Horror Extreme Movie Review - Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion of the Crust

Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust takes our favorite, and hopefully only, killer cookie into an almost Lloyd Kaufman scenario mixed with Puppet Master and sprinkled with a smattering of Ghoulies. The movie is a mess and has ditched the restrained humor from the first movie and replaced it with unsubtle slapstick murderousness. The characters/victims are all massively exaggerated and Mr Gingerdead himself obviously got a new joke book from Santa's Slay this Christmas as he now exhibits a wit that would make Arnie fearful of loosing his "king of the corny one-liner" crown. The deaths are more creative true slasher style and the victims are all so annoying that each death gives the ginger-one more kudos, escalating his status to hero rather than evil executioner.

Little Tommy Hines is a terminally ill and wheelchair-bound boy whose dying wish is to tour the Cheatum Studios during the production of Hamburger Time Traveler Detective, Space Spanker 2015 and, his most favoritest ever, Tiny Terrors. Fortunately for little Tommy Hines the lovely people at the Rainbow's End Foundation have made this possible, unfortunately for little Tommy Hines, Cheatum Studios is in total Chaos when he arrives.

Kevin Cheatum is desperately trying to save his father's failing studio from bankruptcy with low budget cult movies and an over inflated sense of optimism but this task is becoming exponentially difficult as the cast and crew don't share his optimism and are starting to lose patience with the long hours, lack of pay and the overall cruddyness of the movie that they are supposed to be starring in. Luckily the dedicated staff member named Polly Bonderhoof knows that the best way to stop a mutiny is to provide a box of cookies. Unfortunately for Cheatum and his staff the baked goods are from a Waco bakery that has had a recent encounter with a psychotic gingerbread man, a gingerbread man by the name of Millard Findlemeyer whose current state of staleness has inspired him to hope to stumble upon a spell book containing a spell for transferring a cookie's soul to a human.

Fortuitously the Gingerdead man does stumble upon a spell book with the required spell and must now source the necessary ingredients - a pentagram, the blood of five innocents and a virgin, all of which are usually available in a studio making three low budget movies.

As expected there follows a certain amount of near-cynical deaths, a plan gone wrong and an animation of the Tiny Terrors, although the crusty one survives for a sequel coming to a DVD near you after his crucifixion and stake burning.

Passion of the Crust makes the oh so common slasher sequel mistake of promoting our gingerbread fiend from evil assassin to center stage superstar and as this concept often works with some of the more convincing anti-heroes it lacks some credibility where the anti-hero is no more than a possessed cake with his only motive being mischief. The final showdown between the Gingerdead Man and the evil puppets is the final straw that breaks the donkey's back and leaves me wondering if the silly humor was a waste of 82 minutes and whether there was enough gore to counterweight the corniness. Fans of the genre will probably get a lot out of the movie, especially if they are also someone who can appreciate a Troma production and although Gingerdead Man 2 is far from the genius depraved comedy exhibited by Lloyd Kaufman it is refreshing to see another director trying to enter the gore filled slapstick genre. Usually slasher characters evolve into lameness over eight or so episodes; Silvia St. Croix has decided to skip the build up and has bravely entered the realm of Alan Smithee in a part 2 movie.