.

I've become a fan of Gary Busey in his "is he insane?" recent years, so his presence either in live form or vocally as a cookie is really amusing. The other actors aren't as bad as one might expect, either. But everything else in the film drags and drags and draaaaaaags, not to mention the production budget appears to be under $100 (check out the bakery sign that looks like it was painted for a junior high pep rally). I know these flicks are self-financed, and that's a great thing, but there wasn't much to work with.

The movie clocks in at around 60 minutes, so for there to be so many slow spots (i.e., scenes sans cookie) it was difficult to watch. Will this be a cult classic? Yeah, probably, just given the featured actor and the premise. But it's just not very good, even by Full Moon's standards.

What is it that makes this Charles Brand tick away? This guy is like the not-quite-as-talented step-son of Roger Corman, producing hundreds of films, very few of them people actually probably legitimately like with a straight face (let alone those he might have, heaven forbid, directed). I didn't know this until I a) looked him up on IMDb, and b) was subjected to The Gingerdead Man, one of his recent, um, "features". I bought it thinking I'd get some laughs, after all it's hard to not find the prospect of a Chucky-style killer in the form of a Gingerbread Man (voiced by Gary Busey himself) quite tempting as a truly fun bad movie. But I didn't expect it to be this boring, this absolutely dreadful, so abysmally acted to the point where I wished my own bed-ridden Grandmother could walk on to the set and wipe the floor with these other "actors" with her own non-existent acting chops.

Oh sure, Brand *tries* to put a story together, something close to it I suppose, involving a bakery called, um, "bakery", and how it is under threat from a Mondo Burger style competition of a new bakery across the street and how the workers cant seem to cope and, uh, work into the late hours of the night and then one of them cuts his finger and so conveniently blood drips into the flour and the electricity goes off on.... damn, you get the idea. What little hope I had for the movie, perhaps from the trailer, was moot. Brand probably does know how to put together a trailer for a movie - looking at the one for this and a couple other "Full Moon" productions on the DVD it looks like that is their real metee - but the actual film is um... a film? More like a string of terrible, inexcusable and inconceivably written scenes strung together by wretchedly done "attacks" from the pastry on his dumb-as-wood victims. The only thing more stupid and ridiculous is how the poor little feller meets his/its end.

I wish I could recommend this, I wish I could say this is the "shiznit" of killer-whatever movies that you can turn off your brain and enjoy as fun schlock. I can't, in good conscience, ever do that. If it weren't for Gary Busey's little bits of "WTF-ness", I might have come close to slitting my wrists and swearing a life of nothing but Ozu and Bergman for the rest of my life.