Gingerdead Man vs Evil Bong (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Full Moon Entertainment

RUNTIME: 83 mins

FORMAT: Screener

PLOT: The Gingerdead Man seeks revenge against Sarah Leigh for causing him to live his life in the body of a gingerbread man. Her only hope is to team up with Larnell who has problems of his own in the form of an evil magical talking bong named Eebee.

REVIEW: I already have reviews posted for Gingerdead Man, Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion of the Crust, and Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver so you can go check those reviews out for my thoughts on each of those and that trilogy as a whole. As for the Evil Bong trilogy, I always meant to have reviews posted of those before I got around to doing a review of this Gingerdead Man vs Evil Bong crossover 'epic', but I was sent the screener far sooner then I was expecting, so the Evil Bongs got pushed to the back burner for now. Still, I'll let you all know, briefly, what my basic thoughts were on them right here, so you understand where I'm coming from when I review this Part 4 in each respective series.

I love both Evil Bong and Evil Bong 2: King Bong. They are the perfect movies for modern Full Moon – they only need a small group of so-so actors, minimal sets to build/rent out, doesn't require much (if any) special effects, and it's all wrapped up in a really nice short runtime. I'm the furthest thing from a stoner, and I'm not particularly a fan of most stoner comedies outside of the Harold and Kumar trilogy and the first Friday flick, so it's a bit of an enigma to me as to why the Evil Bong movies turned out to be one of my favorite modern Full Moon movies yet. With that said, I really didn't care for Evil Bong 3: The Wrath of Bong much at all. It's not that it did anything differently than the first two movies, but that was kind of my issue with it - It was just the same song and dance we've seen for three movies now, with the added addition of a muddled confusing ending that still has me wondering exactly how they defeated the Alien Bong because it wasn't really clear. But whatever, for the most part, a couple entries aside, I'm actually a decent fan of both the Gingerdead Man series as well as the Evil Bong series, so it goes without saying that I was especially excited for this Vs mash-up.

The best way for me to do this review is to divide it up into sections. First I'll start with the Gingerdead Man portion of the movie. Finally, after two unconnected sequels, it was great to have Robin Sydney back as Sarah. For those who remember, she played the original heroine in the first movie and I've been very vocal about having her back for the sequels, which never happened, so I'm thrilled to announce she returns to this movie, playing her original character of Sarah, having finally after all these years began to cope with and move on from the events that happened in the first movie, and she has opened her own little bakery now, of which she is obviously the boss of. For fans of this character, this section of the movie was the perfect 'Where is she now' catch-up, and she is a stronger person (and by association, a stronger character) than she was in the first movie, no longer being timid or taking crap from anyone. This comes to a head in what is my absolute favorite scene of the movie, where her character from Gingerdead Man meets her polar opposite character from the Evil Bong series (see, she was also in those movies but playing a totally different character) and the two of them (both still played by Robin Sydney) get into quite the fight.

The Gingerdead Man himself once again looks slightly different then any previous incarnation but seems to be the closest to how he was portrayed in the first movie (in terms of looks, voice, and attitude) as he tracks down Robin Sydney's character to finish what he began all those years ago. While he still has a few funny one-liners, he's much more subdued this go-around then he was in either Gingerdead Man 2 or 3, and he's very much out for revenge and isn't taking any side tours. He's also back to being basic yet brutal in his killings – no distractingly inventive deaths like in the second movie or dull boring ones like in the third where he mostly just used a gun. Just like in the first movie, he just grabs the nearest knife or axe and goes to town on his victims, spraying the blood as much as he can in each case. Sadly, there's only three of those deaths and two of them happen in quick succession in the same scene so there's not really much of that. Low number of deaths aside, this portion of the movie was actually exactly what I was looking for in a Gingerdead Man sequel and I really wish the movie focused more on this stuff, or that it was its own stand-alone Gingerdead Man sequel because over all, it actually makes up such a tiny bit of the movie. You see, despite the title, this was actually much more of an Evil Bong sequel that happens to have a couple characters from Gingerdead Man in it then an even mix of the two franchises.

Unfortunately, even though the Evil Bong portion of the movie is what makes up the majority of it, it's also the weakest portion. One of the only characters that returns from the Evil Bong series is John Patrick Jordan as lead stoner Larnell who, admittedly, is just not nearly as cool or fun without the rest of his gang there with him. The Evil Bong movies are very much an ensemble piece and without the rest of said ensemble, you're just left with this giant gaping hole that feels like something is missing. In this entry Larnell has opened his own weed and weed memorabilia shop and the worst offender with this part of the movie is that they could have had at least one of his pals around but instead they replace them with a new character that's not nearly as funny as the people making this movie thought he was. Personally I just found him eye-rollingly annoying. It also doesn't help that not only is this the weakest part of the movie, but it also makes up the bulk of it as well, spending a good 25-30 minutes on just these two characters trying to get the shop ready for business and opening the doors for the first few quirky customers. We spent all of 5-10 minutes on catching up with the Gingerdead Man stuff and then over half the movie on just this?It felt terribly uneven.

The Evil Bong herself barely even makes an appearance during this stuff. It's not until the other returning Evil Bong character, the always-causing-trouble Delivery Man/Priest/Traveling Salesman Rabbit shows up and, of course, accidentally frees the Evil Bong from where Larnell had her hidden away and it's not until this part that the movie even begins to start picking up it's pace and by that point it's only 15-20 minutes from the end.

Now for the crossover portion of the movie. Larnell learns of the new bakery opening up nearby and goes to check it out, hoping to talk the owner (which is Robin Sydney's character) into a joint-business venture seeing as how his business gives people the munchies and hers cures the munchies. They hit it off pretty well and I have to admit that those two characters actually have really good chemistry together. He brings her back to his shop to show her what it's all about (at which point the stalking Gingerdead Man kills the other two bakery workers and then follows them to the weed store), and it's here that he reveals himself to them by killing Larnell's annoying new sidekick and they end up having to smoke from the Evil Bong in order to enter the mystical Bong World of the previous movies to escape the Gingerdead Man and he, of course, follows them in. During this part there's a nice cameo by King Bong and the Poontang tribe of the second Evil Bong movie, and even a really funny Superman spoof as Gingerdead Man gets caught in these whirling rings and the three Prisoner Pastries from the intro of Gingerdead Man 3 show up to judge him.

Unfortunately, this is also the portion where the movie continues to fall even further. All that strength and growth we saw in Robin Sydney's character earlier is totally gone as she's regulated to essentially just following Larnell around and doing what he says, rarely (if at all) coming into her Own and taking the lead. Also, you know that epic showdown between the Gingerdead Man and the Evil Bong that the title and advertising of this movie promises? Yeah, don't hold your breath because it never happens. Hell, they don't even interact at all except for one short scene where the Gngerdead Man finds out his would-be victims smoked from the Evil Bong and escaped from him into the Bong World so he then has to go smoke from her to follow them in. That is literally it for their interactions together. No fight, no showdown, not even any heated argument. Oh and don't expect a climax or any sort of proper ending either because there's nothing like that here. The big 'climax' consists of the two main characters escaping from the Bong World and the Gingerdead Man deciding to stay in there, and that's it. They walk off into the sunset together, leaving the Evil Bong behind and back out in the open of his store and not even trying to get rid of it or hide it or anything. They escape from her and then just walk away laughing while the Gingerdead Man decides to stay inside of her and smoke weed. That's it for the 'big climax'.

I really wanted to like this movie as I'm a fan of both series', and of the characters from them. And while I loved seeing Robin Sydney back again and I loved most everything from the Gingerdead Man portion of the movie, I hated that she was regulated to just following Larnell around all movie, and it also didn't help that the stuff I liked made up such a small amount of time in the movie. The Evil Bong portion was way overlong and drawn out, missing most of the characters that made those movies fun to watch to begin with, and then the actual Vs part was just a joke that didn't even come close to living up to the promise that the title of the movie and it's advertising gave, leaving things off on a very quick and sudden end without any sort of proper built-up climax. And speaking of broken promises, on Full Moon's Facebook page they said that Gary Busey would be returning to voice the Gingerdead Man in this movie, but he doesn't. Granted the guy who does is the closest to sound like him out of all the other Gingerdead Man voice actors, but point is it indeed is not Gary Busy like we were led to believe.

I actually would have preferred it if the Gingerdead Man stuff was in a movie by itself and then extended to feature length, as that would have actually made a really good Gingerdead Man 4 worthy of the first movie, but sadly it's totally underused and forgotten about in this so-called crossover movie that's really just an Evil Bong 4 in disguise that happens to have a couple Gingerdead Man characters in it, that also manages to leave out most of the fun Evil Bong characters as well. Add to that a muddled and weak ending, no actual confrontation between the two title characters, and way too much time spent on just the weed store's opening, and what you're left with is, unfortunately, a very far cry from the epic crossover that I was hoping it would be.

3/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

Read more »

Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver (2011)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Full Moon Entertainment

RUNTIME: 70 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: The Gingerdead Man breaks out of Pastry Prison and travels back in time to 1976 to carry out an epic disco killing spree.

REVIEW: I loved the first movie in this series despite a few issues I had with it, but I really didn't care much for Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion of the Crust. So when Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver one was announced, I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about it. In the end though, I landed on 'excitement' because after all -  it's about A KILLER COOKIE, and that alone will be enough to get my money – Every. Single. Time. Unfortunately Full Moon and Charles Band know that, and no longer bother to put much more effort into these then that basic premise. Much like with the second movie, all the right ingredients were present to make this a B-Movie Legend, but it was all mixed together incorrectly and what we ended up getting was just a sloppy mess of a movie and the weakest in the series thus far.

This one starts off  interesting enough: We don't really get a backstory on this deadly cookie, but we can assume that much like his previous two 'brothers', he probably went on a rampage somewhere and got caught, because as the movie begins we get to see a hilarious Silence of the Lambs parody scene that reveals this Gingerdead Man is already locked away in a prison. But not just any prison – a prison for re-animated objects! Golden idea right there! Other 'criminals' in his cell block include a fowl-mouthed French baguette, a promiscuous raspberry pie, a stoned batch of Jamaican brownies, and a dirty-minded cream puff. So far so good, if you ask me.

Unfortunately, just like with the second movie and its Tiny Terrors characters, these new murderous baked goods are only in the movie for not even two minutes. Upon seeing them, I was really hoping that the creators learned from the second movie and would give these guys a decent-sized role – perhaps having them escape with the Gingerdead Man and make him be the ringleader of a gang of killer food – but nope. Once again, they have no impact on the movie whatsoever and are only on the screen for a minute or two, leading to another wasted opportunity. It's made even all the worse by the fact that those new characters actually looked really good design-wise, so it's clear they spent a good portion of the budget on them, and you would think that if they did that then they would have made it actually worth it and keep the characters around longer.

Because of that total misuse of the budget, the Gingerdead Man himself gets the short end of the budget stick and looks absolutely horrid. By far the worst that the puppet has looked in the entire series. Sure, the one in the second movie was a step down from the one in the first, but this one is like an entire ladder down from both of those. And not just in terms of how well it looks as it moves around and does its thing (made even worse still by the overuse of horrible CGI), but also in the basic design as well. At least the one in the second movie still resembled the design of the first, but this one doesn't even come close to looking like the other two. I know, I know my logic behind the different design that I used in my review for Gingerdead Man 2 could still be applied here – It is a different cookie after all, and thus, as a cookie, it was designed differently. But still, is it really that hard to duplicate the puppet prop used in the first movie? Or better yet – just use the exact same prop! To add insult to injury, they also used yet another voice actor for the character (this time the director of the movie lent his voice 'talents' for the character), and just like with the prop itself, he's the worst Gingerdead Man voice in the entire series, not even trying to sound like how the character sounded or talked in the previous two movies. As big of a step down as everything regarding the character of the Gingerdead Man was in the second movie from the first movie, this one is the same step down but from the second movie. Just pure unnecessary laziness led to the atrocity that is this movie's Gingerdead Man character.

One of the movie's few saving graces is its amazingly campy plot. I mentioned a Silence of the Lambs parody scene up above, and that comes into play when an FBI agent by the name of Clarissa Darling visits this Hannibal Lector-esque version of the Gingerdead Man, complete with an excellent Hannibal/Clarice dialog exchange. However, the Gingerdead Man ends up breaking free of his confines during a prison riot and gets lost, ending up in a science laboratory that's currently experimenting with time travel. Of course he ends up setting the machine off and getting sent back in time to 1976, right in the middle of a disco-on-rollerskates competition (“Of all the shithead decades to get stranded in!” he so hilariously notes).

The rest of the movie is made up of two main stories, just like the second movie was – On the one side, we have the Gingerdead Man going around and killing all sorts of sex-crazed drugged-out, disco-loving teens while uttering hilarious one-liners, and luckily this time he had a bit more of an impact on the overall movie then he did in the second movie (where it was largely unimportant to anything else going on). On the other side, we have the human story which thankfully is more interesting then the one from Gingerdead Man 2 as well. We have the owner of the arena trying to raise money in multiple different ways to keep the roller disco arena from getting shut down. Some of these ways include a bake sale, a beauty pageant, the previously-mentioned roller disco competition, as well as a car wash by young hot girls in tight bikinis (which is something all B-Movies should strive to find a way to include). She's not the main focus though; the main character of this movie is her shy socially-awkward teenage niece by the name of Cherry Wright, whom seems to be the only person in the building that even notices that there's a killer cookie running around (and of course nobody believes her). Silence of the Lambs isn't the only movie this one spoofs, seeing as how, just like in Stephen King's Carrie, after Cherry gets a make-over so that she can try to win the title of Roller Boogie Queen, the social teenage Bitch Queen devises a plan with the end result of – yes, you guessed it – dropping a bucket of pig's blood all over Cherry. And JUST LIKE in Carrie, it turns out Cherry also has strong telekinetic powers when she shows displays of strong emotion, which comes into play quite a few times – the best of which is during an entertaining show-down between her and the Gingerdead Man, which results in a mass electrocution death of almost everyone in the building.

This movie takes everything that the first two movies did, and then multiplies it all by about 10. You loved the cheesy one-liners? This movie has one being spurted out almost every 30-60 seconds. You like to embrace the campiness of the other movies? Well then, hold onto your hat because you haven’t seen anything yet. This one openly showers in the cheese like never before, which is made quite obvious with all the blatant movie spoofs throughout (I noticed Silence of the Lambs, Carrie, Candyman, Psycho, Hellraiser, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and Porky's). While this worked to a degree, it did reach a point where it was just too much and too over the top. I never thought I'd ever think of the first Gingerdead Man movie as being subdued and low-key with the cheese, but after seeing this one that's the only way to think back on the first. Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver takes everything you love about the series and cranks it all up even higher, which works both for and against it, depending on the scene. I kid you not, this movie involves a scene where two little kids return from time-traveling throughout history to bring Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, Lizzy Borden, and Charles Manson to 1976 to team up with the heroes and fight the Gingerdead Man, and then have them dance and celebrate their victory with the heroes – WTF!? That ending doesn't even make any sense, nor does it even try to make sense other then to throw in yet another random and unnecessary movie spoof. Sadly, this entry felt quite like one of those horrid 'Insert Genre Title here' Movie spoof movies more often then not, and that's never a good thing seeing as how those are some of the worst movies to ever grace the entire history of our planet.

Even ignoring the maximum overload of camp and spoofing, the fun cheese and hilarious one-liners can't make up for all the other aspects that they just totally did wrong or botched. Alongside the previously-mentioned horrible Gingerdead Man prop and effects, and the lack of good use of the new pastry characters, this entry also has pretty bad acting. Not like the first movie had excellent actors, but the acting chops on display in both the previous entry and this one makes the first movie look like The Godfather in comparison. There's bad acting, and then there's distractingly bad acting.

Another distractingly-bad step down for this entry is the special effects. Not only is the Gingerdead Man himself of far lesser quality this time around, but so are the kills. This movie is overloaded with unneeded CGI, both in making the Gingerdead Man move around but also with almost every single kill. The previous two movies needed no CGI at all to get the job done, and they were better off for it. Here, it just ruins what would otherwise be some excellent kill scenes. There is some great stuff like a group of bikini-clad beauties being sprayed with acid and having their skin and bones melt into a pile of goo, a nailgun used like a tommy gun on three people in the middle of having a threesome, a head cleaved in two, plenty of headshots, and the previously-mentioned mass electrocution scene. But almost all of the awesome kills are completely ruined by the 25-cent paycheck that the computer animator must have received for his work on this.

The final nail in the coffin for me however, is the total misuse of Robin Sydney. Ever since the first movie, I've been hoping to see the original lead character, as played by Robin Sydney, make a return. The second movie never touched on her, but when I saw her name in the opening credits of this one, I got excited – especially when we find out about those kids traveling through time to collect people to fight the homicidal cookie, I figured 'Hey now, that's an excellent way to bring Robin Sydney back!' but unfortunately, that's not how she returns. Actually while the actress returns, her character does not. As it turns out, she only has a cameo that lasts just a few seconds, playing another completely different character – again, WTF!? Those two kids even go to the future to grab someone who has dealt with this pastry before...but not her; They get Clarissa Darling from the opening scene of this movie instead! Talk about yet another missed opportunity! They even had the actress on-set so I can't even fathom why they didn't use her as her previous character in that scene instead of the Clarissa Darling character! That payoff alone would have almost saved the movie for me.

In regards to some aspects, this one improved somewhat over the previous movie but unfortunately it does far more things wrong then it does right, resulting in a very frustratingly uneven movie that should have been, and could have been, the best in the trilogy. After two disappointing sequels, I really just want to throw in the towel and say that if they continue on with this series, then I'm done with it...

...Sadly, as it turns out I'm very easy to entertain, and the very idea of a killer cookie is all it takes to keep me coming back time after time, no matter how disappointing each continuing entry turns out, and so because of that, if Gingerdead Man 4 ever gets made then I'll be the first (and probably only) person at the video store that day to buy my copy.

3/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Read more »

Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion of the Crust (2008)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Full Moon Entertainment

RUNTIME: 82 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: Continuing his quest to become human again, the evil gingerbread man returns to stalk the cast and crew working at a low budget B-Movie production company.

REVIEW: Full Moon has a habit of making sure their sequels are better then the originals (Puppet Master 2: His Unholy Creations, Trancers 2, Bloodstone: Subspecies 2, The Evil Bong 2: Wrath of Bong, The Killer Eye 2: Halloween Haunt). However, sometimes it just doesn't turn out that way in the end, despite an obvious effort (Demonic Toys 2: Personal Demons, Oblivion 2: Backlash). Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust by all rights should have been better then the first Gingerdead Man movie. It had all the right ingredients to make an even better experience, and it tried to go 'bigger' in almost every way possible (bigger cast, more kills, larger location, more reanimated living objects, longer runtime) but somehow, somewhere along the way, it dropped the ball. Don't get me wrong, it's still a decently-enjoyable and cheese-filled campy B-Movie, and not a half-bad return for the deadly pastry, but there's just...something...stopping it from being as good as the first movie was.

Where the first movie took place in a tiny little bakery, this one takes place in a low budget B-Movie studio...not unlike the kind that Full Moon themselves is. And just like such a company, this one is plagued by dozens of problems: they're in the process of filming way too many movies at once on a less-than shoestring budget, while still in the process of writing the scripts for half of them, with no-named actors all thinking they're topshit and not getting along with one another, a well-known actor agreeing to spend a few hours on-set as a favor to the producer but throwing tantrums while there, and one washed-up sex symbol 80's scream queen that's trying to just have people pay attention to her again (and that's only a small sample of the issues plaguing this low budget movie company). All in all, this setting is perfect, and done to perfection by a company that does business exactly like how it's portrayed as in this movie; This is quite the realistic portrayal of how these movies, and studios like Full Moon, operate and this could easily be passed off as a comedy-documentary if it wasn't for the whole killer cookie thing. It's also an excellent setting for a horror movie, as everyone would just assume that the weird going-ons is for one of the movies being filmed, and that any of the cast or crew who disappear is off on a temper tantrum.

When last we left off at the end of the previous movie, we saw that an entire batch of cookies had been made with the gingerbread mix that had been infused with the soul of serial killer Millard Findlemeyer, and they were being sold at a bake fair thanks to the mysterious old lady (that this movie confirms as being Millard Findlemeyer's mother, whom dabbles in witchcraft). After a recap of the first movie, and a pretty fun opening credits sequence set to a parody of Joan Jett's Bad Reputation, this movie starts off with a box of pastries that had been purchased at the bake fair from the end of the first movie being delivered to this low budget horror studio, and among the random pastries inside is one of those Millard Findlemeyer-filled gingerbread cookies, AKA a Gingerdead Man. Suffice to say, it isn't long before he climbs out of the box and starts causing chaos and death in the corridors and various rooms of this movie studio.

Where the first movie fumbled, this one picks up the slack. We have a much larger cast this time around, which means much more death scenes. And unlike the first movie, just about all of them are bloody as hell and each one is totally different then the last, opting to go with variety and uniqueness in the deaths this time around instead of just generic stabbing after generic stabbing. There's even a scene where the Gingerdead Man kills someone by shoving a burning hot curling iron up their ass like a dildo – and no, I'm not joking. The one kind of cheese that the first movie left out was Death-Cheese, and this one delivers that by the baker's dozen. It also takes a page out of the first movie's book by offering plenty of Visual-Cheese - just seeing a tiny living cookie chasing after regular-sized people isn't enough now that we've seen that already in the first movie. No, this time they add so much more to it – including a scene of other living objects (a gang of living movie props dubbed The Tiny Terrors) stringing the Gingerdead Man up on a cross, while wearing a thorny crown, and light him on fire in what I'm sure is quite the controversial scene for religious people. We also get a scene where the Gingerdead Man attacks our main cast in several different movie sets, all with a totally different style to them (Examples include a space station and a mythical castle dungeon), as well as a scene where our little unholy baked good tries to hump one of the non-living female puppet props, not realizing that she's not alive. There is plenty of visual-Cheese to feast our eyes on with this one.

Unfortunately, that's pretty much where the good things end. There are no returning characters from the first movie, which is quite the disappointment as I loved Robin Sydney in the first and hoped she would return for this one. Also, due to the bigger cast we have this time around, we don't get to spend as much time with each person as we did in the first movie and thus we don't get to really come to know any of them. On top of that, every single character is totally and completely unlikable; Everyone in this movie is just an asshole and it makes it impossible to care about any them. Like seriously, this is a movie about a killer cookie – that alone already has us rooting for the cookie! No need to make every single person an asshole in order to get us to root for the little guy. All it does is makes the time where he's not on-screen (which there's plenty of) all the more difficult to watch. The fact that the actors here could make the actors in the first movie look like award-winners in comparison doesn't help either – there's bad acting and then there's bad 'acting'.

Which brings me to my biggest fault with the movie. There's only one great sin that a B-Movie can commit - It already has bad actors, crappy effects, plot holes you can sail a ship through, and plenty of other bad aspects about them that come with the package, but none of that matters as long as the movie is fun. The single greatest sin that a B-Movie can commit, is to be slow and boring, and good lord this is one slow movie. Nothing at all really happens until the final 15 minutes. We might have the scattered two or three death scenes during the movie, but for the most part everything exciting is jammed into the final 15 minutes, which leaves the other hour and ten minutes with not much meat on it's bones. You could almost cut the Gingerdead Man character out of his own movie and it probably wouldn't even affect anything else in the movie until close to the end; this movie focuses too much on the troubled productions of the low budget movie company, regulating the title character to secondary status and even having most of his scattered scenes have no impact on anything else going on in the movie. And as I already mentioned above, absolutely none of these human characters are even interesting or likable so it makes that time away from the Gingerdead Man feel even more excruciating. When the movie does do something of note, it does it really well and full of the kind of camp that I love and look for in these movies, but those moments are so few and far between until that last little stretch, that it in no way makes up for the dull and overly-long lull between them.

Even some of the new things they throw in to try to spice this entry up, just fall completely flat. For example, the above-mentioned Tiny Terrors: The idea for them is pretty good, with some really...unique...designs (among them is a water kettle with machine-gun arms and a dildo wearing a tux – don't ask), and they're all puppeteered really well, but in the end it just doesn't work because the makers of this movie do nothing at all with them. They pop in about 5 minutes from the end after being brought to life, thanks to a voodoo spell book that the Gingerdead Man wanted to use in order to transplant his soul into a human body (but instead ended up putting the soul of the last person he killed into those props), but they only come alive long enough to string the Gingerdead Man up like Christ on the cross and light him on fire. As soon as he burns away to nothing 30 seconds later, they get taken out rather quickly, and that is it. It came across like the producers were sitting around and said 'Hey, people really loved our Gingerdead Man prop in the last movie – let's do that, but times ten!' and thus they created a handful of 'Tiny Terrors' puppets, but they must have come to that decision well into the filming cause really, those little guys have no impact on the movie at all. They certainly don't seem like they were added in during the script stage, otherwise they probably would have had much more to do. It was just a huge missed opportunity, and while I like the idea behind them, if that was all they were planning on doing then I would have rather they just not bothered instead of wasting such a great idea like that and taking even more time away from our title character.

As for the Gingerdead Man himself, he looked a bit different in this one then he did in the first movie. Effects-wise, they still did a pretty good job with him and he moved about well enough, but you can tell it definitely had a slightly different design to it and seemed to look a bit...I don't know...cheaper, I guess. Which is probably a result of having to remake the puppet and wanting to save money in the budget for those useless Tiny Terrors puppets, so they did a rush job on the title character, thus giving us Gingerdead Man-Lite. He's not even voiced by Gary Busey this time, but instead by some no-named actor that doesn't even sound anything like him (though that's partially-understandable, seeing as how in the Behind the Scenes feature on the first movie they talk about how difficult Busey was to work with and how he kept delaying the production of the movie). Although I suppose all of that could be explained away in-continuity by the fact that it technically is a completely separate cookie then the one in the first. Granted, it IS the same soul as the one that occupied the cookie in the first movie, or at least a part of the same soul, but if it works to help make the movie just that tiny bit better for you, then so be it. I'm fully aware though that that's a weak explanation and far more thought then the writers themselves probably gave it.

When all was said and done with this one, it seemed like every step it took to improve on the first movie, it ended up taking two steps back directly afterward. The potential was totally there to be one of the all-time best B-Movies and a really fun cheesefest, but sadly it didn't even come close. Still, it's worth checking out for nothing more then to see a realistic portrayal of how low budget studios do their thing (such as Full Moon and The Asylum).

Plus, a wise-cracking one-liner-spewing killer cookie in a shitty movie is still a wise-cracking one-liner-spewing killer cookie, and thus that movie must be watched, because really, that's just too zany to pass up.

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Read more »

The Gingerdead Man (2005)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Full Moon Entertainment

RUNTIME: 70 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: An evil gingerbread man comes to life with the soul of a convicted killer, and this real-ife cookie monster wreaks havoc on the girl who originally sent him to the electric chair.

REVIEW: Full Moon is one of the more well-known low-budget production companies by horror movie fans, if for nothing more then their sheer lasting-power. They've been around since the 80's, and they're still around now. Granted, what they put out now doesn't even come close to the amazing stuff they put out back in the 80's and 90's (Puppet Master, Trancers, Subspecies, Prehysteria, Robot Wars to name just a small portion), but there's still a few gems that pop up from time to time, and it's because of the thrill of potentially coming across one of those occasional gems that I find myself checking out their titles as soon as a new one comes out, even if I'm left disappointed more often then not these days (Stay away from The Killer Eye and Killjoy - seriously).

One of those recent titles of theirs was 2005's The Gingerdead Man, a movie very much like a classic Chucky movie, but instead of a wise-cracking killer doll it's a wise-cracking killer cookie. Yes, you read that right: A wise-cracking killer cookie. And to top it off, this deadly pastry is voiced by none other then genuine crazy-man himself Gary Busey! Talk about perfect casting! I mean, just those two bits of information right there is enough to grab my interest and shoot the cheese-scale so high it breaks the meter! The sweet cherry on top of this sure-to-be cheese-fest is the main actress, Robin Sydney. Pretty much a no-name to most people, but B-Movie fans should recognize her as the hot-but-crazy girlfriend of one of the main characters from the Evil Bong trilogy (which is also from Full Moon). Luckily she has a much bigger role in this movie then she did throughout that entire series. And what a role-reversal as well: In the Evil Bong trilogy, she plays a self-centered slutty crazy chick, where-as here she plays the sweet and innocent, down-to-earth shy girl. She plays both parts so well, that when you watch one and then go watch the other it's hard to believe it's even the same actress. It's amazing that with her range, she's not in much else other then Full Moon flicks.

Also in a similar vein to the first Child's Play movie, The Gingerdead Man starts off with Gary Busey's psychotic character, Millard Findlemeyer, on the run from the cops (in this case after robbing a restaurant and murdering some people in there), which ultimately results in his capture and eventual execution. After the overly-long opening credits that Full Moon is known for at this point, we cut ahead some undisclosed amount of time and our sweet and lovable main female lead Sarah, as played by Robin Sydney, is the girl we saw briefly in the intro who had her brother and father murdered right in front of her by Millard Findlemeyer, and she is the one that testified against him in court, leading to his electric chair execution (in which his dying words were 'I'll get you for this'). She's now working as the Manager, Co-Owner, and Head Baker in a little independent family-operated bakery that was previously owned by her father before he was murdered, and she's still quite haunted by the death of her father and brother, and by the killer's final threatening words.

Working alongside her is a wrestling-loving dorky guy that's a fellow baker and seems to have feelings for her, a hot girl who works at the counter and likes to wear low-cut tank top shirts, and her barely-there alcoholic mother. The rest of this small cast consists of an asshole business tycoon that is moving a large bakery chain in across the street and wants her small family-owned independent bakery gone and will go to any lengths to get it gone (which mostly means dirty sleazy underhanded tricks). With him, is his spoiled brat of a daughter and her bad-boy-but-good-hearted boyfriend, who is overall kind of a nice guy and starts to fall for Sarah throughout the movie, drifting away from the spoiled brat of a bitch he currently has as a girlfriend and widening the rift between those two girls. That's pretty much it - not a large cast at all, and apart from Busey and Sydney none of these other actors are really worth talking about as they're pretty much nobodies and like most nobodies in these kinds of movies, their acting leaves a bit to be desired most of the time (but also leaves a nice thick trail of cheese in their wake!).

Shortly after the opening credits finish and we get introduced to our main cast, a mysterious tub of gingerbread seasoning shows up on the back steps of the little bakery, dropped off by a mysterious old lady that is never explained but we can only assume it's the mother of Gary Busey's Millard Findlemeyer. Since Sarah was actually in desperate need of some gingerbread seasoning, and assuming that it was her daily order that had just arrived, she brings it in to start making gingerbread cookies with. While mixing it all together, one of the other characters ends up cutting himself, and while Sarah looks the cut over, blood is dripping down into the cookie mixture. Now, instead of throwing out that batch like a normal and sanitary person would, she continues mixing it. And she's supposed to know better, being the Head Baker and all! Even if that wasn't some voodoo-tampered cursed seasoning, that would still not even be close to right or sanitary. But of course this isn't the Cooking Channel and that's not what people are watching for, so thanks to some voodoo by crazy mysterious old lady, the fact that she put the ashes of her son in with the mixture, plus the added bonus of some spilled blood, when the main big cookie gets baked, it comes to life, occupied by the soul of Millard Findlemeyer!

From there, the rest of the movie deals with all the above-mentioned people being stuck inside this little small bakery, with a one-liner-spewing wise-ass killer cookie offing them one by one until they inevitably find a way to defeat him once and for all (though not really, since there's two more of these movies). Although oddly enough, they're not really 'stuck' per sey as they just choose not to leave. There's even a scene where one of the characters goes out to his car to get his cell phone and brings it back inside so they can call for help. Um...what? Why not just all of them leave with him, and then drive off in the car? Even when the power goes out and they are literally a foot away from the door, and they know that there's a killer gingerbread man after them, instead of leaving through that door they turn and head deeper into the building in order to try to turn the power back on...WTF? There's quite a few glaring and laughable plot holes like that scattered throughout the movie.

Unfortunately, that's not the only problem with this movie. Due to the small cast, and the fact that more people survived then I expected, there's not really a large body count in this one. Even the few that do get killed are very generic un-inventive deaths that consist of mostly just regular stabbings, so to be honest there's not a whole lot to look forward to in the kills department.

The characters are decently-written though, with some pretty funny dialog between all of them, and you genuinely start to care for them so you enjoy spending time with them as the movie goes through its motions. Plus there are tons of cheesy lines that spew forth in Gary Busey's voice from the killer cookie, so despite the movie kind of dropping the ball with the death scenes, there's still plenty of other good stuff to keep you paying attention. And if it helps at all, when you remove the ending credits the movie is only 58 minutes long (even shorter then that when you remove the overly-long opening credits as well), so it's extremely short and it just zooms by thanks to the aforementioned cheesy dialog, plus the added bonus of quite a few humorous visual treats such as seeing a group of fully-grown humans running away from a tiny cookie instead of just turning around and stepping on it, an awesome cat-fight that leads into a hilarious food fight in the back of the bakery (think of a similar scene from Mega Python vs Gatoroid), a scene that includes a perfect laugh-out-loud delivery of 'Got Milk?', and the Gingerdead Man doing up a body to look like a giant cake, just to list a few gem scenes that this movie holds within.

Speaking of the tiny potty-mouthed killer cookie, I must say that I was quite impressed with the puppetry used to bring the Gingerdead Man to life. Sure, there were occasional shots where it looked like nothing more then decked-out hand puppet, but more often then not it actually looked pretty impressive, especially with the close-ups of it's face when it talked. Granted, it's not like it was jumping around and doing acrobatics, so it couldn't have been hard to make it look good, but I still appreciate it all the same. Even more-so when take into consideration other recent Full Moon movies have opted to take the lazy way out quite often, and be much less-impressive with their effects (I must direct you to the Evil Bong trilogy, where while they are fun cheesy movies that I enjoy, the mouth on the Evil Bongs in each movie don't even move when they talk).

I tend to see quite a lot of people complain online that the entire plan concocted by the mysterious old lady, of bringing her psycho son back to life as a killer cookie, was hinged on the fact that somehow the old lady knew that someone would cut themselves, bleed all over the gingerbread seasoning mix (which already had the ashes of Millard Findlemeyer mixed in), and then continue to use that batch to make cookies. However, the way I like to look at it is this – later on in the movie, one of the characters eats the Gingerdead Man in order to (hopefully) defeat him. However, when the little guy was eaten, the evil soul of Gary Busey's character transferred into the person's body and he possessed him. Much like with Charles Lee Ray in Child's Play, this guy just wants a normal human body again, and so the way I look at it is that the old lady planned on someone eating the cursed cookie (probably Sarah herself was the intended target) and so Gary Busey's character would be able to possess the person and return to life that way. But when someone bled on the cookie mix, it brought him back in that form instead, and thus he was never supposed to be a homicidal baked good. It's not so much an example of an outrageous plan going perfectly, like haters online like to point out, but rather of the plan totally failing miserably. Though as hinted at in the final scene, this may actually have worked out better for Millard Findlemeyer then returning to a human form could ever have been for him. But for more on that, you must seek out Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion of the Crust and Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver!

When all is said and done with this first movie in the series, was this a perfect B-movie? Definitely not, seeing as how some things were never fully-explained, some other things leave gaping plot holes, and there's an annoyingly-noticeable lack of kills and an even bigger lack of inventive kills. But whatever shortcomings this movie has, it more then makes up for in pure unforgiving cheese, a quickly-paced immensely-short runtime, and the very unique idea of having a killer cookie.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

Read more »