Shit.
Shit.
Motherfucker.
Goddammit.
Shit.
Monkey dick.
Motherdammit.
Godshitting monkeyfucker nutdick.

Full Moon Fever continues.  Last week, I had a good time watching the cult classic Puppet Master.  I felt like I really got to see something good for the first time in 2017.  But I just couldn’t stop there, could I?

Oh, no.  No, I just had to continue on plumbing the depths of the Full Moon Features catalog.  What turd did I fish out of the shitter this week?  Gary Busey as The Gingerdead Man.

Fuck.

By the time 2005 rolled around, Gary Busey had gone so far off the deep end he was hanging out in the Marianas Trench.  With Charles Band directing and producing, and his penchant already well in place for making crazy ass movies, throw Gary Busey into the mix and, well… oof.

Interestingly, this movie is billed as a Horror/Comedy and has an astounding 60% on Rotten Tomatoes.  Yeah, guys, this means it is considered “Fresh”.  I mean it only has five total reviews, but three out of five ain’t bad.  It’s not as good as Meatloaf needing and wanting some rando chick, but it cuts the mustard on RT.

Let’s get to the plot from the back of the DVD box: “In a quiet, small town diner, a deranged patron, Millard Findlemeyer (Gary Busey), opens fire on the Leigh family, killing all but the daughter, Sara Leigh (Robin Sydney). During the trial, Sara’s testimony sends Millard to the electric chair and his ashes are sent to his mother.  In a vow of revenge, Millard’s mother mixes her son’s ashes with a secret gingerbread cookie mix, which makes its way into Sara Leigh’s bakery.  When one of the bakery employees, Brick Fields (Jonathan Chase), cuts his arm and accidentally bleeds into the mixture, an old curse spawns a deadly 12″ walking, talking, killing gingerbread cookie and wreaks havoc on anything standing in his way!”

Fuck.

And, really, movie?  Sara Leigh?  Fuck you.  I guess nobody does it like Full Moon.  Ugh.  I turn 40 tomorrow and this…  This is how I choose to live my life.

As promised, the movie wastes no time getting to Gary Busey going nuts on a diner and killing people.  I guess if there is one thing I can say that’s good about Full Moon, it’s that they do deliver on the goods they promise.  The very first moment we see Busey, he’s shooting some poor bastard in the head.  Next, some old fart decides they have to defend themselves and comes at him with a pocket knife.  That ends with him getting shot and killed almost instantly.  After doing so, he looks at the dude’s kids and says he smells something “feminine” in the air.  The kid begs him to put the gun down.  When he finally does so, he asks the kid to take the gun so he can stab him.

This movie is already pretty bipolar.  As further proof, he calls for a girl, our main heroine, Sara, to come out from hiding.  First, she’s dressed relatively sexy (shirt showing off her midriff and a plaid skirt) for being obviously a teenager.  Then, he tells her he’s not going to kill her, but he has to finish what he started because he always promised his mother he would finish what he starts…?  He struggles over what he’s going to do.  However, he goes through with it, but doesn’t kill her.  When sirens ring out from outside, he decides to get out of Dodge.

We are off and running, and I can’t help that I would rather watch other Gary Busey movies like The Buddy Holly Story or Point Break.  Goddamn I would REALLY rather watch Point Break.  Fuck, I’d rather watch Contact or Starship Troopers and that’s just Jake Busey.

Okay, so some time later, Sara is now working in her bakery business.  Remember, her name is Sara Leigh because fuck this movie.  She is grown up, I guess, because she’s dressed less like a curly-haired, plaid skirt wearing piece of jailbait and now has straight hair, wears long sleeve shirts and jeans, and runs a business.  I will say that I do appreciate that she’s more cute than sexy for a lower budget horror b-movie,  The 90s and 2000s did have a problem with the survivor girls being a little less plain.

Anyway, Sara *sigh* Leigh is letting us in on the exposition by reminiscing about the most horrible day of her life by reading her newspaper clippings she’s hung up on the wall.  At least the newspaper exposition gives us this treat:

While Sara is agonizingly remembering that her dad and brother were murdered by Gary Busey, he provides some additional exposition in the form of voice over by saying that he’s going to get her for giving her testimony because his mother is a witch so even from beyond the grave, he will have his revenge.  So, there you have it: Our movie has been set up by a brief opening scene showing Gary Busey on a rampage, some newspaper clippings, and a voice over that sets up the entire rest of the movie.

Full Moon is a lot of things, but they do not leave us wondering what the hell is going on.  They lay that shit out pretty succinctly so they can get to their puppets, special effects, and makeup.

Sara is, rightfully so, still a little shell-shocked about being attacked in the diner.  She jumps and gets a little freaked out when a knock comes to her bakery’s backdoor.  When she does actually answer the door, she finds a box for “Grandma’s Gingerbread Seasoning”.  She sees a person in a black hooded cloak walking away.  She tells herself to calm down because it’s just the delivery person.  Because delivery people wear black hooded cloaks and drops things off without signatures and/or return addresses on boxes (or shipping addresses for that matter) all the time.

Goddammit, Sara, are you an idiot or something?

That’s answered by her dumb guy friend, Brick, who may or may not be her boyfriend.  He’s got this really stupid southern drawl.  He also cuts himself while opening a box, and then Sara holds his arm so that he can bleed OVER the gingerbread seasoning.  That gets mixed into the gingerbread cookie dough while Sara talks to her friend and other employee, Julia, who is A) super hot and B) I guess, Hispanic.  I mean, yes, she is, but it’s an odd thing to constantly draw attention to when she barely even speaks with the southern accent the other actors use.  Whatever, she’s hot and, unfortunately, very likely to be one of the first people to die.  Not long after this, we learn that Sara’s mom is an alcoholic that shoots a rifle across the street at a big cafe chain’s new location.

I now realize that this movie is going to meander along until it gets to the crazy gingerbread version of Gary Busey.  I also started to notice that this movie looks like it was shot using made-for-TV-Lifetime film/video stock.  It’s definitely not your typical film stock, but not so shitty as video.  It’s “other”.  That “other” being what’s used for Lifetime Channel movies.

Also, Brick is incredibly stupid.  Like super duper stupid.  He is checking on the gingerbread dough mix and doesn’t notice there’s blood obviously swirled into the mix.  And it’s not like he just peeks in and checks on it and then it’s not really noticeable or anything.  It’s obvious.  This fucking guy bled into your cookies and you are eating them.  That’s scarier than a gingerbread man version of Gary Busey.

There’s a subplot too that concerns the owner of the franchise across the street trying to buy the Leighs out of business so they won’t be a problem for each other.  Sara’s mom being a fall down drunk and the threat of this new guy across the street makes for this to be an enticing offer because they likely can’t keep up with the big chain, but the guy is a real jerk.  He also looks a lot like Xander Berkeley – which the creep guy in Puppet Master also looked like him.  What is with guys who look like Xander Berkeley being dicks and/or creeps?  He does have a sexy debutante daughter who tries to sneak into the Leigh’s bakery and drop a few rats into the food case to get them shut down by the health department.  Sara and the sexy daughter fight and wrestle while the Gary Busey gingerbread man is baking.  When they cause a power overload, he finally comes to life.  The (sorta) boyfriend of the debutante comes inside after they finish their fight and is seemingly not aware of the plan Lorna had with the rat.  He even seems to be a decent guy and/or sweet on Sara.

But!  Holy fucking shit…

Okay, now we have Sara, Lorna (the hot debutante girl), and Amos (Lorna’s boy toy) inside the bakery trying to figure out what’s going on with the gingerbread man.  Lorna is onto the idea it being a product of black magic.  She even tells them about a story of her and her friends playing with a Ouija Board.  Amos thinks it is all a joke – probably perpetrated by Brick.  I’m a bit distracted by two things though.  The first is the southern accents.  They are grating on my brain.  I don’t know why this has to take place in Waco, Texas, but that’s the choice everyone went with.  Second, and I can’t really get a good screen grab of it, but Lorna is not wearing a bra under her pink sweater.  Them titties are poking out and lookin’ nice.

Leave it to me to find something to be fairly lecherous about.

Sara’s mom comes back to the bakery looking for some booze she’s hidden around the joint.  She hears the gingerbread man (I fucking refuse to call it the “gingerdead man”) knocking about and investigates.  After he talks to her in his gingerbread form, Sara’s mom realizes she’s talking to Gary Busey (I fucking refuse to call him by his character’s name).  In a drunken stupor, she points at him and laughs, but the gingerbread man cuts off her finger.  She falls into the laundry and is found by Julia.  Mrs. Leigh tries to warn Julia about the gingerbread man, but Julia just thinks she’s drunk.  He knocks Julia out with a frying pan.

Outside, Amos gets his gun from the case on the floor of his car.  Now I see why this takes place in Texas because dudes do indeed just drive around down there with gigantic magnums within arm’s reach.  While he walks around looking for the gingerbread man, Sara asks Amos to put away his gun because, you know, her dad and brother were shot and stuff?  Outside, Lorna’s dad comes to get her out of there because she called him earlier.  However, he gets killed when the gingerbread man gets into his car and runs him down.

I do have one (of many) things that I find myself more concerned about than anything else.  That is – HOW FREAKING BIG IS THIS BAKERY???  We already know that Julia and Mrs. Leigh are somewhere in the bakery with Mrs. Leigh missing a finger, and Julia knocked out.  Outside, Lorna’s dad was smashed by his care against the side of the building and no one heard that.  So, what’s going on here?  What are we doing?  Is this a giant, multi-faceted building with so many rooms that you could conceivably be lost in the bakery or at least so separated you can’t hear your other characters being abducted, attacked, or smashed against the outside wall?  If they are so big, why are they worried about Not Xander Berkeley coming in and taking over the town with his chain franchise?

But, more importantly, is Julia okay?

Even more baffling is Lorna is guarding a door to a generator that Amos and Sara are trying to fix to get the lights turned back on in the bakery.  She’s marching back and forth in front of the door with a rolling pin (which is actually clever, but too bad the shot is horrible).  When Amos and Sara come out, Lorna says some bitchy stuff about there still not being any lights (yeah, Amos and Sara just talked, they didn’t fix shit).  Amos then notices a trail of blood RIGHT NEXT TO WHERE LORNA WAS MARCHING BACK AND FORTH.  Is Lorna having a heavy flow month?

No, she’s just a bitchy idiot.

Amos follows the trail of blood to the refrigerator.  Lorna decides to let Amos and Sara do their own detective work, which could possibly lead to their murders, to go outside and wait for her “daddy” (shiver).  When they get inside the fridge/freezer thing, they find Julia covered from the neck down in icing with two cherries over her tits.  Nice touch, movie.

Thankfully, it appears Julia will be okay, though she probably has a pretty bad concussion and will miss at least the next two games while she undergoes the league’s concussion protocol.  Outside, Lorna finds her daddy, which, sadly, is not her pet name in the sack for me.  She has a moment of tender goodbyes and then takes his nice pinky ring and walks away saying she’ll miss him.

Back inside, Sara says she believes it’s Gary Busey back from the dead in the form of a gingerbread cookie trying to kill her.  And that’s a sentence I just typed…

Fuck.  There has been one on screen death.  We are at minute 46 of a 70 minute trainwreck and only Lorna’s “daddy” (shiver) has been killed by our “Gingerdead Man”.  Just when I start bitching about that, the gingerbread man offers Lorna a facial – which is, sadly, not something I’ve had the chance to do with her yet – and cuts her face.

She runs away and finds Amos and Sara.  She keeps crying about her face, but only sorta mentions that a cookie killed her father.  She’s much more concerned about her face than anything else going on.  Hey, guys, I think Lorna might be a bitch.  I’m not sure if they’ve nailed that point down or not yet.

She decides she’s going to storm off because she’ll be damned if that little fucker does anything more to her than what he’s already done to her face.  As she walks away, she trips a wire the gingerbread man set up as a booby trap.  It appears she only caused a box to fall down for her to try to shield herself from, but then…

Amos realizes that the exits must be booby trapped.  I don’t think it will be too damn hard to find more trip wires.  Just look around the fucking ground to see if anything looks booby trapped.  As they mill around, the gingerbread man says her dad and brother died because they were stupid and were trying to stop him.  She was scared and therefore got to live.  He then says she can’t stay scared forever.  What happens then?  Then he will kill her?  I don’t get it.

I also don’t understand the WALK IN oven she has in the bakery.  Is that a real thing?  Really, I don’t know.  I don’t think it is.  It doesn’t feel like something that is real.  Oh well, that’s where Sara’s mom is.  Amos helps pull her out which gets Sara locked inside.  Amos gets knocked out by gingerbread man but not before he shots the lock off on the door of that walk in oven which gets Sara out.  It looks as though the gingerbread man has taken Amos’ gun.  Before he shoots, Brick comes in dressed as the most rejected wrestler character ever.  You see, he loves wrestling.  That’s a thing in this movie too.  I don’t feel like going into more detail about that.

The gingerbread man tries shooting Brick, Amos, and Sara, missing them all badly.  You know why?  Because he’s a fucking gingerbread man trying to aim and fire a magnum.  He also fires more than the allotted six bullets in the revolver.

Julia, like the dreamboat she is, comes to the rescue by knocking the gingerbread man down with a frying pan.  She’s awfully clean despite being covered from neck to toe in icing that I, sadly, did not get to lick off her.   Brick jumps on top of the gingerbread man and starts eating him as you do with demonic cookies.

Julia gets pretty turned on by the machismo of Brick which really bums me out.  Brick, though, as everyone else tends to Sara’s mom, is not feeling so well.  Turns out he’s now possessed by Gary Busey.  Did you really think eating a monster cookie was going to end well?  I mean it bled blood, not cookie stuff.  Also, did you really think I was going to get lucky enough for this movie to end fifteen minutes early?

Of course not.

Possessed Brick and Sara and Amos have a little stand off and while they exchange words, Julia, like the dreamboat she is, comes in and pushes possessed Brick into the walk in oven where he gets baked.  At some point later, Sara and Amos are handing out donuts to neighborhood people while two nurses from a hospital thank them for what they are doing for them.  Also, I guess her mom is no longer on the sauce because the nurses say she looks so much better.  The nurses reveal a “sweet old lady” dropped off some little gingerbread cookies for them and their eyes turn into googly eyes signifying that either A) they are alive and little Gary Buseys or B) they are going to be the most fun you’ve ever had eating cookies (what with the googly eyes and all).

I don’t understand that ending whatsoever, but the movie DOES end early.  TEN minutes early to be exact.  But that’s so every cast member can get their name displayed individually with some shots from the movie.  It takes three minutes to go through that and then it repeats the cast in the normal scroll.  Slowly.  All while the song “I Can’t Help This”, written by Charles Band with some vocals done by Gary Busey himself (or at least it certainly sounds like him), plays.  For real there are ten minutes of credits!  That’s impressive even for a Marvel movie with all the people who work on those.

Oh, guys…  Guys.  This was a rough one.  It’s billed as a comedy, but it wasn’t funny.  It wasn’t particularly well made either.  I mean I guess you can say Gary Busey was alright, but oof.  I really think I should expect more from a movie called The Gingerdead Man.  There’s so little to say in a critical sense about the movie either.  If you thought this was going to be some sort of art, than you’re fucking dumb.  If you thought it was going to be so bad it’s good a la The Bride of Chucky, you’re going to be disappointed there too.  It falls somewhere in between and that’s the worst place a movie like this can land.  I guess I should be thankful it was only a quick 60 minutes.  And, sure, at least there was Julia.

Seriously, how often can I legitimately make this joke…

As for eye candy, next week, I will talk about a movie that was entirely made in order to display tits.  It was a sequel to a pansexual, sci-fi/horror movie that involved tentacle rape.  It’s got a whole lotta not much going on in it other than those boobs, though.  So come back next week and I’ll break down the Charles Band directed Killer Eye: Halloween Haunt.

Hopefully I will die before then, though.

But I doubt I’ll be so lucky.