Wow, that's a lot of blood

Movie Review: Dead Alive

I have company coming down from Springfield tonight! Yay! However, that means that I'm not going to be able to get as deeply into this movie as I had possibly planned on doing, because if I don't get this out of my system this evening then who knows when I'll ever get back to it. Tomorrow's Friday, you know, and it's supposed to be an amazing weekend here in Tulsa. And the ol' short-term memory just ain't what it used to be, let me tell you, so I'd better get after it now.

First of all, I'd like to apologize to Peter Jackson for waiting so long before seeing this movie, because it's been floating around out there since the early nineties. I've seen it in video stores and heard it mentioned about a thousand times, but it seems to me that somewhere along the course of my life I was told that it wasn't worth wasting time on. Usually I don't pay attention to comments like that unless they're coming from someone whose taste in movies I really trust, so I dunno. Maybe he was high. Maybe I was high and just imagined he said it. Maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about. Whatever the case - sorry, PJ. I shoulda trusted you.

Basically, what we have here is yet another twist on a zombie movie. The "Rat Monkey of Sumatra" is brought in from Skull Island and placed in a zoo, where it promptly bites a woman. After what may be the most tasteless dinner party ever put on film, she dies. Apparently, however, she's not too fond of being dead, because a few short seconds later she's rising up from her deathbed to tear the head off of her attending nurse. Now the insanity begins in earnest. A gang member gets himself Bobbitt-ed, a couple of zombies make out, their mutant baby runs rampant through the park, zombies get hypodermic needles shoved up their noses, a pile of disembodied entrails tries to get in on the flesh-chomping action, the kung-fu priest kicks some ass, and so on. (Although it's hard to say "and so on" when chances are you haven't seen anything quite like this before.) Finally, it all culminates with an enormous party gone horribly awry, which leads to the Greatest Lawnmower Zombie Massacre In The History Of Ever. Five gallons of fake blood per second at times. Seriously. Look it up if you don't believe me, but I'm always right. :op

Sounds horrible, doesn't it? The thing is, somehow it's not. For one thing, it's such an in-your-face obvious attempt to offend (while still making you laugh - think Family Guy with lots of blood) that you can't take it too seriously. For another, it's an amazingly black parody of the whole horror/gore film genre, and if you're a fan of the genre you'll discover that it's a pretty intelligent one to boot. And it's so ridiculously over the top (as most of PJ's movies end up being in one way or another) that in the end you just have to grin and let yourself become one with the madness. It's like... well, imagine if the Evil Dead movies had a baby with Heathers, and then that baby grew up to be a zombie. On crack. That's as close as I can get, folks. You have to see it to truly believe it, and see it you should.

Four popcorn boxes out of five.