Directed By: Jesse Hibbs
Starring: Timothy Balme, Diana Peñalver, Elizabeth Moody
Tag line: "You'll laugh yourself sick!"
Trivia: Famed collector Forrest J. Ackerman makes a cameo appearance in this film, playing a tourist at the zoo
There are a number of effective ways to mutilate the human body, and director Peter Jackson covers damn near all of them in his 1992 gorefest, Dead Alive.
Released as Braindead in its native New Zealand, Dead Alive takes us back to 1957, when Wellington’s own Lionel Cosgrove (Tim Balme) first met and fell in love with shop girl Paquita (Diana Peñalver). For Paquita, Lionel was her knight in shining armor, the man that her grandmother (Davina Whitehouse) saw while reading her tarot cards. Lionel, it is foretold, will protect Paquita from all dangers great and small, but nobody could predict just how dangerous things were about to become!
It all started when Lionel’s overbearing mother, Vera (Elizabeth Moody), followed the two lovers to the zoo. While spying on them from behind a bush, Vera was bitten by a Rat Monkey, a rare creature found only in Sumatra. What at first appeared to be a simple bite, however, soon had Vera on death’s door, and despite the best efforts of Lionel and Nurse McTavish (Brenda Kendall), the old girl passed away rather quickly. But she didn’t stay dead for long; moments after expiring, Vera was up and walking again, only now she had a craving for human flesh! With his mother a zombie, a confused Lionel does what he can to keep her locked up, but within a day or two, she, as well as the others she’s infected, are on the loose, attacking everyone in their path. Will Lionel fulfill his destiny and keep his beloved Paquita safe, or will she, too, join the ranks of the walking dead?
Dead Alive is considered by many to be one of the bloodiest motion pictures ever made (do an online search for the top-10 goriest movies of all-time, and I’ll bet this title appears on just about every list), but the red stuff doesn’t start flowing right away. The opening scene, which features explorer Stewart McAlden (Bill Ralston) capturing the Rat Monkey on the island of Sumatra, has more in common with Raiders of the Lost Ark than it does a horror film (there’s a chase involving natives with spears, who are bound and determined to prevent McAden from leaving the island with his prize). From there, the story shifts to Wellington, where we’re introduced to the love-starved Paquita, desperate to find her Prince Charming; and the shy, somewhat clumsy Lionel, whose mother keeps him on a short leash (several flashbacks hint at a family tragedy that Lionel believes was his fault, a fact his mother is quick to remind him of whenever he shows a little independence). Aside from the occasional alarming moment (the morning after she’s bitten, Vera’s skin starts peeling off), Dead Alive focuses more on laughs early on than it does turning our stomachs.
That all changes, however, when a deathly sick Vera insists on entertaining the Mathesons (Lewis Rowe and Glenis Levestam), who’ve come to make her the new head of the local women’s auxiliary. The bloody puss that Vera inadvertently squirts into Mr. Matheson’s custard is bad enough, but it’s the way she reacts to her ear falling off that’ll really shock you. From then on, Dead Alive is nothing short of insane, with a brutal scene involving Vera and Nurse MacTavish; a priest who uses kung-fu to subdue some zombies in a church graveyard (shouting, at one point, “I kick ass for the Lord!”); and a blood-drenched house party during which Lionel starts up his trusty lawnmower (arguably the film’s most violent sequence).
By spending time with the characters before the carnage begins, Jackson ensures that his audience will care about the leads and their plight, and will pull for them to survive what amounts to a very messy apocalypse. But what Dead Alive does best is get the guts oozing and the limbs popping off, which is what you’ll remember when thinking back on this movie. As horror / comedies go, Dead Alive is easily the grossest of the bunch, and I loved every minute of it.
