AKA: Dead Alive

Tag Line : Lionel has something hideous locked in his cellar... It's his family!

Featuring an army of zombies, a mutant baby and a kick boxing vicar. It's just what you'd expect from director Peter Jackson, who took the world by storm with his earlier movie Bad Taste.

This story centre's around a young lad called Lionel. His mother is bitten by a rare Rat-Monkey creature at their local zoo, which has hideous consequences as it turns her into a zombie. Of course, as with most zombie films, she spreads the infection to others, and only thing Lionel can do, being unable to kill them, is to knock them out with horse tranquiliser and lock them in the basement.

As with "Bad Taste" the amount of gore in this film is quite phenomenal. In one scene he tries to spoon feed one of the zombies some tranquiliser by flipping back its partially severed head, and pouring the stuff down its open neck (Yuk!). There's also an absolutely hilarious scene where the local vicar, upon discovering several zombies rampaging through his graveyard, exclaims "This is the devils work, time for some divine intervention!.... I kick arse for the Lord" and proceeds to start kickboxing the zombies into submission.

Another equally funny scene is with a zombie baby, born to 2 of the undead who've got better acquainted. He attempts to take it out to the local park, with disastrous results. The gore, however, reaches an all time high at the films zenith, as the zombies go on the rampage and Lionel fights them off using a lawnmower, dispensing the undead by mowing them to a pulp.

Of course, the gore is presented in such light, that it just makes you howl with laughter, rather than want to vomit. The film has gore galore, laughs a plenty and tons of zombies. If you liked Bad Taste, you'll love this.

Overall marks : 7/10

Other Information.

• Alternate tag lines, "Some things won't stay down, even after they die", "You'll laugh yourselves sick", "Prepare for a complete mental shutdown", "The rot has set in".

• The UK version is the complete original version which left British film critics stunned as the censors let it through uncut.

• The song played on the organ as the mourners wait to enter the church (prior to the embalming scene) was "Sodomy" from Peter Jackson's previous film "Meet the Feebles" (1989).

• The original Swedish rental video came with supplemental vomit bags.

• Peter Jackson actually makes a cameo appearance in the film as the morgue attendant during the embalming scene.

• 300 litres of fake blood was used during the end battle scene, which lead to this being dubbed "The bloodiest film of all time".

• The US version of "Braindead" was re-titled "Dead Alive" to avoid confusion with the similarly titled Bill Pullman film "Brain Dead" which was released in 1990.

• There were 2 different versions released in the US as "Dead Alive", a heavily censored "R" rated version and a more complete "Unrated" version. However the unrated version is not as complete as the UK release, which misses out several scenes, including Uncle Les trying to chat up Lionel's girlfriend, a party guest letting Void the zombie out of the basement, Paquita and one of the party guests using Void's dismembered legs to beat back the attacking zombies and the scene of two of the zombies making love whilst being impaled on a pitch fork. Also, the UK version has 16 seconds of additional gore during the "Lawnmower" scene.

• The film earned more money per cinema in New Zealand than "Batman Returns" which was released the same year.

Cast & Crew.

Theatrical trailer (1.23MB)

Buy the UK DVD (fully uncut).

Buy the UK DVD (fully uncut).

Buy the US DVD (unrated but slightly cut)

Notes on affiliate sites.

Other Peter Jackson films.

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