The Gingerdead Man (2005) Horror/Comedy Review

by Spider
(Salem, OR)

The Gingerdead Man fails as horror and as a comedy. First, it is not scary and second, it is not funny.


Release: November 8, 2005
Directed by: Charles Band
Written by: William Butler, August White

Starring:
Gary Busey as Millard Findlemeyer
Robin Sydney as Sara Leigh
Ryan Locke as Amos Cadbury
Larry Cedar as Jimmy Dean
Alexia Aleman as Lorna Dean



The movie title alone should have been enough to warn me that I wasn’t going to find cinema brilliance in The Gingerdead Man but my love of B grade horror films often overcomes my good sense. So rent the film I did hoping that anyone who would write a film about a killer Gingerbread man would include some humor and creativity. I was to be sorely disappointed.

The film starts out in a greasy spoon diner called ‘Cadillac Jacks’ where our rather wussy heroine , Sarah Leigh hides behind a booth as killer Millard Findlemeyer proceeds to shoot her father and her brother Jeremy. Instead of shooting Sara as well, the killer rambles off nonsensically for a while until he hears police sirens. He finally shoots at her, but whether he hits her and whether she survives or not the movie never bothers to tell us.

The film then skips forward to what would have been Jeremy’s 21st birthday had he survived the opening of the film. Sarah is trying to keep the family bakery going. This is proving difficult as rich Jimmy Dean and his obnoxious beauty queen daughter Lorna are opening a bakery across the street and trying to run Sarah out of business.

Sarah’s mother Betsy the rifle-toting alcoholic is no help and Sarah, still mourning the loss of her father and brother, and disheartened by the fight to keep the bakery open is ready to throw in the towel.

But fate seems to have more trouble in store for Sarah as a mysterious package of gingerbread mix arrives on the bakery’s doorstep. It turns out the mix is contaminated with the ashes of cremated killer Millard Findlemeyer. Millard’s mom has apparently sent this package so her son can have revenge against Sarah since her testimony sent Millard to the electric chair.

Bumbling bakery employee Brick manages to cut himself and bleed into the gingerbread mix which instead of throwing out, he and Sarah continue to prepare (pretty sure that’s a health code violation) until Sarah lets him leave early to attend a wrestling match. She then pops the large gingerbread cookie man into the oven.

Lorna meanwhile comes back to the bakery to plant a rat so the health inspector will shut the bakery down (if she had seen the making of the gingerbread man cookie she could have saved herself the trouble) and a fight breaks out between her and Sarah, resulting in a switch being thrown on the oven that causes a surge of electricity, bringing the killer Millard Findlemeyer back to life in the form of a giant cookie.

Predictably Millard/Gingerbread man proceeds to bring death and destruction to the bakery.

While I loved the silly concept of a killer gingerbread man, the deaths in this film were few and poorly enacted, and the gingerbread man himself was not particularly entertaining. While I don’t want to give away the climatic ending of the movie, I will tell you it involved goggle eyes like the ones you buy at a craft store.

The only real entertaining part of the movie in my opinion is the rat. It’s very cute and the scene where the Gingerbread man dares the rat to eat him was kind of funny.

Overall I’d give the movie two stars out of ten and recommend you save your money for a more entertaining film.