The Ideal Diet Accompaniment....It 9;ll Put You Off Breakfast Anyway (Braindead (DVD))

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	Braindead (DVD)
Date:	19/12/01 (49 review reads)
Rating:

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It is going to come as something of a shock for the fans of the new Lord Of The Rings movies should they decide to take a wander through director Peter Jackson’s back catalogue. Far from being full of blockbusters of the same calibre they are going to find some of the classic gross-out movies of the horror genre and even one to rival Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series for gross out comedy fun...that movie would be Braindead aka Dead Alive which is under review here. Before the rather impressive Heavenly Creatures and the new LOTR movie, Jackson specialised in making hilarious, but stomach churning gross horror/comedies on something of a low budget. His first was made with only a few thousand dollars, shot starring his friends and quickly because classic because of its repugnant and uncompromising humour...it was appropriately titled ‘Bad Taste’ and it most certainly was bad taste all the way through. Some years later little had changed, other than the budget and he released the most bloody, gore filled movie ever to hit the cinema screens which hit these shores entitled Braindead.

Braindead is an interesting member of the horror genre quite simply because the actors quite literally wallow in blood once the action starts. Our hero is a wimpy guy who has always been under the thumb of his oppressive mother. When an equally odd girl sees him and decides that he is ‘the one’ they arrange to go to the zoo on a date...an event which his mother is less than happy about so basically invites herself along as chaperone to spoil things. Well she manages to do this(but not in the way that she hoped ) by falling into the rat monkey enclosure(nasty looking beast) and being bitten by one of the resident swingers...a bite which turns out to be hideously infectious causing the wound to spouts gouts of blood and puss, flesh to peel back, and body parts to fall off...yup, such are the beginnings of Braindead, and it just gets better. Now infecte
d with this hideous zombifying disease she craves human flesh and of course wimpy doesn’t know what to do so locks her in the cellar, but not before she has savaged her nurse who herself is now infected and shoved into the cellar too...pretty soon there is a whole family down there including a zombie baby. Well, zombies start a-popping up all over he place and like the hero of Sam Raimi’s zombie fest, our hero and his new found girlfriend have to kick some serious zombie butt in order to...well, in order to provide us with some seriously gross entertainment and a fair amount of belly laughs...you’ll not give a damn about the plot...

Its all good clean zombie splattering, brain eating, internal organ spilling stuff, with literally gallons of blood spilled in the name of entertainment. Braindead is positively disgusting viewing but its oh so entertaining if you can stomach it. Forget the level of violence and horror on display here because its a movie which has its tongue firmly planted in its rotting cheek so its impossible to take seriously. In fact, I guarantee that there are moments when you will laugh out loud despite of the horrific scenes of flying limbs and splattered gore. Who’d have thought a lawnmower would be such an effective zombie fighting piece of machinery? How many times do you see a kung-fu vicar kicking zombie ass in the church graveyard and spouting lines such as “I kick ass for the Lord!”? How often do you see a movie in which literally everything is covered with copious amount of blood and gore...and I do mean everything? Its too over the top to be scary, but then it was never meant to be. Forget the acting, forget the scripting although there are some wonderfully cheesy lines here and simply revel in the lunacy of it all because Peter Jackson has created a completely manic masterpiece which may not top Sam Raimi’ s movies but certainly gives the definitive 90s version of the gore movie and is g
uaranteed entertainment.


~~Links~~

A whole bunch of 'lovely' images from the movie can be seen here:
http://www.houseofhorrors.com/braindeadpics.htm.

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