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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!

On Christmas Eve for over a Decade until 2011, a psychopath dressed as Santa Clause hunts down people on his naughty list, people whom have, at one time or another, been incarcerated. Santa’s violent kill streak ends when detective Thomas Rasch tracks puts multiple bullets into Santa after the gruesome slaughter of three people. After 6 years of imprisonment, with no sign of improvement from his holiday hallucinations, Santa escapes to continue checking and crossing those unlucky souls off his naught list, leading him to Alta, a small, quiet village in the northern most part of Norway where one woman when unpunished on his list. Unbeknownst to Santa, the woman he intends to frightfully dispatch has committed suicide, leaving behind a daughter, Julia, to oversee her mother’s home. Struggling to cope with her the loss of her mother, Julia’s college friends from all over the world embark to comfort her on Julia’s first Christmas without her mother, but the gesture of goodwill only speaks to their impending doom with a serial killer Santa ready to reign in Christmas with red blood soaked, holiday fear.

“Christmas Blood, aka “Juleblod” in the original Norwegian lingo, is Reinert Kiil’s yuletide splattering spectacular. Kiil writes and directs a new horror-holiday classic of the Norwegian variety that turns the jolly, red nose, cookie-eating fat guy into an axe wielding maniac. “Silent Night, Deadly Night.” “Black Christmas.” “Jack Frost.” “Christmas Blood” joins the high ranking level of a niche genre, the X-Mas horror genre, which doesn’t see really the light of day in conventional theaters, but home video unsheathes the new life into films one may have never heard of such as Kiil’s “Juleblod” Yet, the overall body of work for Christmas films is very black and white. They’re either overly feel good films with a blanket of pure white joy and happiness or utterly insane and soaked with the crimson interior body fluid, unless you count Die Hard or Lethal Weapon as Christmas films than one can make a case. “Christmas Blood” is certainly in that far right polar opposite of extreme violence, but is solid and engrossing, chopping body parts away with trepidation and stringed up with multi-colored lights.

Ringing in the holiday screams are young victims typically associated with familiar slasher archetypes. The “Christmas Blood” prey, typically adorned by actresses due to their ability produce toe curling, are a pact of university school friends gathered together to rally around one who has recently lost her mother to suicide. Helen Eidsvag, Haddy Jallow, Yassmine Johansen, Karoline Stemre, Kylie Stephenson, and Marte Saeteren share the limelight as unsuspecting Christmas carnage-fodder and all of the actresses hail from Norway with the exception of Kylie Stephenson, who has odd interjecting into Norwegian conversations with her Australian English dialect. Written as great friends, but also depicted as the worst of enemies as various facets of animosity slithers between them, the actresses pull off of their ill-fated character quirks well: Eidsvag as the innocent and naïve Sanne, Jallow as the drug indulgent and secret keeping black sheep Kitika, Johansen does stern and uptight girlfriend well in Katja, Stemre as a favorably licentious mute Elisabeth, Stephenson is the fun-loving non-national in Annika, and Saeteren as the heartbroken Julia with loss of her mother. I’m not sure if “Christmas Blood” would be a socially acceptable film in the States and not because of the blood-spatter blasphemy of traditional holiday and Christianity values, but because of how the one and only black character is treated throughout the narrative in a predominately white movie. Kitika has no verbal filter, smokes weed despite her host’s severe objection, slept with and was going to sleep with again her friend’s boyfriend, is kicked out into the freezing cold along with said friend’s boyfriend by the rest of her white friends, and is eventually slaughtered and stuffed into Santa’s sack. The remaining cast includes Jørgen Langhelle, Stig Henrik Hoff, Sondre Krogtoft Larsen, and Andreas Nonaas.

“Christmas Blood” is a retro-grade horror film that very merrily feels like a product of the Golden Age of slasher-survival genre from the 1980’s with a powerful and unstoppable aggressive killer, a delectable high body count, and a significant calendar date to infamously memorialize the event, similar to Friday the 13th or Halloween dates that are have been synonymous to Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. Generally speaking, Santa’s already this jolly mystical being worshipped by all and in “Christmas Blood,” that mysticism is really exploited, but as a frightful killer Santa who is seemingly able to be in two places at once and survive a barrage of bullets. Only a couple gripes linger that don’t necessarily derail Santa’s slay-ing of bitchy former co-eds, daft police offers, or any unfortunate person in his blizzard path of butchery. For one, the wordy title card sequence explaining the background of serial Santa’s 13-year killing spree is sorely out of place and slightly kills the buzz built up initially by the gruesome opening scene that sets the morbid tone. Secondly, on the technical side, the lighting is very dim lit. The coloring scheme from the decorative bulbs is festively great and there’s also a very low-tone neon red, blue, and yellow juxtaposed against a bleak, cold setting as if walking through Amsterdam’s Red Light district at night, but with less people, more snow, and no peep shows, but the overall lighting is thin-to-damn near black at times that, shamefully, shades some of the gore work into a silhouette something and your eyes attempt to define what is being seen, but can’t definitively consume the form. Luckily, numerous gory moments make the cut in the light that include exposed entrails and some sheer brutal force with an axe to the neck and to the vagina!.

Artsploitation Films present “Christmas Blood” onto DVD this December. Presented in a widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio, the details are a little lost in the dim lighting as mentioned before, but the image quality looks vibrant on colorful in the mise-en-scene lighting and there are no issues with artefacts. The Norwegian Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound track is rather pristine like a bow-wrapped present under the tinseled tennenbaum, gifted with clarity, synchronization, and no distortion in any aspect. English subtitles are available and are synched well. However, Artsploitation’s release offers no bonus materials aside from a static menu, but this Reinert Kiil’s “Christmas Blood” snarls Merry Fucking Christmas by bastardizing the popular Scandinavian folkore of the genial Saint Nick into a fierce and frightening killing machine!