Braindead

This film is truly the finest hour of the young, aggressive, full-speed-ahead Peter Jackson. Check your squeamishness at the door and get ready for proof that splatter can be played for laughs.

Not all the laughs are splatter-based. The opening scene shows a zookeeper waving a permit to a tribe of hostile natives about to kill him, shouting out "per-mit! Per-mit!" From there, the film descends into the inspired, amused lunacy of the splatstick. Look for the cameo of a young, thin Peter Jackson as a mortician's assistant. Also look for the minor hilarious characters- the Nazi vet, the idiot football player, and most famous of all, Father MacGruder, he of the film's best one-liner.

Timothy Balme is excellent as the nebbishy mama's boy who ends up taking on the whole undead world by himself, with a couple of mechanical aids. He out-Ashes Ash! Like any good zombie film, the end features waves of zombies, but many with unique and twisted personalities of their own. The best is, of course, zombie baby. It is shocking and yet hilarious to see what zombie baby endures, and yet survives (perhaps to live on in the long awaited sequel?) Ten stars, and five out of five blood splats thrown up against the wall (during the last half hour).

Wellington, New Zealand, 1957. Lionel and Paquita are at the zoo on date when Lionel's domineering, oppressive mother, Vera, appears, trying to prevent Lionel from seeing Paquita. Vera is bitten by a Sumatran rat-monkey and overnight becomes a zombie. Soon she infects others and Lionel is struggling to contain the zombie outbreak.

Written and directed by Peter Jackson who later went on to direct Heavenly Creatures, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Braindead, his third film, is nothing like those movies. If, however, you've seen his first film Bad Taste, Braindead will be no surprise.

Bad Taste relied heavily on a silly plot and gross-out special effects but was quite funny and generally quite fun. Braindead is similar but has a more solid plot, including a set up - Bad Taste just launched straight into the humans-vs-zombies/aliens action. There is still a lot of gross-out visual effects, many of which are silly and gratuitous, but some of them are really clever and funny. Some great laugh-out-loud moments.

On that note, in Bad Taste the silliness pipped the funniness but here the laughs win out. Not by a huge margin but enough to make the movie watchable and fun.

I think it's called the sweet spot, that place when everything comes together at the right moment: the build up has been great, the levels on all the gauges are optimised, you have all the ingredients, the recipe for success has been perfected and then you unleash the beast, and what a butcher of a beast you unleash!

If you dig too deep for the secrets or contrast it with today you'll end up burying yourself however, do be mindful and in awe of the immense crafts these artisans had developed in the early 90s and, above all, revel in the way those talents were recombined to produce a true work of ground breaking genius that will keep those fascinated by such majesty capitated, bowled and limbed for as long as is inhumanly possible.

DEAD ALIVE (1993) ***1/2 New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson made his mark in horror cinema (and for himself as a talent to be reckoned with) in this incredibly gory, funny and altogether sickfest zombie flick about a young man's shrew mother getting bit by a Sumatran Rat Monkey rabid with a truly nasty disease that turns her (and all that she infects with a bite) into a crazed/ravenous thing that can't be stopped in its rapacious wake of terror. The scattershot breakneck pace makes fellow monster maven Sam Raimi look like Busby Berkeley! Classic cult film that will have you laughing at the putridness of it all. Look for Jackson's homage to "King Kong" with Skull Island reference at film's precredit sequence.

Crazy, visceral, over the top, quirky, violent, gory, silly, extreme and (in it's own way) sweet, are just a few words that can describe this visual extravaganza.

What makes it such a good movie? It's fast paced, it's witty, it's charming... and it is GROUNDBREAKING,it's an important movie of the genre.

Lionel is a loser who lives with his dominant mother. Lionel finds a way out, by hooking up with Paquita (a beautiful Diana Peñalver), but soon Lionel's mother gets bitten by a RAT MONKEY and she gradually starts to decompose (it's hilarious) and turns into a living dead... Lionel like a loving son he is, tries to hide the fact that her mother is a zombie, keeping her sedated with drugs... until, naturally, all hell breaks loose.

Timothy Balme is genius as Lionel, I mean; HE'S SO UNDERRATED, he gives a truly comedic performance that's top notch and really entertaining, so is the rest of the cast.

This is my favorite Peter Jackson film, and maybe one of the best horror comedies EVER. It's so f***ed-up, crazy and over the top it's almost poetic.

Everyone who considers himself (or Herself) a Horror Lover, a GoreHound, a rare-movie seeker or a Three Stooges fan should get their hands on this unusual flick.