Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver

The third part of the GINGERDEAD MAN franchise from Full Moon, and surprisingly the best yet; you'd expect the quality to drop as the series goes on, as is the case with mainstream cinema, but this one's gone from being awful to being not awful for a very low budget production. This time around the story involves time travel, with the antihero fleeing the authorities and ending up at a roller disco in 1976. The acting is pretty awful, as ever, but the writing has improved and there are fun spoofs of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and CARRIE along the way, alongside the cheesy gore. A sequel, which combines this franchise with the EVIL BONG franchise, followed.

It's weird how film concepts get lost in translation. When the The Gingerdead Man (2005) was released, it had a certain level of groundwork that it needed to cover. Unfortunately, it only covered enough to make the practically hour long movie far from anything worth more than one watch - even with its minimal strengths. Then came Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust (2008) which was even less of an entertaining installment. The continuity was loose, the characters were even less likable and the whole motivation behind the killer cookie was dropped. Now we have this movie, which quite honestly is baffling for several reasons. Nothing makes sense here.

The movie starts off with an actress knock-off look alike of Clarice from Silence of the Lambs (1991) looking to interview the gingerdead man. But wait, didn't the gingerdead man get burnt to a crisp in the last film? And before that wasn't he burnt to a crisp then too? How does he keep coming back? One word - continuity. Also, the place where the gingerdead man is staying is at a psychiatric ward of homicidal baked goods. So the writers mean to say that Millard Findlemeyer wasn't the only serial killer who had a mother who knew witchcraft in homemade pastries? This is really poor writing. Why does William Butler, a person who has exceptional credentials allow an at least potentially fun franchise go down the wrong path of a good production.

A few minutes in, the gingerdead man escapes and happens to find two scientists completing a time machine. So what does Mr. Findlemeyer do? He jumps in of course a decides to use it to help him evade the authorities. The end result is seeing him land in the middle of a discotech in 1976. This ends up pissing the evil (and stupid) cookie off, but he ends up finding a way to cope. How? By killing various people of course. Don't get to excited though because it takes an awfully long time for anything to get going. At least in the first movie it only focused on a small group of people. Here, the audience is introduced to a ton new individuals that don't excel or help move what little plot there already is.

The main focus is given to a character named Cherry, a parody of Stephen King's Carrie (1976), the difference being that it takes place at a discotech instead of a prom. Other than that, no other actor makes their characters stand out among the rest. In fact, this movie loves to show a lot of scenes of nothing - specifically scenes of girls giggling and screaming for really silly things. It's just annoying. There was one scene that viewers may enjoy but that's it. The only other thing that helps boost the quality of this picture is the CGI but even then it's too late in some cases. Specifically during the kill scenes, instead of using practical effects, they were replaced with CGI and it looks bad. Topping it off is the fact of adding a ridiculous idea of time travel to an already ridiculously silly (although potentially entertaining) concept of a possessed cookie.

It may make viewers laugh in a scene or two,...maybe. This better than average low budget production still has practically no plot, transparent characters and poorly executed kill scenes.

Having watched both Gingerdead Man films in the series, and found less interest in the second film.

This third instalment once again features a different voice actor for the Gingerdead Man, as well as a new cast of characters. Now this film is better than the second film. It has a more fun and a silly entertainment factor. The look of the gingerbread looks more realistic at times and he seems to show more range.

Still this movie is quite cringe and off putting at times. Some gruesome kills by him with overloads of cgi. The ending was bizarre and made little sense, yet they seemed to make it as over the top as possible.

Noting that this film was ultimately the final film of the series (although there is a crossover film with the Evil Bong released after), we wonder if this third film was meant to end of the franchise.

The Gingerdead Man is back once again! This time, he's in jail (insert terrible Silence of the Lambs parody here), he manages to break out, only to conveniently find a time machine to take him back to a 70s skating rink (cue terrible Carrie parody here). And those aren't even spoilers; that's the very beginning of the movie. With another terrible cover/parody of Bad Reputation to add cringe to the crap.

Gingerdead Man 1 was mediocre, offering little of value or interest to the viewer. Gingerdead Man 2 was a massive improvement, honing in on the comedy with jokes that worked well. Gingerdead Man 3 undoes everything that happened between the first two. This is a shallow shell of a franchise that wasn't all that much to begin with.

The humour of this film falls completely flat. This is the Leprechaun: Origins or Halloween: Resurrection of the series; it's just terrible. The jokes aren't funny, the Gingerdead Man isn't charismatic in the slightest, and the movie fails to maintain anything of interest. For the longest film of the trilogy (albeit not by much), it's by far the weakest and the biggest disappointment as a follow-up to the second one, which was just so much fun.

Consensus: If you watch one Gingerdead film in your entire life, watch PASSION OF THE CRUST. Give this one a big, fat, triple-sugar-dipped SKIP. Don't give this stale cookie your time.

No pun intended - the movie starts off with a nod to ... well Silence of the lambs ... instead of lambs ... I mean humans (prisoners) we get ... well puppets of sorts. Clarice (or whatever her name is) is not holding a candle to the real one ... but I reckon if you like the joke you may not care.

This is not the only nod to other classic movies we get here. You either think this is hillarious ... or you'll have issues with it ... and find it annoying. This has a better (bigger) budget than the original ... and it has a really cringeworthy love scene ... and there are many things that you may find offensive ... but that is what you get with a movie like that ... I am almost surprised they didn't do another one (if you do not count the crossover with Evil Bong - not seen that one yet) ... be aware of what this is ... and if it is something you want to watch.