Dead Alive

Dead Alive (1992) is set in the 50s (why not?) and follows Lionel and his new gf Paquita on a trip to the zoo.  When Lionel's overbearing mother decides to snoop on the date, she gets bitten by a freakie-deakie rat-monkey from Skull Island (heyy King Kong reference).  The bite gets gross and pussy and she dies, but she just won't stay dead.  Soon everyone's gettin' gross and pussy and won't stay dead, and much fun and vomiting is had.  This film is notoriously gross - when the first film came to video in New Zealand (did we mention this was a Peter Jackson flick, or did you manage to guess that yet?) it came with a complimentary vom bag.  Sick.

RB: Dead Alive is by far the number one most 90's horror movie I've EVER seen. Think an hour and a half episode of Goosebumps, just not so much for the kiddies. But really, these zombies (and their rat-monkey source) are more funny than scary, owing to cartoony latex work, puppetry, and gloppy gak-like gore.

BR: Agreed, this is an exemplary work of splatstick. It's also one of the grossest movies I've ever seen - we've got on obscene amount of blood, pus, and guts, plus needles-up-the-nose, mashed up body parts, and zombie sex. But if you're into this kinda stuff, this movie can be a lot of fun.

RB: All that aside, I think we've established that I just like zombies in my zombie movies. And there's a little too much movie in this movie. I think I see what Mr. Jackson is doing, but I don't care. I really don't. That's just time you wasted that could have been spent on more light bulb zombies, lung zombies, etc. etc.

BR: I disagree. Sure the beginning gets a little slow, but there's a lot there that makes this movie pretty unique. I mean, real talk for a minute, most zombie movies don't have too many memorable living characters. Dead Alive gives us some keepers - a lovable although bumbling hero (he seriously tripped out of a Scooby-Doo episode), an overbearing mother, some-kinda-ethnic love interest, and a karate priest. The story adds enough for me to be patient.

RB:  I'll give you karate priest and crazy mom, but eff Lionel and the bittie with the weird accent. If we're talking memorable characters, let's talk about the punk rock, grave-pissing hottie who gets to be about 40 different zombies in one.  It's like goddamn zombie potato head except I want him to be my bf.  But surriously, I'm pretty in the middle about this movie.  I'm not a fan of the cartoony style of makeup and puppet work and I would have liked to be scared OR it would have been nice if they had even tried to scare me a little. But this movie IS hilarious and I do love the gross out factor, so I'm torn.

BR: I'm not a huge fan of the approach, but you can't deny that this was an enjoyable movie. We were both laughing, screaming, and cringing throughout. In general, I prefer the Sam Raimi approach - being able to keep it creepy while making me laugh is an awesome skill, but I highly recommend watching Dead Alive with your pussiest friends and watching them retch.