Dead Alive

Saw Dead Alive, an incredibly bloody and surreal horror/comedy from Peter Jackson.  Pre-Lord of the Rings, Jackson was mostly known for effects-heavy trash horror movies and this is one of them.  The Spanish title apparently translates to "Your Mother Ate My Dog" which I feel captures the spirit of this film a lot better than "Dead Alive".  This one starts out slow but gets truly nuts.

The plot follows this dweeby, Norman Bates-like dude who lives under his mother's thumb in a giant mansion.  One day, much to the displeasure of his mother, he goes on a date with a convenience store clerk to the zoo.  The mother follows to spy on them and is bitten by a hideous, stop-motion animated Sumatran monkey-rat.  She dies from this injury but doesn't stay dead (which happens sometimes when Sumatran monkey-rats are involved.)

The film is heavy on gross-out comedy/horror.  Zombie bites suppurate and fester, pus bursting wildly, sending strawberry custard flying onto the faces of horrified onlookers, or into the soup of oblivious gentlemen.  The film keeps ratcheting up the insanity up to dizzying heights until the climax, when a bunch of partiers descend on the mansion.  The final few scenes have got to be seen to be believed.  Let me just say, it takes the metaphor of the controlling mother trying to keep her child hers forever very literally.

There's so much craziness in the film though.  At one point a zombie's entrails fall out of him body.  The entrails get up and start running about, using the lungs as legs and intestines like an octopus's tentacles.  It's like The Thing, but with less budget.  Even before the final climax, there's plenty of nuttiness: there's a karate priest ("I kick ass for the Lord!"), drooling Nazi veterinarians, and zombie sex followed by zombie babies.  It's so over the top!

The humor is quite broad and although a few jokes landed, most of the time I sort of endured them.  I really didn't think the zombie baby stuff was very funny and I kept wondering why on earth the main character guy needed to keep his zombie mother secret.  Surely events have escalated out of your control, dude.  The craziness of the zombie biology is worth it however.

So, this is one of those films you put on for your unsuspecting friends.  They're expecting a campy good time that they can chat through, but they'll get all of this high-grade insanity, some tedious jokes, and five gallons of blood per second during the climax.  This film is an absolute trip.