You’ve heard of the Gingerbread Man, now get ready for the Gingerdead Man: a horror-comedy premise
that’s rife with possibility…and is perhaps one of the greatest disappointments
I’ve ever seen.
Gary Busey plays a maniacal killer who is executed for his
crimes and cremated, but his ashes are sent to his mother, who happens to be a
witch, and she mixes his remains with gingerbread spices and delivers them to a
small bakery, where the bakers unwittingly bring the killer back as a
murderous, wise-cracking gingerbread man. It sounds like horror-comedy gold,
doesn’t it? Oh, if only the filmmakers had used the premise to its full
potential.
The Gingerdead Man
is, unsurprisingly, a bad movie, but it falls into the unfortunate category of
being just plain bad and painful to watch instead of so-bad-its-good. Right
from the opening scene it’s awkwardly shot, poorly edited, badly acted, and
dull. Gary Busey only appears in-person in the first scene, where he kills a bunch
of hostages in a diner, for whatever reason, and it makes for a confusing way
to start. Then the entire rest of the movie takes place in a bakery at night,
with only a few people present, and it becomes clear very quickly that it’s
going to be a dismal affair.
In total, Gingerdead Man kills maybe two people, max. The
attempts at humour are awful, for the most part, with only a couple lines that
are even remotely funny. With such a dumb premise, you’d think they wouldn’t
take the material too seriously, but a good portion of the story is played
quite serious, which only makes it more boring. The runtime is just over an
hour, including beginning and end credits, and yet I’ve watched three-hour
films that didn’t feel nearly as long as this. I got the impression that the
filmmakers knew someone who owned a bakery, so they just filmed there at night
while it was closed, worked on the smallest budget possible (the effects aren’t
even worth commenting on) and sold the movie based on the premise alone just to
make a quick buck.
What really blows my mind is how prolific this series
managed to be. There’s Gingerdead Man 2:
Passion of the Crust, Gingerdead Man
3: Saturday Night Cleaver, and a crossover with Evil Bong, another low-budget horror-comedy franchise: Gingerdead Man vs. Evil Bong. I’ll give
them credit for persistence (and hilarious titles), but that’s it.
The Gingerdead Man
has its devoted fans, however I cannot count myself among them. It’s easily the
worst food-related horror movie I’ve seen so far, but don’t worry, I’ve saved
the best for last. Schlocktober is going out with a bang this year. Perhaps
you’ve heard of a bad movie being called a “turkey?” After tomorrow, that word
is going to take on a whole new meaning.
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