The Gingerdead Man (2005)

The Gingerbread Man (2005) is available for free on Tubi and is another Full Moon Entertainment series. This storyline involves a family in a diner that has a serial killer come in, shoot up the place killing most of the family, and the killer dying and having his soul captured in dough that is made into a Gingerbread Man. The Gingerbread Man returns to life and goes on a killing spree. Believe it or not, I can enjoy a bad plot, storyline and cheap gimmicks as an excuse to make a horror movie, especially if it contains the voice of Gary Busey . The acting as a whole is made for TV bad and the cast includes Robin Sydney (Corona Zomies and Puppet Master: Axis Termination), Ryan Locke (Magnum PI) and Newell Alexander (Cyrus) along with Busey. This movie is kind of fun if you enjoy bad horror movies. I can tell you I liked it more than the Krampus series. I'd give this a 4/10 and recommend it to fans of the awful.

Fmovies: 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.

Now, there's a school of thought which I call the 'Snakes-on-a-Plane' viewpoint – it's where a film's title tells you everything you need to know about the story and therefore, if you can't work out whether you like it or not from that, you don't really deserve to complain if the movie turns out to be not for you. So, armed with my love of cheesy and 'so-bad-they're-good' films, mixed with my enjoyment of the horror genre stories and appreciation for Gary Busey, I figured that the low budget 'Gingerdead Man' would be right up my street.

I think it's fair to say that I'm not 'spoiling' the film by letting on that Gary Busey plays (mainly be voicing) a killer who's murdered, but whose soul is sent to that of a gingerbread man (think 'Child's Play' but with pastry instead of a 'Good Guy' doll). Then he returns to reek revenge on those who, er, turned him into something from a baker's window display. I expected daft. I expected ludicrous. I expected low budget. I expected a ridiculously over-the-top performance from Busey. However, I only really got the low budget part.

Yes, the film's premise is as daft as it sounds and the budget is so small that the film stock used actually looks worse than you could probably recreate on your iphone. In fact, the budget appears so small that there's only really one location used for the whole film – a pretty bland factory. Not only is the scenery nothing to write home about, but there are only really three cast members. Now, the problem with this in a 'slasher' film is that it doesn't really give the deranged killer many options with who to kill. In 'Scream' the film would be over in about a quarter of an hour with that few 'expendable' characters! Of course the lack of people to murder also equates into a lack of gore and/or creative kills, so don't do expecting too much of the 'red stuff' here.

Yes, Busey does do his best with the script and adds an air of sheer manic madness to the proceedings, but I just felt that his best wasn't enough to justify it. Or, rather an idea this whacky could have been so much better with a bigger setting, cast and (gore) effects. I could forgive the awful model of the Gingerdead man himself as that seemed to add to the overall silliness. So, I think I can safety say that I wasn't as much of a fan of the franchise as I thought I'd be. Yes – franchise. Just because I didn't like it doesn't mean that other people agree with me. It seems to have developed enough of a cult following to warrant a fair few sequels, so what do I know? I just won't watch them. I'll stick to viewing Gary Busey on the UK's 'Celebrity Big Brother' to get a true dose of his madness!

The Gingerdead Man fmovies. The B in "B Movie" stands for Gary Busey in this film. He dominates in this film. If anything, the whole reason a price tag is on this film should be for Gary Busey. He is a great, creepy killer in this film. Even in cookie form. Who cares if the film is bad? Who cares if this film makes no sense? GARY BUSEY IS IN IT! Thats enough for me.

This is a strange film, it was a movie I stared at in the video store wishing I could rent it, but no. I was never allowed to rent anything R or PG-13 at Family Video at the age of ten. I saw this, Uncle Sam, Santa's Slay, Jack Frost and it's sequel, and Banned & Exposed: Too Hot for Cable TV! looking me in the face, begging me to rent them. But I couldn't. But the covers were enough, I loved every cover of these films. They were a big tease, but the covers were very cool. With this one, I said "What the hell is this?" I couldn't imagine how this would work.

The film starts at a diner where a killer named Millard Findlemeyer (Gary Busey) opens fire on the Leigh family and kills Jeremy (the brother), James (the father), and leaves Sarah (Robin Sydney) and the mother Betty (Maggie Blye). A year later, Sarah is working at a bakery and while making a Gingerbread man, an employee drips blood into the dough and while baking a power surge makes the baked good come to life with Millard Findlemeyer's soul possessed into it. It has an extreme Child's Play feel like no other movie and feels like almost another one in the series.

The premise is up and down a lot. The film is only around seventy minutes, but even with the minimal requirement for a movie length, it struggles to keep the movie going. It sometimes drags on for the most simplest of things. I hate that, it's extremely annoying. Though The Gingerbread Man has comebacks and remarks almost exactly the same of ones like Freddy Krueger or Chucky would say. The comebacks/gags are corny and though sometimes amusing, throw off the "scare" level of the film.

I also want to point out that shockingly there's a sequel to this film too. The Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion of the Crust was released in 2008. There will also be a third film entitled The Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver that was due for a release in 2009, but maybe coming out this year or 2011. I will try and find the sequel and do a review but after seeing how this film played out, though entertaining, still had various flaws, I'm in no hurry.

Starring: Gary Busey, Robin Sydney, Ryan Locke, Alexia Aleman, Jonathan Chase, and Maggie Blye. Directed by: Charles Band.

A psychopath (Gary Busey) who's been killed by the electric chair, returns from the dead in the form of a demonic gingerbread man to gain vengeance on the girl who had sent him there. Sometime horror films with utterly ridiculous plots can be really fun, as was the case in "Monsturd", "Death Bed" and others. But sadly this is definitely not the case with this rancid stinker. Gary Busey is the only redeeming attribute that this movie has going for it, but he's under-used in the film and the 'humorous dialog' is so groan-wothingly awful that sitting through the whole movie is quite the chore to accomplish. Followed by a sequel that was a tad better, but how could it have been worse really??

My Grade: D-

Working at her family's bakery, an accident forces a woman to realize that her efforts to keep it afloat are to be put aside when a thought-dead serial killer returns as a rampaging cookie killing off those working with her and must try to stop the killer again.

For the most part this one was quite decent and rather ordinary slasher effort. One of the better points here is the fact that this one's really quite funny and cheesy which really works nicely for the film which is what makes this one so much fun. The light tone that comes from the story and the cheesy set-up gives this the perfect light-hearted story which is then turned into the rather cheesy and silly atmosphere here that extends rather nicely to the rest of the film as it's action scenes are just too silly to take seriously. The way in which the killer is resurrected by the blood being dropped into the vat of dough and then being baked into the cookie itself is the start of this one's cheesiness as there's the oddball manner of it always coming up behind someone and taking them out in the back of the bakery or the manner of it attacking those around the bakery which are some of the greatest scenes in the film as these stalking scenes are quite fun. As well, the different manners of it confronting the group in the back-parts of the bakery in the end are just as much fun which gives this one quite a rather exciting final half which gets some really fun action to pump it up. Alongside the fine gore and make-up effects for the killer, these here are what really make for an enjoyable time over the film's few flaws. One of the main stumbling blocks here is the fact that there's really just so much about this one that sticks out about it's low-budget influences. This is mostly apparent in the rather shoddy, cheap-looking sets that are used here with this one, being especially prominent in the opening at the diner though it's really obvious with their bakery shop being used for the entirety of the film which is just so cheap-looking that it's hard to take this one seriously about the budgetary constraints. As well, that includes the film's utterly ludicrous plot line that really seems as though it's quite a cheesy effort with the concept of the killer coming to possess a cookie and then proceeding to stalk and torment her friends which is such a crazy idea that it's nearly impossible to take this seriously. Add onto that the fact of the wisecrack- quipping killer and it's somewhat cheesy and silly enough to really be somewhat irritating at times. The only other issue here comes from the fact that it's so short, barely clocking in at seventy minutes and then being forced to tack on an agonizingly slow ending screen-scroll for the credits to beef out the time even more which shows off even further how weak the overall plot is. These here are what hold this one back.

Rated R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.