It's your Horror Review Advent Calendar.
25 Christmas themed movies.
Ho, ho, ho.
Starring: Gary Busey, Robin Sydney, Ryan Locke
Find it: IMDB
Brilliantly named killer Millard Findlemeyer (Gary Busey) walks into a diner and kills everyone there. After the killer spends too long speechifying, the police arrive in time to arrest him. Survivor Sarah (Sydney) testifies and Millard is sentenced to death. In a sequence of events that could only happen in an anthropomorphic horror movie like The Gingerdead Man, Millard's ashes become mixed up with the cake ingredients at the bakery Sarah happens to own. As an employee's blood drips into the gingerbread mix, The Gingerdead Man is born. With the staff bleeding willy-nilly into the cakes, it's little wonder that business isn't booming. All blood and cremated remains, the Gingerdead Man mix wouldn't look out of place in a Heston Blumenthal recipe book.
This is only a Christmas movie insomuch as people (apparently) eat gingerbread men at Christmas. You can watch it any day of the year you like but I suppose Christmas is the optimum time for watching ridiculous films about sentient food. Christmas is the optimum time for substandard shit being passed off as entertainment. Which would go some way to explain Fred Claus, the Star Wars Christmas special, the X-Factor Christmas no.1, the entire Christmas TV schedule, sprouts and The Gingerdead Man.
Better in concept than execution, Gingerdead Man is of about the same quality as Jack Frost. Few of the jokes are particularly funny whilst the horror elements are just useless. Gary Busey is physically in the movie for less than five minutes, and it's the most bizarre of his performances that I've ever seen. Which is what happens when Meat Loaf isn't around to keep him in check. It's actually a shame when Millard becomes the Gingerdead Man because it robs the film of a potentially awesome Gary Busey performance and lends it a stupid monster that's even less threatening than the gingerbread man in Shrek. As it is, Busey just grumbles a few lines and then goes home. However, he does tell a rat to fuck off.
Gingerdead Man is a movie in which grown adults are menaced by a wee gingerbread man and none of them do anything to fight it. They don't even do the bare minimum, which would be to leave the bakery. I'd be embarrassed to die at the hands of the Gingerdead Man; even more so than Jack Frost or Chucky. It takes a special breed of dipshit to die at the hands of an article of baked goods. Even when one considers that the movie is supposed to be a comedy, Gingerdead Man is stupid. A character becomes possessed towards the end and the movie has the cheek to reference Army Of Darkness.
If you must attempt to watch The Gingerdead Man, I'd suggest taking a leaf from Gary Busey's book - give it five minutes, until Millard's arrest in the diner, then just do one.
You had me at 'Gary Busey'.
ReplyDeleteSounds like typical Charles Band - the concept is so ridiculously compelling that you can't not watch it, but it always ends up being a disappointment. His movies should really be a lot funnier than they are. But Hell, I have a thing for gingerbread men, so I may give this one a go anyway.
ReplyDeleteNormally I try not to have too much Busey in my diet... it's the teeth, I think he would bite back and i'm really not drunk enough for that.
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