Today Peter Jackson is famous for his work directing the Lord of the Rings series, and the 2005 King Kong remake. But in 1992 he released another, less known, masterpiece.
Lionel is a adult man still living at home under the abusive heel of his mother. But when his mother is bitten by a Sumatran rat-monkey while spying on Lionel on a date with his new girlfriend, Paquita, things start to get interesting. His mother falls ill and her mind and body quickly begin to deteriorate, eventually transforming her into a flesh eating zombie whom Lionel makes the ill fated decision to hide in the basement.
To make a long story short, it turns out that Lionel's mother has a propensity for infecting others and Lionel soon has a basement full of flesh-starved zombies living downstairs. The assortment of flesh eaters includes a baby zombie, the result of rare zombie-to-zombie copulation and the subject of several highly amusing scenes throughout the remainder of the film.
To make matters worse, Lionel's uncle soon takes possession of the house and decides to throw a huge party which, predictably, ends up with the zombies escaping and wrecking havoc upon the party goers. Lionel is finally forced to break out of his introverted, beaten-down shell and put a stop to the rampage through some fairly creative and messy means, as well as face his control-freak mother in her new demonic form.
Dead Alive, also known as Braindead, is one of the finest examples of zombie cinema with a comedic edge. It's characters are purposely absurd, and well played. The plot, dialogue and special effects are stretched to the point of complete silliness making for a stark contrast between explicit gory violence, and goofy hilarity. The rat-monkey, zombie baby, intestine monster, and ninja priest are all just added bonuses.
5 rat-monkeys out of 5
Rated 18A/R for an abundance of outrageous gore.
Watch the Dead Alive trailer.
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