Directed by Silvia St. Croix

Starring K-von Moezzi, Kelsey Sanders and Joseph Porter

A failing low-budget movie studio is on the verge of bankruptcy if the son of the former studio’s owner can’t turn the next film, which is already in shambles, into a hit.  The scenario gets much worse when a box of donuts containing the serial killer turned gingerbread man shows up and slashes his way through the filmmakers trying to transfer his soul into a human body again.

Freshly baked terror!

For many years, Cheatum Studios has cranked out classic B-films including their big franchise called Tiny Terrors. But now things are tough and the studio is facing bankruptcy.  The young studio owner, Kelvin Cheatum, who is the son of the studio head, is confident his latest film, Tiny Terrors 9, will be a hit.  He relies on everyone’s good will and willingness to help as a favour to Kelvin’s father to get through to the end of production except that wears awfully thin on long night shoots.  As Kelvin escorts a pretty lady with a Make-a-Wish kid around the movie sets, the Gingerdead Man shows up in a box of donuts.  He escapes and happens upon a Satantic novel that contains your usual black magic spells, including a spell to transfer his soul into a living body.  Very convenient!  The spell requires lots of blood but that’s a cake walk for this guy.  The killer cookie goes from set to set dispatching various filmmakers in gory fashion, while spouting lots of puns about baked goods, in order to complete the spell.

Not even the Island of Misfit Toys wants these guys.

Does that sound ridiculous?  No arguments here.  Does it sound interesting?  Hey, if you watched the first one you should at least give this a shot.  Unlike the dull as dishwater original, there’s always something going on in this flick.  The body count is a lot higher and the gore factor is ramped up quite a bit as well as every kill, from the chainsawed hand to the curling iron in the butt, features gushing blood all over the place.  Huge improvement over the lackadaisical kills featured in the previous instalment.

There’s a bigger focus on comedy, as you can probably tell after reading that curling iron bit.  I can’t say the movie is completely hilarious but the better parts feature cameos with genre filmmakers (keep an eye out for the likes of John Carl Buechler and Greg Nicotero) as they parody themselves in a film they could very well be working on a week from now.  That’s a bit of unexpected street cred to feature in this flick and it was nice to see.  Even the studio in the film is a take on distributor, Full Moon, which also has several killer puppet franchises.

That cookie is baked.

Now let’s talk about the cookie.   The majority of the scenes have the puppet behind a counter or on top of a table but it certainly moves better though the mouth movements never match the dialogue.  Gingy is no longer voiced by Gary Busey though you can see the man appear in footage reused from the original.  Busey must’ve been paid by the word because there’s a lot more dialogue for the killer this time around, maybe a little too much.  I can only take so many puns in a short amount of time.

Ooooh! Passion of the CRUST! Now I get it.

If you take a look back at my review of the original, I didn’t like it.  It was awfully bland and was nowhere near as fun as it could have been.  GD2 isn’t perfect but it’s a step in the right direction.  It’s really over the top with both the blood and cheese factor.  Of course it’s terrible; it has to be!  That’s what makes it so fun.  I’ll give it to the filmmakers, they rectified most of the problems I had with the original movie.  They really went out and made a movie that looks like some effort was put into it, as low budget as it is, and they came up with a horror/comedy that combines a slasher with the feel of a Saturday morning cartoon.

TL;DR

Story: 4 – Ahhh, does the story really matter for this type of flick?  The Gingerdead Man shows up on a horror movie set and discovers a way to become human again.  It involves shedding blood which was what he was going to do anyway.

Blood: 8 – The movie features a ton of gushy stab wounds but throws in it’s fair share of odd ball kills you would expect in this type of film.

Nudity: 3 – Well, Gingy masturbates and later forces himself on another puppet.  There’s a “haunted dildo” puppet.  Scream queen Michelle Bauer shows up to show off her ample s

Overall: 5 – Chances are you already know if you’re going to watch this movie or not.  There’s no way I can convince anyone that this is good but it thrives on giving you a cheesy good time and it somewhat succeeds in that respect.  If you saw the first film and were disappointed, this is the movie it should have been.

Trivia

-The song featured over the credits, “Run, Run, Run,” is a spoof of the Joan Jett song, “Bad Reputation” as well as a reference to the Gingerbread Man fairy tale in which the title character taunts “Run, run, run as fast as you can! You can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man!”