The Gingerdead Man

Year of Release: 2005
Genre: Horror / Comedy
IMDB Rating: 3.3 / 10
Level of Awful: High

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Charles Band strikes again! Except this time we aren’t dealing with homicidal dolls but rather the resurrected soul of a madman contained in a biscuit. It’s difficult to know what to say about this movie. In some ways it’s a little bit like the Jack Frost of the 2000s but with a lot more problems. At only 70 minutes long it manages to simultaneously feel too short for proper story development but also incredibly boring as you wait for it to end. As someone who likes to bake and watch horror movies I thought this movie may be a good way of bringing those two joys together, but sadly this batch of cheese flopped a little early and doesn’t leave the sweetest taste in your mouth.

A somewhat different approach to tummy poking than the Doughboy

Our tale of sugary misadventure begins during a robbery at a local diner where Millard Findlemeyer is shooting anyone who tries to stop him entering the cash register. Cowering in a corner is our lead female Sarah with her dad James and brother Jeremy. James and Jeremy try to be the hero and land up being killed. Millard seems to hear voices in his head and believes, like his mother always told him, that he has to finish whatever it is that he started, and this means killing Sarah. Maybe it’s because she’s a woman or maybe it’s because her jersey was quite tight, but Millard has a sudden attack of conscience and finds himself unable to kill her and instead only shoots to wound her before the police show up to arrest him. Later on we find out that it was Sarah’s testimony that lead to Millard being imprisoned and ultimately sent to the electric chair.

Now this is a cake you don't see every day!

Since the loss of her father and brother Sarah has been effectively left to run the family baking store on her own since her mother, to deal with her grief, has resorted to the age-old method of Jack Daniels and shooting random buildings. Sarah has help from employees / friends Julia and Brick, but the bakery store is in trouble. Across the street arch-bakery nemesis Jimmy Dean is planning on opening up one of them there fancy eateries (we’re in Texas so I thought I’d give the lingo a bash) and running Sarah and co. out of business. He also has one bitch of a daughter, Lorna, who is hell-bent on making Sarah’s life a misery. Lorna, however, is blonde, which is always a plus. To ease her pain Sarah takes to making an enormous gingerbread man (maybe this is the bakery’s problem – shouldn’t  you be making more than one biscuit at a time?) but, due to a sad string of events that includes demonic ginger seasoning and Brick bleeding into the batter mix, the cookie comes to life with the soul of Millard Findlemeyer, still obsessed with finishing what he started.

It's either his soul or very lumpy jam...

So now, with a killer gingerbread man on the loose, we find ourselves with Sarah, Lorna and Lorna’s man-toy Amos stuck in the bakery trying to escape the demented piece of confectionary. Although Julia and Betty (the mother) rock up and are attacked by Millar since they don’t know what’s going on, two questions occurred to me while watching the other three trying to dodge being attacked by the biscuit: 1. Sarah has the keys, so why they don’t just leave the building is a mystery and 2. HOW HARD CAN IT BE TO KILL A COOKIE?!?!?! And it’s not like he’s a little biscuit that can just run and hide either; he’s the size of a baking tray! Somewhere in amongst all of this we have time to squeeze in a good bitch fight, a rat, a budding romance, a moral lesson on the dangers of combining alcohol, shotguns and old ladies, the beginning of one man’s wrestling career and an inside look into the darker side of the baking industry and the lengths people will go to to ensure that they have the freshest, tastiest croissants on the block.

While this movie is slightly brain-numbing, it is worth a watch if you feel like watching something absolutely daft and mindless. And no matter how bad I may have found it, it won’t stop me from watching The Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion of the Crust 🙂

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Druids now have a booming gingerbread seasoning delivery service.
• 2 cups flour, 1 egg and 1 soul. Mix well and bake until cookies sit up and try to kill you.
• Moral question: if a cookie eats baking ingredients, is it a form of cannibalism?
• Once-bitter enemies will become the best cycle sisters when faced with the threat of a killer gingerbread man.
• Coming face-to-face with a killer gingerbread man can make or break business decisions.
• When someone’s been run over with a car you should beat them repeatedly to see if they are still alive.
• Gingerbread men have a really bad aim.
• The best cure for massive blood loss is a breath of fresh air.

THE GINGERDEAD MAN TRAILER