Dead & Breakfast

I just watched this one last night with my brother-in-law we both got allot of chuckles out of it and a few good laughs.

This movie is a cross between "Evil Dead 2" and "Shawn of the dead" with a touch of "kungfu Hustle" style dance scenes thrown into the mix, but not quite as good as any of the above mentioned movies.

It starts abit slow but picks up pretty fast.Lots of gore in the second half so if you have a weak stomach...

Some of the funniest bits in the movie are the song interludes, listen to the words,as it is funny stuff.

The acting is all pretty good,and the special effects well above average.

Highly recommend this one.

Three couples are on a road trip to a wedding in Galveston when they decide to make a pit-stop in a weird little rustic town Lovelock. They stop over for the night at the local bed and breakfast (run by none other than 'Bill" himself, David Carradine). But when the chef winds up carved and filleted and the owner dies of an apparent heart attack these road weary friends learn the story of Pandora's Box the hard way and with possessed zombies to boot. 'Dead & Breakfast' is the perfect companion piece to 'Shaun of the Dead'. 'Dead' one ups the zany genre referencing humor of 'Shaun" by adding absolutely hilarious songs the link (and even further the plot) many of the scenes together. The comedic timing of the actors greatly improves as the feature progresses as the humor gets crazier and the gore gets going. "Dead" is quite gory and conjures many a fond memory of past 80's gore classics.

A group of friends has to go to a wedding, and decide to take a drive trough the American Midwest to get there... but they get lost...have to spend the night in a bed and breakfast, in a little Midwestern town. Soon the whole city turn into zombies, and start killing everyone. Let's face it, you should not expect a great scenario, but who would expect a great scenario in a zombie movie. This one is a especially good. Cut into chapters, separated by country songs, the whole thing is well directed and well played (in context : this is a zombie film, not the next Oscar winning blockbuster), and blood is dripping all over the place, a bit of humor, and bits and pieces of bodies. A future classic of the genre. And you should watch the remix of Jackson's "Thriller" while the zombies are attacking : hilarious. Another highpoint is the presence of Carradine (Bill in Kill Bill), yeah! Zombie Rocks.

Horror comedies are usually much better on paper than on film, which Dead & Breakfast wholeheartedly proves. The first half is a mish-mash of self-consciously 'witty' dialogue and 'hilarious' situations as a group of yappy twenty-somethings throttle in a Winnebago towards Texas for a wedding. But an overnight detour leads them into a den of hillbilly zombies and handmade shotguns, and some semblance of fun, whether it's comedic or not.

With its unnecessary close-ups, terrible acting, and abhorrent hand-held camera use, Dead and Breakfast has all the charm of a first feature by a fanboy with too many ideas and too little experience. (Note that this is actually writer/director Matthew Leutwyler's third feature.) This isn't to say that the movie's bad – there's plenty of gore and creative death scenes to tickle your attention span for 88 minutes. But as a horror film it never finds its voice, and as a comedy, it tries far too hard to ever provoke a good chuckle out of me.

Early on, the lead is taken by Christian, a pill-popping but level-headed mediator played by the always wonderful Jeremy Sisto. But his premature nixing leaves the scattered cast without a den mother. Sara (Ever Carradine, who amazingly looks nothing like a Skolnick) should be leading the pack, but she spends the rest of the film bellowing, 'you've got to be kidding me!' as she wards off zombie attacks. Hardly a leading heroine. The rest of the cast – much better than the headshot-cast prats I see in studio horror pics these days - simply squabble amongst themselves about personal issues while under attack. Then there's the 'comedy': look, drunk guys aren't funny, rude French people aren't funny, and while slipping around in a puddle of gore is funny (see Shaun of the Dead's off-screen tumble by Simon Pegg), when the scene lasts upwards of 30 seconds, one feels pandered to. Even hillbilly zombies aren't funny – isn't that a little too on the nose?

You could do worse than Dead & Breakfast, but if you're looking for a genuine laugh with a good smattering of gore, check out another of Lions Gate's indie horror acquisition, Monster Man. And if you want a good zombie gorefest, stick with Dead Alive or Evil Dead II, which Dead & Breakfast aspires so painfully to be. Because there's nothing funny about desperation, is there?

I had this one sitting around for awhile (as I recorded off TV about two years ago), but I heard mainly poor things which made me leave to sit on my shelf gathering dust. Clearing out my copies, I decided to take the dive and in all honesty it wasn't too bad. It might be dumb, but still sorely entertaining. The very low-budget horror / comedy 'Dead & Breakfast' is completely daft, but surprisingly amusing with its tongue-in-cheek pulp send-up of the zombie sub-genre. Its influences are obvious, but it doesn't try to hide it but wears it on its sleeve. After an imaginative get-go, it does fall on the familiar side (small rural town under threat/people boarded in a house with the dead outside) with its running joke beginning to wear thin, but its comic book enthusiasm (and crazy blood splatter) drives it on. It really relishes in the gruesomely squishy make-up FX and oddball pluckiness. However it has some interesting facets like the storyboard illustrations cutting between scenes and linking the erratic storytelling is a singing narration (which does feel longer than it is) with a real country swing. But the leering one would be variation of how the zombies come about. Nicely done. Roaming through is a rock soundtrack, and a score that's got the flair to match. The performances are light-head, but colourfully quirky and sharp with the likes of Gina Phillips (who's perfectly wholesome), Jeremy Sisto, Bianca Lawson, Ever Carradine, Erik Palladino, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Brent David Fraser and Miranda Bailey. It was cool to see David Carradine pop up in a cameo role too. Also recognizable showing in minor parts are Vincent Ventresca, Portia de Rossi and Diedrich Bader. Spiritedly goofy, messy fun.