Horror Movie Reviews – Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver
by: Stiff Magazine’s Dave Harlequin
I’ll be totally honest with you, when I first opened my latest press shipment from Full Moon Features and saw a copy of Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver in the box; I was really not looking forward to sitting through this one. To say I had “low expectations” would definitely qualify me for the understatement of the year award. So when I popped this disc into the old DVD player, you can imagine my surprise when it turned out to be kind of an enjoyable film.
Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver is the third installment of Full Moon’s campy slasher-comedy series about a killer cookie created by baking the ashes of a killer into a batch of pastries. The original installment (2005’s The Gingerdead Man) featured none other than Gary Busey as the sentient serial killer cookie man. If it all sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is, and Full Moon doesn’t try to hide that one bit… in fact they play it up as much as possible. While I never saw the second installment (and honestly didn’t even know one existed until just a few weeks ago,) you don’t really need to see any of the previous films to understand this one.
The latest installment opens with a Scary Movie-esque parody of Silence of the Lambs as FBI agent Clarissa Darling visits the Scientific Research Institute for the Study of Homicidal Baked Goods in an attempt to uncover the motives (and “ingredients” if you will) of the infamous Gingerdead Man. The killer cookie does the interview in his best Anthony Hopkins impression- complete with the Hannibal mask, fake British accent, and plenty of borrowed dialogue. During the interview, a group of activists break into the institute and free all of the prisoners. While escaping, the Gingerdead Man stumbles into the Time Travel Studies room, jumps into a time machine, and ends up in a “roller boogie” skating rink in 1976. I can’t make this stuff up. From there, the psychotic killer cookie goes on a blood-soaked killing spree filled to the brim with plenty of low-brow humor, bad jokes, and spoofs on a ton of movies- including Porky’s, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and Carrie, which our telekinetic hero girl “Cherry” is based on. The telekinetic Cherry even manages to team up with a collection of the world’s most infamous killers in order to stop the Gingerdead Man and put him back in the cookie jar. Among these evil allies are Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, and a roller-skating Adolf Hitler… again; I can’t make this stuff up!
While all of this is just as ridiculous and over-the-top as it sounds, the film is actually pretty funny, and rather enjoyable for what it is. It actually reminds me of something one might see on USA Network’s “Up All Night” broadcasts back in the 1990’s. Those that remember the show (and others like it) will know exactly what I mean when I say that I can totally see Gilbert Gottfried presenting this one to viewers tuning in to enjoy some silly little guilty pleasures.
Overall, Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver is a surprisingly hilarious b-movie that never once (not even remotely) takes itself seriously. If you’re in the mood for some crude, irreverent, and absolutely unapologetic brain-candy, give this one a look… you might even be surprised. I know I was.
Does exactly what it sets out to do. How much more could you really ask for from a low-budget horror-comedy about a killer cookie? 7/10
Dave Harlequin is a professional freelance journalist and Editor in Chief of Stiff Magazine, a bi-monthly horror culture & entertainment publication available internationally in print/digital formats through Amazon Publishing/Graveyard Girls Entertainment. Additionally, he serves on the Board of Directors for North Carolina’s Modern Film Fest, and is the Programming Coordinator for the annual multi-genre fandom convention MonsterCon in Greenville, SC. For more info on Dave and Stiff Magazine, please visit www.stiffmag.com or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/STIFFmag
