Get Ready to Chomp on this Cookie! “The Gingerdead Man” Blu-ray Available Here!

Cold-hearted, mama’s boy killer, Millard Findlemeyer, brutally gun downs Sarah Leigh’s father and brother before wounding during a diner robbery.  Two years later, Findlemeyer is executed with the help of Sarah’s damning testimony and the traumatized survivor attempts to pick up the pieces of her life by keeping her crumbling family bakery business afloat.  With her mother a raging alcoholic and a competing business threatening to shut the business down, Sarah doesn’t realize the gingerbread seasoning dropped off at her doorstep is actually the ashes of the evil Findlemeyer.  Thrown in a gingerbread mix and baked to live again, Findlemeyer returns to continue his carnage but as a delectably devilish cookie sporting candied buttons and wielding a knife.  Trapped inside the bakery, a handful of survivors are being more-than-gingerly picked off one-by-one by Findlemeyer’s possession of a pint-sized cookie and Sarah must face again the evil that destroyed her family.  

“The Gingerdead Man” is one of Full Moon’s more contemporary repeat villains this side of the century.  Christmas may be over, but the holiday cookie carnage doesn’t just pack on the pounds, it also can shred and cut the waist, literally, with guts spilling out everywhere.  The Charles Brand directed, 2005 film that kicked off the icing for not one, not two, but three sequels and a timeline intertwinement with Full Moon’s “Evil Bong” series.  Pot and cookies, a perfect combination when blazed.  The script was penned by Full Moon regular and “Night of the Living Dead” remake actor William Butler, under the pseudonym of Silvia St. Croix, and fellow Full Moon regular Dominic Muir (“Critters,” “Doll Graveyard”), under the pseudonym of August White.  Filmed in Los Angeles, the indie horror-comedy is a Shoot Productions and Full Moon coproduction venture with Band producing and Dana Harrloe serving as executive producer. 

Adding to “The Gingerdead Man’s already zany resurrecting the evil dead into a baked good concept (there’s nothing good about this cookie monster), the untamed energy and distinguished voiceover from Gary Busey is better than self-rising flour for this doughy production.  The “Predator 2” and “Lethal Weapon” actor headlines as the despicable killer Millard Findelmeyer but only in the flesh for the opening diner sequence that establishes Findelmeyer as a coldblooded murderer.  The backstory of his apprehension, trial, and execution is whisked into a frothy afterthought after the title credits to establish more of Robin Sydney’s Sarah Leigh character of rebuilding her life.  Sydney, who would become Charles Band’s wife nearly two decades later after debuting in this role, reserves Sarah into a stasis of plugging along into a woe-as-me state as a setup for her to be heroine nemesis to Findlemeyer’s flaky, killer crust.  What’s neat about her character, along with a handful of other principal characters, is they’re subtly and smartly named after notable cookie making companies.  Sarah Leigh is an obvious rework of the frozen desserts company Sara Lee, Ryan Locke, an unlikely Sarah Leigh love interest cladded and carried by all things from early 2000s, is Amos Cadbury, a mixed play on Famous Amos and Cadbury confectionary, and Jonathan Chase as commercial wrestling enthusiast Brick Fields lends to believe the character’s name pulls inspiration from Mrs. Fields soft baked cookies.  There’s also the corporate-commercial takeover statement with an adjacent restaurant that threatens to put Sarah’s bakery out of business and the owner’s name is Jimmy Dean, as in the sausage company, with Larry Cedar (“The Hidden,” “C.H.U.D. II”) in the role.  Alexia Aleman, Margaret Blye, Daniela Melgoza, and James Synder fill out the cast.

Kitschy personification horror is all the rage in the independent genre circle.  Murderous dolls at are dime a dozen, but a few outliers stray into something more risking and adventures, like an evil llama pinata in “Killer Pinata,” a wicked snowman in “Jack Frost,” or even a killer unicorn standing figure in “CarousHELL” that make the niche subgenre fascinatingly tacky for all the right reasons.  Charles Band and team tap into that peculiar ripe vein to extract their own usually joyous, kid-friendly object and transfigure its G-rated image to a hard R with death, sass, and a whole bunch of mischief and what better wholesome inanimate object to vilify than a scrumptious gingerbread man?  Voiced by Busey and animated by the always preferred practical means, “The Gingderdead Man” evokes promises of a so-bad-its-good composite, especially since the antagonist for this franchise starter fits right into the Full Moon small things come in killer packages niche, and while half of “The Gingerdead Man” delivers on a havoc-wreaking spiced cookie, the execution, as a whole, leaves much to be desired by whirling through a two year story gap of the capture and execution of Findlemeyer and how and why his malevolent essence is mixed into the batter for resurrection.  The slapdashedly before and after title credits causes a brief loss of thought as the brain frantically tries to catch up and fill in the gaps as much of the images and exposition haphazardly piece together.  The Gingerdead Man isn’t also quite as quippy as his human form counterpart, but a ton of appreciation goes into the multiple renditions of the distorted faced Gingerdead Man character from hand puppets, to animatronics, to full size human suit provides that breadth of range in angles, perspectives, and appearances that shape a personality package to where dialogue can nearly be neutralized altogether.  “The Gingerbread Man” lives and breathes as its marketed image, a mediocre kill possession-slasher with a bunch of characters scratching their heads instead of building upon who they are and what hurdles, figuratively and literally, to jump, the latter mostly falls into the hands of Sarah Leigh and her depression-induced fear, an aspect she has to face when being revisited by the man who killed her father and brother. 

An all-new transfer and remastered from the original 35mm elements, Full Moon Features re-bakes “The Gingerdead Man” onto a new physical media cookie sheet.  The AVC encoded, 1080p resolution, BD25, presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio, had elevated some lower resolution complications with better definition appeal but the overall package isn’t an epitome showcase of the format possibilities with softer contrasts that leaves voids and shadows milkier, textures fluctuate during decode that sways in a range between 15 to 25 Mbps, and minor damaged portions, such as light scratches and speckling, are not touched up in the restoration.  Skin tones and other colorist applications appear organic and, when reaching peak performance, displays a nicely diffused sweat sheen in the lighting.  Two English, lossy audio options are available, a Dolby Digital 5.1 and a Stereo 2.0.  A clean and clear presentation on all layers with an amalgamated cast that just as good as any other solid sound design with powerful forefront and intelligible dialogue, an above par ambient dispersal that has suitable depth and range, and a Roger Ballenger carnivalesque score that isn’t from Richard Band but is a great mimic.  English subtitles are available.  Extras include an archival behind-the-scenes featurette with interviews with cast, crew, and Charles Band with some BTS-footage in creating the cookie monster, a blooper reel, the original trailer, and trailers for other Full Moon features.  Front cover on the Amaray Blu-ray is an illustrated composition of characters that clue in a sense of what to expect but other than that, this standard re-release has physical bare bones.  The region free release has a runtime of 71 minute and is not rated.

Last Rites: Though doesn’t reinvent the recipe nor does it not make this naughty killer cookie stale, “The Gingerdead Man” has come a long way with a new, revitalizing release onto a high-definition format pulled from the extensive and vast Full Moon catalogue that’s slowly but surely updating the filmic cache. This schlocky bad baked good should surely be in everyone’s holiday horror collection.

Get Ready to Chomp on this Cookie! “The Gingerdead Man” Blu-ray Available Here!