While the whole "one line" premise of this movie (that being real-life nutter Gary Busey playing a serial killer who's brought back to life as a murderous gingerbread man cookie) sounds like it could lend itself to a whole slew of campy fun, the final product however is a different story all together.

Busey puts in his two minutes of screen time as a pretty thief Millard, who's decided to rob a family diner only to end-up killing off all the people inside, with the exception of the one girl who saw her father and brother being shot by the obviously psychopathic criminal - we know this because he has an argument with the voice in his head, that also happens to be the voice of his mother. We flash forward to two years later and Millard has been executed for the killings while sole survivor Sarah Leigh (Robin Sydney) is trying to get her life back on track by helping run her family bakery and make sure her heavily drinking mother stays out of trouble (kind of hard to do when she's blasting a shotgun at the signs advertising the arrival of a rival bakery across the street).

A mysterious box of "Grandma's Gingerbread Mix" shows-up at the backdoor as part of the deliveries and things start to get crazy when it turns out the mix contains the cremated ashes of Millard and when one of her helpers is accidentally cut and spills some blood into the mix. This causes some sort of unexplained supernatural event that brings back Millard as a twelve-inch-tall gingerbread man with murder in mind.

The Gingerdead Man is one sad little movie. Clocking it at a mere 57 minutes minus credits the entire thing feels like the lame Child's Play rip-off it is with Busey (who continues to slide into B-movie obscurity) getting to crack a whole slew-of foulmouthed lines while his cookie counterpart fumbles around in the bakery killing off a handful of people, laughing manically, and even threatening a rat ("I'll kick your rat ass!"). Band hasn't made many decent movies since the heyday of Full Moon in the early 90's and this one - his third release under the Wizard Entertainment banner - doesn't give us any hope it's going to get any better. Don't get me wrong, I like the guy, his movies have offered me hours of entertainment in the past, but all of his recent movies just seem to be lacking in the charm and tongue-in-cheek attitude of past efforts such as Puppet Master, Trancers, and Doctor Mordrid.

Even though the acting is suitably goofy at times and the title killer created by veteran effects man John Carl Buechler isn't too bad, this one is just much too talky and dull for it's own good. It's the lack of outright mayhem (that a premise like this should have) that drags The Gingerdead Man down. Not to mention the fact there's barely any kills and the finale is especially bad with its "Got Milk?" pun, a mock wrestling match, and body possession. Band has got to stop making one-note concept movies that barely clock in at feature length and try to get back to the spirit of his past work, if he doesn't even the most patient fan might start to become annoyed. (Chris Hartley, 11/25/05)

Directed By: Charles Band.
Written By: Silvia St. Croix (William Butler), August White.

Starring: Gary Busey, Robin Sydney, Ryan Locke, Alexia Aleman.

Picture Ratio: 1.85:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: Probably the worst transfer of the three Wizard releases, The Gingerdead Man looks pretty soft and has many fuzzy moments - but at least it's clean of any visible grain.

Extras: There's the expected trailers and "Message from Charles Band" on hand here, plus we get a blooper reel (I'm really beginning to hate these things) and an actually pretty decent "making of" featurette that shows us that the movie was planned as far back as 2001 (we're shown a clip of what you could call a "teaser trailer" with a completely CGI "Gingerdead Man", which is not only cool but shows the idea originally gave the killer a heck of a lot more personallity).