Dead Alive
From AwardAnnals
| This creative work has a long or truncated description. Please review the creative work guidelines concerning descriptions and edit down or replace the description. |
 | |
| Director(s) | Peter Jackson |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | (Braindead) |
| Distributor | Lions Gate |
| Honors | |
| Peter Jackson proves that if gory is funny, then excessive gory is downright hysterical. As our hapless hero wades through an ankle-deep puddle of blood and entrails, brandishing a lawnmower like a portable Cuisinart at the climax of this zombie-fest, you’ll either be screaming with laughter or fleeing in disgust. Timothy Balme stars as the shy mama’s boy Lionel, whose controlling shrew of a mother (Elizabeth Moody) starts rotting away, literally, with a vague supernatural disease. Mother dies but refuses to stay down, rising as a flesh-eating zombie infecting… | |
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
Peter Jackson proves that if gory is funny, then excessive gory is downright hysterical. As our hapless hero wades through an ankle-deep puddle of blood and entrails, brandishing a lawnmower like a portable Cuisinart at the climax of this zombie-fest, you’ll either be screaming with laughter or fleeing in disgust. Timothy Balme stars as the shy mama’s boy Lionel, whose controlling shrew of a mother (Elizabeth Moody) starts rotting away, literally, with a vague supernatural disease. Mother dies but refuses to stay down, rising as a flesh-eating zombie infecting everyone she bites. Lionel tries to hide her in the basement, but the victims keep piling up and finally break out when Lionel’s blackmailing uncle (a grotesque, leering Ian Watkin) throws a party in the house. It’s snack time as the guests become undead hors d’oeuvres and rise again as hungry soldiers of the new zombie army marching on Lionel and his girl Pacquita (the lovely Diana Penalver). New Zealand goremeister Jackson pulls out all stops in this truly outrageous sanguinary comedy, from gross-out gags of oozing puss and rotting body parts at a formal dinner to slapstick antics as Lionel tries to keep his flesh-hungry mother sedated during the funeral to the final Freudian showdown between a now-monstrous mother and the newly liberated Lionel. If you like your horror with a sense of humor or your comedy with gristle, then wade through this taboo-busting bucket of blood. —Sean Axmaker
—
If you’re not a connoisseur of graphic horror and gruesome gore, you’d better steer clear of this wicked 1992 horror-comedy from the demented mind and delirious camera of New Zealand-born writer-director Peter Jackson. However, if nonstop mayhem and extreme violence are your idea of great entertainment, you’re sure to appreciate Jackson’s gleefully inventive approach to a story that can judiciously be described as sick, twisted, and totally outrageous. The movie’s central character is a poor schmuck named Lionel who’s practically enslaved to his domineering mother. But when ol’ Mum gets bitten by a rare and poisonous rat monkey from Skull Island and is turned into a flesh-eating zombie, Lionel has the unfortunate task of keeping Mama happy while fending off all the other zombies that result from her voracious feeding frenzies. If you’ve read this far, you’ll either be crying out for censorship or eagerly awaiting your first viewing (or second, or third…) of this wildly clever and audaciously uninhibited movie. And while director Jackson would later achieve critical success with his fact-based drama Heavenly Creatures, his talent is readily evident in this earlier effort. If you find this kind of thing even remotely appealing, consider Dead Alive a must-see movie. —Jeff Shannon
Barnes and Noble
Possibly the goriest movie ever made, New Zealand’s zombie-fest Dead Alive offers an outrageous combination of extreme violence and black comedy that satirizes motherly love—all while spewing vast quantities of bodily fluids across the screen. Director Peter Jackson made the transition to Hollywood with this smart and squirm-inducing 1993 cult hit, following it up with more mainstream efforts, including the critical success Heavenly Creatures. A bite from a cursed rat monkey turns smothering Mum (Elizabeth Moody) into a ravening creature of the undead, creating romantic and housekeeping difficulties for mild-mannered mama’s boy Lionel (Timothy Balme). Before long, hordes of local citizens have been turned into bloodthirsty ghouls, leading inevitably to the climactic orgy of dismemberment and disemboweling that industriously uncovers new uses for many common household items. The film’s sly employment of movie clichés coupled with a subtly retro look heighten the unreality, making the carnage more cartoonish than disturbing. While not for the squeamish, Dead Alive will more than satisfy viewers who like their horror laced with a gross-out sense of humor. Amy Robinson
