The Gingerdead Man

If there is something you need to understand about me, it's this: I paid money to watch this movie.

The Gingerdead Man is one of Charles Band's Full Moon Features productions. If you haven't seen any of his direct to video flicks, I highly recommend that you check them out, as Band seems to be highly sensitive to the fact that anything scary is automatically more terrifying in puppet form.

This movie is pretty much unreviewable. It's special effects consist of a some lights and a sock puppet with Gary Busey's face. Actors stand three abreast, facing the camera, reciting their lines in clipped, terse delivery. It's got the heroin addict from Deadwood in it. And Gary Busey is the Gingerdead Man.

I love Gary Busey, the walking poster child for motorcycle helmet laws. I was a big fan of I'm With Busey, mostly because I was genuinely unsure of how real it was. Was it an act? Was he really that far gone? Here's a taste of the magic:



Anyway, he plays the best goddamn twelve inch serial killing Gingerbread Man that has ever been committed to film, brought to life by haunted dough infused with wrestler blood and baked in the fires of perdition. Evil never tasted so good.

It strikes me as kind of hypocritical that I reacted so negatively to Return To Sleepaway Camp and I kinda enjoyed Gingerdead Man. Both movies are no-budget goofball ideas with a cult following and a wry sense of irony. Gingerdead Man is, if anything, even more ineptly executed. Maybe I was in the right mood this time, but I think it had more to do with the fact that there was some missed potential in RTSC that Gingerdead Man cheerfully avoids. It's the movie equivalent of the kid you knew in high school, the one who had potential but chose to hide out behind the cafeteria getting high rather than apply himself.



When I was a kid I got a lifetime membership in the Full Moon Fan Club. It came with a little membership card, a quarterly catalogue, a tee-shirt, and a free tour of the Full Moon Studios that I never took. I liked the mystique of the company, the cheerfully goofy nature of the movies, and I like the way that Charles Band is sort of the Stan Lee of direct to video schlock flicks. At the end of all his old VHS movies there would be a little video of Band thanking you for watching his movies and telling you what projects were currently being developed. You didn't feel like you were just watching one silly movie, but that you were part of a little community. Check out his blog here.

This is the sail on your boat of life.

ia ia cthulhu fhtagn

Creature