{"id":2229,"date":"2016-03-30T23:51:54","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T23:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/?p=2229"},"modified":"2016-03-30T23:51:54","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T23:51:54","slug":"dead-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/?p=2229","title":{"rendered":"DEAD ALIVE!!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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  1. Brain Dead\/<\/strong>AKA Dead Alive<\/strong><\/a> ~ 1992, Peter Jackson, New Zealand<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"braindead_poster_02\"<\/p>\n

    Before New Line made the ballsiest gamble of the 21st century and entrusted him with directing the entire Lord of the Rings<\/strong><\/em><\/a> trilogy, Peter Jackson, honorary Hobbit and King Kiwi of the cinematic lexicon, was a handsomely bearded, but\u00a0little known\u00a0director, who spent the first phase of his career crafting some of the zaniest splatter films ever made. Like, obnoxiously, unreasonably zany.<\/p>\n

    It’s worth mentioning this was not necessarily the most hospitable environment for that type of cinema, either,\u00a0the 1990\u2019s\u00a0were a bleak and dismal period for horror films on the whole. The genre had enjoyed a reckless hayday in the 1980’s, but\u00a0by the close of the decade, the\u00a0market had become saturated, the products dated, and mainstream audiences no longer gave a shit. The once proud horror subculture retreated underground like the primitive\u00a0Morlocks that they are, and\u00a0America’s first tier\u00a0film studios lost faith in tentpole horror franchises of yesteryear,\u00a0motivating them to move\u00a0away from the likes of\u00a0Freddy and Jason, and onto\u00a0greener pastures, like Ace Ventura 2<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, Battlefield Earth<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, and Big Momma’s House<\/a><\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0As such, 1992 yielded precious few zombie films, but one that it did produce was Brain Dead<\/strong><\/em>, or, as its known in the United States, Dead Alive<\/strong><\/em>. Luckily, sometimes it’s quality over quantity, and Dead Alive<\/strong> has quality on lock down.<\/p>\n

    THE PLOT:<\/strong> Lionel is a meek and unremarkable man who lives with his\u00a0manipulative, over-baring\u00a0mother Vera, in a small coastal town somewhere in New Zealand. Lionel is a straight up momma’s boy,\u00a0Vera has him 200% under her thumb, and he doesn’t appear to have the strength of character to tell her to friggin’ back off now, or ever. In fact, Lionel is so incapable of letting go of his unhealthy relationship with his mother, that when she becomes zombified in a freak\u00a0primate exhibit accident at the\u00a0zoo\u00a0(yep), he does everything in his power to conceal her condition from the public, even going so far as to round up all of her newly zombified victims and keep them hidden away in his basement. Seems like if he had any intention of moving out of his mother’s house, her turning into a homicidal ghoul would be as good a\u00a0time as any\u00a0to pull the trigger. Clearly, this birdie ain’t leavin’ the nest.<\/p>\n

    …But if Lionel won’t ever\u00a0man up\u00a0his own, a\u00a0much needed catalyst arrives in the form of Paquita, a pretty young woman who meets Lionel through coincidence, and who\u00a0quickly\u00a0decides that he’s the man she’s going to marry, whether he likes it or not. For a time, Lionel tries to juggle these two relationships, but eventually this becomes infeasible, and\u00a0he\u00a0is forced to\u00a0choose between\u00a0his controlling, domineering mother, who makes all of his decisions for him…\u00a0and his\u00a0controlling, domineering girlfriend…. who makes\u00a0all of his decisions for him…\u00a0So, really,\u00a0this is\u00a0sort of a long trip to wind up right\u00a0back where you started, but at least Paquita\u00a0isn’t a\u00a0zombie. He for sure upgraded.<\/p>\n

    Dead Alive’s<\/em> dodgy super-motif doesn’t bother us. The journey is enjoyable enough that we aren’t deterred by Lionel’s half assed character arc, and the film is silly enough that\u00a0we assume\u00a0this lateral development to be deliberate. And anyway, this is easily the most true to life component in the entire\u00a0film,\u00a0 everybody knows somebody like Lionel, and that guy usually winds up with\u00a0a Paquita. Most people even know a Vera!<\/p>\n

    \"braindead-5\"<\/p>\n

    Sadly, few of us have religious leaders like this guy in our lives.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

    It’s a hell of a movie. For years, Dead Alive<\/em> was said to be the goriest movie ever made- a boast that’s easy to believe if you see the unrated version of the film.\u00a0It really feels like if Peter Jackson could have conceived of a way\u00a0to\u00a0make this movie gorier, he would have done it. The much coveted “goriest film ever” crown has been snatched up more than once over the years- last I checked, Fede Alvarez’s remake of The Evil Dead<\/a><\/strong><\/em>\u00a0is the curent record holder, but I’ll tell you this; Dead Alive<\/em> still FEELS gorier. In fact, I’ve searched and searched, and no film feels quite as bloody as this one does. No matter how many gallons of red stuff\u00a0Alvarez dumped onto a sound stage, Dead Alive<\/em>\u00a0will trump that\u00a0volume through it’s execution. Truly,\u00a0if you have any interest in gore cinema, this needs to be your next stop.<\/p>\n

    Dead Alive’s<\/em> 1992 vintage\u00a0is indeed a rarity.\u00a0Zombies were sort of in hibernation during this period,\u00a0meaning that Dead Alive<\/em> came out\u00a0after the second wave of zombie fiction, but before the third.\u00a0More than likely this helps to make the film feel fresher, it’s not really part of any trend, and it’s not really a rehash of anything else, it’s a zombie film that was made because Peter Jackson wanted to tell a zombie story. Really,\u00a0it’s a rare home run\u00a0from an era where not many people even cared to swing\u00a0the bat. If you’re a fan of Jackson’s Hobbit<\/a><\/strong><\/em> and or magical elf related motion pictures, or if you fancy yourself a fan of zombies, but kinda want to see a film that isn’t a broken mess of lowest common denominator pandering and heat chasing, then do yourself a favor and get this shit on your TV pronto. It’s plenty of fun.<\/p>\n

    A+<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \"more
    \n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Brain Dead\/AKA Dead Alive ~ 1992, Peter Jackson, New Zealand Before New Line made the ballsiest gamble of the 21st century and entrusted him with directing the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson, honorary Hobbit and King Kiwi of the cinematic lexicon, was a handsomely bearded, but\u00a0little known\u00a0director, who spent the first phase […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[393],"tags":[946,145,1592,1593,1594,1589,457,856,214,1595,1591,1590,1597,1596,32],"class_list":["post-2229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-946","tag-a","tag-ace-ventura-2","tag-battlefield-earth","tag-big-mommas-house-2","tag-brain-dead","tag-dead-alive","tag-evil-dead","tag-gore","tag-new-line-cinema","tag-new-zealand","tag-peter-jackson","tag-the-hobbit","tag-the-lord-of-the-rings","tag-zombies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2229"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4887,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229\/revisions\/4887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fantasticcrapcomics.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}