Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Dead Alive (1992)


Peter Jackson directs this zombie picture.  A strange half monkey half rat creature is on exhibition at a zoo.  An old woman is bit by the creature and she turns into a strange zombie like creature herself.  Every person she bites turns into a zombie themselves.  

The old zombie woman's son is trying to hide the fact that these zombies exist.  He takes care of them at his house and keeps them in the basement.  The son's uncle ends up moving into the house and he throws a huge party, but the zombies escape.  Everyone turns into a zombie eventually.  The son and his girlfriend have to do whatever they can to survive the night.

"Dead Alive" also known as "Braindead" is full of camp and humorous gore.  It is probably the goriest film I have ever seen.  It has some of the most original zombie kills such as an entire rib cage being pulled out of a man's chest.  It also has many grotesque scenes.  One scene was most disturbing and it almost caused me to get sick.  The zombie mother, her son, and a couple house guests are eating dinner together.  Custard is served for dessert and pus from the zombie mother's arm squirts into the guest's bowl.  He eats it.  Then the zombie woman's ear falls off into her own custard and she eats it.  It was really sickening.

The acting was OK in the film.  I mean these are all amateur actors, but they do a good enough job.  It is a zombie picture after all.  I thought the girlfriend played by Diana Penalver was actually pretty good.  She is very likable.  

The scene of the rat monkey at the zoo is a good scene.  Stop motion animation is used to make the rat monkey come to life.  I always like to see the use of this type of animation.  The best thing about the zoo scene is the cameo from Forrest J Ackerman however.

Even though "Dead Alive" is just one step above being an average student film, it still has some worthwhile things to it.  You can see the beginning of Peter Jackson's creative mind starting to take shape.  There is some originality to the story, but overall "Dead Alive" is just an average horror film with endless amounts of blood and guts.

C+  I kind of recommend it...

1 comment:

  1. Yeah I guess that's about what I'd expect you to give it. I mainly recommended to you for The Forry Cameo (which is still definitely my favorite of his appearances).

    Still I love the wild style, surprisingly sweet romance, "I kick Ass for The Lord!" and the great gore gags (Come on man the lightning bulb was clutch!)

    ReplyDelete