By Emi Gruender and Mia Hanuska
Welcome back to Groovy Movies, where The Shield writers Emi Gruender and Mia Hanuska scour Amazon Prime’s movie selection to find the most hilariously terrible movies! This episode, we popped some popcorn and cozied up on the sofa for what might be our new favorite Christmas movie, The Gingerdead Man.
Episode 4: The Gingerdead Man
★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ — 6/10
We began the experience by not being able to find the movie—off to a great start! On Amazon Prime it’s listed as Elvira’s 10 Nights of Halloween: Gingerdead Man which caused us some confusion. After finally finding the correct movie (we were not looking to review The Gingerdead Man vs Evil Bong, unlike what Amazon may have thought), we discovered it’s rated an incredibly high 3.4 stars out of 10. Despite this, and that the movie is unrated, we clicked play, not knowing the next 80 minutes would be some of the weirdest we’ve experienced in a while.
Warning! Spoilers Below!
The movie begins looking like it’s filmed on a moldy Taco Bell chilli cheese burrito. Don’t worry, it ends like that too! The quality is so amazing some of the signs in the movie are unintelligible from the extreme grain. We see an older man come into the diner (via the staff-only door, somehow), and immediately pull out a gun and shoot the cashier. Another man sitting in a booth gets up and tries to vanquish the threat, but ends up being shot as well. Finally, a teenage boy comes out of hiding and, surprise surprise, he’s also shot. Oh yeah, this is in the first three and a half minutes of the movie, by the way. Cut to the beginning of the movie credits that last a mere three minutes with faint instrumental music and no clear visuals behind them. It’s already a great movie!
We are now in the future where the teenage protagonist, Sarah, works for her mother’s bakery alongside a boy named Brick and Sarah’s sister, Julia. Sarah stands in the oddly large warehouse of a bakery—seriously, how is this a tiny building with Costco-sized back rooms—and reminisces on her brother and father, who were two of the three shot by the man in the diner. The man’s name was Millard Findlemeyer, and according to the newspaper fragment Sarah reads, he recently died via electric chair and his ashes were being sent to his mother. On a completely unrelated note, the bakery receives a shipment of totally normal gingerbread seasoning that was delivered totally normally and not by a strange hooded figure at all. Brick opens the seasoning, and while opening it, manages to slice his hand and drip an oddly large amount of blood into the seasoning. The two bakers don’t notice the clear OSHA violation however, and continue to add the bloody-and-not-possessed-gingerbread seasoning to the gingerbread dough.
Here’s where the movie gets weird—well, weirder than before. In cutscenes randomly interrupting the mom shooting at a building across the street, we see an arm begin to form in the dough and the gingerbread seasoning does not mix in AT ALL. Whatever recipe they’re following for gingerbread, it looks more like bread dough than gingerbread; quite disappointing for a bakery. Sarah uses a massive gingerbread man cookie cutter to create a very large gingerbread man, and decorates him with a nice smile, some chocolate chips (which don’t stay in place because it’s not actual gingerbread dough), and other assorted candies.
Suddenly, the power goes out! As the bakers go to fix it, an electric shock is sent into the excessively large walk-in oven, and we see the Gingerdead Man come to life. Why is he called the Gingerdead Man? Well, we suppose you’ll just have to watch it to find out.
Overall, this movie was actually quite enjoyable, despite some… questionable lines and video quality. We found it hilarious and the voice actor for the Gingerdead Man was surprisingly good, although not very menacing. After enduring an agonizing 105 minutes of Sharks of the Corn last issue, we felt this movie’s pace was much more tolerable. If all the members of your family are at least teenagers (please don’t show this movie to children), we’d definitely recommend adding The Gingerdead Man to your holiday watch list.
OUR FAVORITE QUOTES:
- *opens tin* “Story of my life”
- “Here kitty kitty” (x5, to a teenage girl)
- “Wherever you are up there, I hope they have str***ers and lone star”
- “He wanted to spend it at the t***y bar.”
- “How sick is it that they sent his ashes to his MOTHER in COONSBURY?”
- “Miss Pretty Face of Waco”
- *Seductively* “On the contrary, I think I baked up just fine”
- “Well it sure ain’t the Pillsbury f***ing doughboy!”
- “Big funny ha ha”
- “Ever try a lady finger?”
- *Cuts off a finger*
- “Maybe I like it when girls hit me”
- “That’s easy for you to say… you’re ugly”
- “The candy man can…”
How cooked we are for the rest of the year:
Us when we see another movie on Amazon Prime for us to review:
And in case you’re wondering what the beauty standards are for evil gingerbread men, they’re simply too unattainable:
