Dead Alive - More guts then you can shake a boatload of Oscars at.

It baffles a lot of people to learn that Peter Jackson, of Lord of the Rings and King Kong fame, got his start making insane low budget horror movies with government grant money in New Zealand.

Truth is, the man who won a bazillion awards directing and creating one of the biggest film projects of all time is a dirty, dirty man. His filmography kicks off with Bad Taste, a movie that features people drinking bowls of alien puke and more gleefully unhinged gore violence then was even remotely called for.

Dead Alive, which came later, continues that tradition. The last half of this movie is just insane. Pretty much everything that you could imagine happening, happens, with all sorts of bizarre Freudian implications.

As far as a zombie movie goes, it's a bit on the fringe- there is all sorts of weird demonic possession, and infectious diseases, and midgets in baby suits- but it's more or less a zombie movie, and most definitely worth your time.

Basically, it's the story of a complete and total mamas boy, whose mother has an unfortunate run-in with a plague infected animal. According to the films internal logic, this particular disease results from the rape of tree monkeys by rabid rats. You can see where this is going.

As his mom gets more and more sick, and more and more unhinged, the body count start racking up, and he does his absolute Norman-Bates-best to keep things under control. However, it only takes one douche-bag, slightly modish uncle to throw a totally inopportune house party, and provide some sort of set-up for a half hour of the most over-the-top, hilarious, and downright divinely-inspired bloodshed to occur. 

You'd never know, from some of things that happen in this film, that this was the man that would later become one of the biggest film makers in the world. When you see the midget in the fat baby suit laughing as it waddles through a hole in the wall, or animated intestines strangling the life out of a  Elvis Costello doppelganger, you'll know what I mean. Sometimes the future holds strange things.

I now have the blu-ray version of Dead Alive but it's a little pricey right now for some reason, and as much as I absolutely love this movie it is not worth it's 80$ current tag.



Dead Alive (known as Braindead outside the US)
Directed by Peter Jackson
Written by Stephen Sinclair, Fran Walsh, and Peter Jackson
Starring Timothy Balme, Diana Penalver, Elizabeth Moody