Theatre of the Dead #8 - Braindead/Dead-Alive (1992)

Director: Peter Jackson Stars: Timothy Balme, Diana Penalvar, Elizabeth Moody

Review:

In the mid-80s to most of the 90s, horror comedies dominated the horror genre. Most horror movies at that time are horror comedies. I imagine the mentality goes like this: people getting used to gory stuff and instead of getting scared, they laughed at the scenes. Well, if you not gonna scare anyway, then laugh. Braindead is one of the slapstick horror comedies that came out at the time, but the gore scenes were so exaggerated that it really is the goriest movie ever made.

A manager (?) of a zoo brings back a rare rat monkey from Skull Island. If the monkey bites a person, the person will be turned into a zombie, and go bite other people. It did not really explain why but natives from the Skull Island believed it is related to black magic. Also judging from the theme, that includes a gypsy old fortune teller speaking about dark forces and a blessed necklace that gets our protagonist out of trouble numerous times, I believe the movie suggests it is black magic. A young man, who is not too good with people, go to the zoo for a date. His mom, which have a lot of presence from the mom in Psycho (1960), followed him and got bitten by the rat monkey. So there you go, zombies and more zombies.

Plot does not matter much here, since this movie is all about gore and comedic moments. The opening scene sets the tone of the movie. The zoo representative was accidentally bitten by the monkey on the hand. His workers, who possess native knowledge, screamed "Zingaya" and severed his hand. The workers then noticed he got another wound on the other hand. They screamed "Zingaya" and severed his another hand. The workers then noticed he got another wound on his forehand.

ZINGAYA!!!

There are so many memorable scenes: the Kung-Fu priest, the zombie intercourse and the zombie baby who can take a lot of abuse, and of course the climax party scene. The last 40 minutes or so is just all blood, severed limbs, intestines, and more blood. In the review of Return of the Living Dead, I said there is no way to kill this type of zombies. Well there actually is a way. You grind them into meat pots, which is what they do here. When you see a guy grind all zombies in a party into a mesh of flesh, your care for the plot goes out of the window.

The funniest scene in my opinion: this seemingly clumsy fat guy goes apeshit and chops up a lot of zombies.

It is not that kind of movie that contains satires or deeper meanings, but just plain entertainment from gore and slapstick humor. I am not a big fan of slapstick, but it do set a lighter tone for all the gore scenes here or else I would have puked. I did not laugh too hard nor did I scared a lot, but at least I am entertained. Peter Jackson of course went on and made the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, which is hard to imagine after seeing this.

Oh god.

Up until now we have seen the slow moving Romero zombies, the immortal "Return of the Living Dead" zombies, zombies that can learn to play toys and zombies that just fell down and die to infects others as in Night of the Creeps. We have seen the dead rise up because of radiation from outer space (that's actually is the explanation in Night of the Living Dead), voodoo, re-animation medicine, chemical, alien slug, or it is because hell just full. In the late 90s zombie movies took a rest and when we come back we will jump into modern zombie apocalypses.