• Directed by “Silvia St. Croix” (William Butler)
• Written by “Carolyn Applebee” (Adam Strongoni), Eunice Burns and “Silvia St. Croix” (William Butler)
• Starring
  • K-Von Moezzi
  • Kelsey Sanders
  • Joseph Porter
  • Frank Nicotero
  • Bruce Dent
• Produced by Charles Band
• Executive produced by Dana K. Harrloe and Thomas Smead

The following behind-the-scenes info is partially established fact, sussed out by our crack investigative ninja team, and part reasonable conjecture. I am not going to differentiate between the two so that if anything I consider a solid fact turns out to have been false, I can claim deniability.

The first Gingerdead Man movie had its genesis as a screenplay written by William Butler; its titular terror was supposed to have been realized by computer animation, and some respectable-looking test footage was available on the internet for a time. Unfortunately, by the time Charles Band was ready to bring The Gingerdead Man to production, budgets for Full Moon Features had dropped to roughly a fifth of what the original screenplay was intended for. Butler’s script was rewritten (or, less charitably, “gutted”) by Band’s then go-to screenwriter August White (a pseudonym for either Domonic Muir or his son Brian, or possibly both). Butler was quite vocal in some circles about the violence that had been done to his clever screenplay, and replaced his name in the credits with “Silvia (sometimes spelled ‘Sylvia’) St. Croix,” a name cribbed from the self-serving agent in the stage play Ruthless! The Musical. (This meant that the finished script, credited to Silvia St. Croix and August White, actually bore neither of the names of the real writers who worked on it.)

“Well, I sure as hell ain’t product placement!”

Now, the latest incarnation of the Full Moon movie factory, Full Moon Features, has largely been Charles Band as a, well, one-man band, both producing and directing the various vampire flicks and killer doll movies that put bread on his table. The results have been… underwhelming. Band is obviously a professional who could direct a movie in his sleep, and it often seems that he has; combine the tight budget and abbreviated shooting schedules with a set of played-out story ideas that Band has been relying on throughout his career, and the result is usually something that seems like perfunctory filler rather than a story that needed to be told. The Gingerdead Man certainly followed that trend, and while I have not read Butler’s original script, I can certainly believe that what eventually made it to the small screen held none of the creative pizzazz of which he had been so proud.

For Gingerdead Man 2, for the first time under the Full Moon Features banner, Band confined himself to the producer’s role, with the director’s chair being occupied by… Silvia St. Croix, also credited with co-writing this script. Could it be that Band felt sorry for the rift that had grown up between him and Butler over the treatment of the original Gingerdead Man script and offered to left him helm the sequel as compensation? Nobody’s saying right now, but as we go along, I think the evidence will show that not only is it likely to be true, but that “St. Croix” (apparently Butler still didn’t want his name associated with the franchise) used the occasion for another noble cause: revenge. And in so doing, he made the best picture to come out of the Full Moon Features label, hands down.

Imagine a cross between Charles Band and Tim Burton’s version of Ed Wood.

The setting is a Cheatem Studios, a low-budget movie sausage factory, in which the ninth installment of the Tiny Terrors franchise is being put in front of the lens. Cheatem Studios is run by yound Kelvin Cheatem (K-Von Moezzi), the energetic and charismatic son of the departed Rupert Cheatem, legendary B-movie director-producer, and Kelvin is just trying to hold the remains of his father’s once-great empire together with cheap sequels, fast and loose financial footwork, and a winning smile to bridge the gaps of both resources and ethics.

Hmm… son of a B-movie maker, running an impoverished studio making shoddy quickies about killer dolls while screwing over those around him financially… it almost reminds me of someone…

On the particular night in question, Kelvin is trying to keep the cameras rolling on both Tiny Terrors 9 and Space Spankers, despite frustrated cast and crew and a string of technical problems. (He makes a point of ignoring his right-hand man, Marty (Frank Nicotero), who pointedly says, “I say we pull the plug on 90% of what we’ve got going on, and just make one really great movie!”) Into this hectic night rolls Tommy (Joseph Porter), a terminally ill fanboy being given his last wish, to see inside Cheatem Studios, by the End of the Rainbow Foundation, as represented by innocent and idealistic Heather (Kelsey Sanders) behind Tommy’s wheelchair.

It’s not such a bad wish, really. Especially if the smokin’ hot hospice nurse is a part of it.

Oh, and there’s also a killer gingerbread cookie, who shows up among the donuts at the craft service table and immediately starts looking for a way to transmigrate out of his cookie body and into a living host. (Gary Busey, who provided the voice in the original, has already transmigrated out, with the voice this time being provided by John Vulich). To do that, naturally, he has to kill about half a dozen people for a bloody ritual.

Aside from the novelty of the film shoot setting, the above is a standard Full Moon outline. But it’s how that skeleton is dressed out that makes this a film to enjoy. Everything in the script assumes that the viewer is a Full Moon fan specifically, and a B-movie aficionado in general. (Can someone come up with a specific term for a Full Moon fan? “Full Moonie,” maybe? Though accurate, “sufferer from Full Moon Stockholm Syndrome” is too long.) The first scenes let you know exactly what demographic this movie hopes to serve, as the High Priest (screenwriter Kenneth J. Hall), with assistants “Cornelius” and “Zira,” prior to sacrificing the Nubile Young Virgin (Nicole Shilperoort), starts quoting Criswell’s lines from the Ed Wood-scripted Orgy of the Dead (1965): “More gold! It pleases me!”

And it just keeps coming. The director of Tiny Terrors 9 is played by low-budget horror FX workhorse and director John Carl Buechler. The Tiny Terrors themselves sound like stuff pulled from the reject files for the Puppet Master movies (and Demonic Toys, and Mystery Monsters!, and Blood Dolls, and Doll Graveyard, and…): “Treasure Chest, “Hemorrhoid,” “Nobgoblin,” “Percolator,” “Shit-for-Brains,” and “Haunted Dildo.”

Presenting the only Full Moon props NOT available as collectible miniatures. Yet.

The craft service girl, Polly, is played by Michelle Bauer as an over-the-hill B-movie actress trying to stay in the business (and with fake boobs the size of the eggs from Alien).

The director for the other cheap feature concurrently being cranked out, the sexploitation flick Space Spankers, is longtime B-movie director David DeCoteau, playing himself. (Tommy: “Wow! That’s David DeCoteau! His films are known for their thrills, high-concept gothic horror, and subtle homoeroticism!”)

It’s like every scene is a valentine to longtime Full Moon fans, who know the soap-operaesque backstory behind the sometime-studio’s rise and fall (and fall, and fall). It’s all such a giddy in-joke that it seems almost a shame that it has to be punctuated by the Gingerdead Man himself. Throwing around lame snickering one-liners that are de rigieur for titular movie killers, Gingie (sorry, I couldn’t help myself) assembles himself a half-dozen corpses, working his way up from no-name background characters to supporting performers. (How no-name? Our first glimpse of the first victim is after he’s been beheaded.) It’s a good thing that he’s not the only antagonist here, as one Kelvin Cheatem’s most vocal online critics decides to take things into his own hands. (Internet critics take almost as many hits in this movie as unethical movie producers; I’m just glad that I don’t meet the pattern of “an unemployed virgin living in him mom’s basement” cited here.)

Kelvin is eventually shown to be an okay guy who uses his habitual hucksterism in service of an idealistic devotion to movie-making, and good and right prevails. Yes, the Gingerdead Man is eventually crucified, for no other reason than to justify the subtitle, which might be Charles Band’s only creative contribution. (I’m the last person to criticize bad puns, but a reference to an independent movie released four years previous seems like a bit of a stretch.) And then there’s the obligatory sequel set-up. And this is one of the only Full Moon sequel set-ups that actually has me anticipating the next installment, especially as “Silvia St. Croix” is again slated to direct.

This explains Mel Gibson’s “associate producer” credit.

I have no idea how the casual movie viewer, who many vaguely remember having seen a Puppet Master flick at some point in the past, would react to this movie (or even if they would ever see it, a sequel to a cheap flick that they almost certainly didn’t rent). But for cult movie aficionados who recognize all of the sideswipes at Charles Band and his fellow B-movie impresarios, this movie almost redeems some of the crud that has been foisted on us under the Full Moon logo.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 6
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 3
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0
  • (John Vulich, the voice of the Gingerdead Man, was the makeup designer on an episode of the fan series Star Trek: New Voyages, but I don’t think I can count that)