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'''Braindead''' (New Zealand 1992), released as '''Dead Alive''' in North America, is an extreme zombie horror-comedy directed by Peter Jackson. It is in the same vein as Jackson's earlier works ''Bad Taste'' and ''Meet the Feebles'' but ''Braindead'' is rather more polished, with a budget of around $3 million. Although it starts with the capture of a zombie-creating creature on the eerie Skull Island, the movie is relatively low-key in its opening half. Only in the second part does it spiral out of control into a blood-filled zombie film.

Contents

Plot

Cast

Versions

Trivia

External links

Plot

The first scene of the movie sets up the danger of the Sumatran Rat-Monkey, a hybrid that - according to legend - resulted from the rape of tree monkeys by plague rats: An explorer returning from the depths of the island with a rat-monkey in a cage is stopped by his native guides. Seeing the mark of the monkey's bite on his right hand, they immediately hold down the infected explorer and amputate the appendage. A bite mark is then seen on his left arm, which swiftly results in the removal of that limb. Finally, they see a set of bloody scratches on the man's forehead and kill him. The title screen follows the man's dying scream, and as the opening credits roll the captured rat-monkey is shipped to Wellington Zoo in New Zealand.
In 1950s Wellington, Lionel Cosgrove (Timothy Balme) lives with his domineering mother (Elizabeth Moody) and is at her beck and call. To his mother's dismay, Lionel falls for a local shopkeeper, Paquita (Diana Peñalver), and while following the two on a visit to the zoo, his mother is bitten by the Sumatran Rat-Monkey. Despite it being stomped to death, the animal's bite slowly turns her into a zombie. Lionel is horrified, but, ever the dedicated son, is determined to care for her.
He acts as her "nurse", even as she starts murdering other townspeople and, in turn, creating more zombies. Through it all, Lionel tries to keep his zombie mother placated with doses of veterinary anaesthetic and also tries to maintain his relationship with the completely oblivious Paquita.
His mother escapes, however, and is run over by a tram. As the town assumes she is dead, Lionel tranquilises the still-kicking zombie for her funeral. After she is buried, he recovers his mother from the grave, but not before three more victims are zombified: a nurse who makes house calls, a hoodlum and a priest (Stuart Devenie) who attempts to fight his attackers off using kung fu (and in the process utters the immortal cult film line "I kick ass for the Lord!").
As the number of zombies grows, Lionel tries to keep them under wraps in his home. The nurse zombie (Brenda Kendall) gives birth to a dreadful zombie baby (fathered by the priest zombie), dubbed Selwyn, whom Lionel takes to the park on a surreal and violent occasion. Eventually, Lionel's uncle Les (Ian Watkin), a badly dressed louse with a wig, discovers the "corpses" and blackmails his nephew into giving up his mother's estate.
Lionel acquires some poison and dispatches and buries the zombies as Uncle Les and a crowd of his friends invade his home for a housewarming party. But the "poison" turns out to be an animal stimulant and the zombies burst from the ground to attack and infect the party guests in a gory finale.
The movie's climax has Lionel, Paquita, Rita and Les fighting hundreds of zombies, animated intestines, severed heads, and disembodied legs. Most memorable amongst gore fans is Lionel's charge into a room full of zombies with a lawn mower strapped to his chest (which in turn delivers the immortal cult film's second well-known one-liner "Party's over!"). Les is soon killed by Lionel's mother, who has become an evil gargantuan monster and he is turned into a twisted undead creature that Paquita kills. Rita's head is suddenly torn apart by the zombie baby. Soon after, Lionel and Paquita retreat to the rooftop as the house is covered in flames and faces down his mother, who traps him inside her abdomen as they duel on the house's rooftop. In an over-the-top Freudian "rebirth", he cuts his way out of her grotesquely changed form and she falls into the fiery home below. As Selwyn screams from the burning house, firefighters arrive with ladders and Lionel and Paquita walk away arm-in-arm, covered in gore. In these final scenes, the fact that Lionels mother killed his father is brought to light. The death of Lionels father is something she uses to gain sympathy during the film.

Cast

★ Timothy Balme ... Lionel Cosgrove

★ Diana Peñalver ... Paquita Maria Sanchez

★ Elizabeth Moody ... Mum (Vera Cosgrove)

★ Ian Watkin ... Uncle Les

★ Brenda Kendall ... Nurse McTavish

★ Stuart Devenie ... Father McGruder

★ Jed Brophy ... Void

★ Stephen Papps ... Zombie McGruder

★ Murray Keane ... Scroat

★ Glenis Levestam ... Nora Matheson

★ Lewis Rowe ... Mr. Matheson

★ Elizabeth Mulfaxe ... Rita

★ Harry Sinclair ... Roger

★ Davina Whitehouse ... Paquita's Grandmother

★ Silvio Famularo ... Paquita's Father

Versions

This splatter film was released in a number of different versions. In some nations, such as Australia and the United Kingdom, the 104 minute film was shown in full (which was quite uncommon in the UK, as many other similar films were heavily censored at the time). In countries where the censors balked at the extreme gore, the film was initially banned or left unrated before being heavily cut. In Germany a 94 minute version was seen with major cuts to some of the film's grislier scenes, but was widely ignored.
In the United States, where the film was released as ''Dead Alive'', because of another film with rights to the title ''Braindead'', the R-Rated version is only 85 minutes, while the unrated cut is 97 minutes. This, according to director Peter Jackson, is his preferred cut of the film.

Trivia

★ In Peter Jackson's remake of ''King Kong'', a crate can be seen in the cargo hold of the ship that reads "Sumatran Rat-Monkey - Beware the bite!", a reference to the zombie-creating creature from this film.

★ It has been said that a total of 300 litres of fake blood were used in the final scene on the rooftop, making it the goriest scene in film history.

★ In some cinemas, tickets for the "Braindead" movie included paper bags for vomiting.

★ The song played on the organ as the mourners wait to enter the church (prior to the embalming scene) is "Sodomy" from Peter Jackson's previous film ''Meet the Feebles'' (1989).

★ During the lawnmower scene, fake blood was pumped at five gallons per second.

★ At one point during the lawnmower scene, the jets squirting fake blood are easily visible. Also, many have noted that the blood in this scene is an unusual, bright pink colour.

★ There is not one moment of action or dialogue cut from Peter Jackson's original screenplay.

★ Jackson makes a cameo as the undertaker's assistant in the botched embalming scene.

★ The natives of Skull Island, home of film's Sumatran Rat-Monkey, were played by the Fijian national rugby union team.

★ On its initial release in its native New Zealand, this movie earned more per screen than ''Batman Returns'' (1992).

★ The movie was finished under budget with $45,000 remaining. Peter Jackson used it to spend two days shooting the park scene with Lionel and the baby Selwyn. Peter Jackson has gone on to say that it is his favorite scene.

★ The film's estimated North American box office gross was $70,544.

★ The location used for the film's opening scene, where the explorer is retrieving the rat-monkey, was used again by Jackson in '', when Aragorn and his companions journey to the Paths of the Dead.

★ In a lawsuit, Bradley v Wingnut Films Ltd [1993] 1 NZLR 415, it was alleged that the comedy horror film ''Brain Dead'' had infringed the privacy of the plaintiffs by containing pictures of the plaintiff's family tombstone. The tombstone appeared on the film for less than 14 seconds. It never appeared in its entirety, only the letters "BRA" were visible behind a person sitting on the wall at the side of the plot. After reviewing the New Zealand judicial authorities on privacy, Gallen J stated: ''the present situation in New Zealand ... is that there are three strong statements in the High Court in favour of the existence of such a tort in this country and an acceptance by the Court of Appeal that the concept is at least arguable.'' This case became one of the series of cases which contributed to the introduction of Tort of Invasions of Privacy in New Zealand.

★ The trailer was made in split vision with the trailer playing in one half while the other contained pictures of sheep.

★ Film director Eli Roth, noted for directing bloody horror films, describes himself as a gore hound but stated that Braindead had more than satisfied his thirst for gore in a horror movie.

External links

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★ Dead Alive movie review with animated screenshots I-Mockery

★ Review StillTwitching.com