Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver

This film shocked me. I am usually criticizing Bill Butler for his awful directing, but this may just be his best film... despite being a low budget Full Moon picture, and the third in a series, it was legitimately funny and a well-made film. (Unlike "Evil Bong 3", which is a waste of time.)

Without Gary Busey, you need a good voice to be the homicidal gingerbread man. John Carl Buechler? Good choice. We also have Robin Sydney here (in a very small role) and some great parodies of "Silence of the Lambs" and "Carrie".

I will not say this is a "great" film, but it is a fun film. I enjoyed it more than I expected, and I was not even drunk. It looks like a part four may be coming sooner or later, but that might not be the worst thing if done right...

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.

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.

Gingerdead Man 3 is a very strange movie even when compared to the previous movies. It feels too mean spirited at times to be likeable and it doesn't work when it tries to parody scenes from other movies. Also the effects (practical and visual effects) are much worse than they are in the first two movies which didn't have great effects either.

Gingerdead Man 3 is a bizarre chaotic experience but I don't think I would say it's one I liked overall

Grade: C.

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.