Directed by Charles Band

Starring Gary Busey, Robin Sydney and Ryan Locke

Gary Busey is a serial killer who gets the death penalty yet comes back as a killer cookie in order to finish the job he started back when he was alive.

Evil never tasted so good!

In the opening scene, Millard Findlemeyer (Busey) is robbing a diner and kills the family of a young woman named Sarah (Sydney.)  He gets caught and in what could be the quickest march to the electric chamber, he’s electrocuted for his crimes never to be seen again.  Right?

Turns out Sarah has moved on and opened a bakery in a small town in Texas.  It turns out that Millard’s mother drops off his ashes disguised as gingerbread mix and leaves it by the delivery door.  Sarah is happy to accept the package and immediately goes to make the cookies.  One of the other employees is stupid enough to cut himself and bleed into the batter and never tells anyone.  Sarah continues the batch and makes a big old gingerbread man cookie.  She tosses it into the oven and then it comes to life, back for revenge.

I’d be surprised too if I got killed by a cookie.

Every character is stupid enough to get killed by a cookie.  They could just leave the bakery but they don’t.  They all stick around to have uninteresting conversations and fight amongst themselves.  There’s a lot of drama but it’s childish, high school type drama, no one cares about it.  Since the attacks are so quick, we’re left with a dull, talky slasher.

Needless to say, this is a low budget stinker from Full Moon, meant to create a new franchise for the then floundering genre studio.  The sequels aren’t actually that bad, certainly better than this one, but this is the platform for the series and it’s pretty bland.  Busey only figures into the opening scene of the film and while he does voice the character the bulk of his dialogue is just evil laughter with a line tossed out here and there.  Sure, the main character is a hand puppet/cookie, but seems like such a waste of Busey and they don’t maximize his usefulness.  The Gingerdead Man is an uninteresting horror killer and that’s the worst thing this movie can offer, because there’s nothing else to hold our interest.

Might be a better look for Busey.

There’s very little to recommend about the movie.  The gimmick of a killer cookie is certainly different and if the movie tried to be more of a comedy, maybe that would’ve worked.  The movie actually takes itself seriously which works against it (the sequels definitely went in a better direction adding more comedy.)  Avoid this at all costs.

TL;DR

Story: 2 – It’s kind of like Child’s Play only with a cookie holding a killer’s soul and it takes some very specific events to even make that happen.  Not silly enough for the premise, it’s a boring affair.

Blood: 3 – A cut off finger, a couple of stabbings.  Nothing too crazy.

Nudity: 1 – A dead body with frosting on her boobies. 

Overall: 1 – You might have to watch it if you want to watch the much better sequels, but it’s an awful first go for the Gingerdead Man and it doesn’t try to capitalize on its “so bad its good” premise, it’s just bad.

Trivia

-Cranked out two sequels PLUS a crossover movie with another newer Full Moon franchise, Evil Bong.

-The doll’s design, originally created by John Carl Buechler, changed before filming started. 

-If you watch closely, you can see human hands operating some devices in the puppet’s hand, such as the gun.