31 Days of Halloween: Can you stomach Dead Alive?
Dead Alive (1992) is a goofy zombie flick which shows Peter Jackson’s weird sense of humor. This movie was quite a thing back in the day because it had a LOT of gore for an indy horror movie from New Zealand, and Roger Ebert complained that it was “…the most disgusting horror movie ever made.” The Godfather of gore, Lucio Fulci also called it gross, so you know it’s something if you get a comment like that from him. It’s not ALL gore though (like some Saw sequels), because the story has interesting characters played by Diana Peñalver and Timothy Balme. Balme’s character Lionel has a domineering mother, who becomes a rotting zombie (gross), and she bites most of the family visiting the house (gross), causing a bit of a problem for him.
All the effects are practical. The infected rats at the beginning appear to be stop motion or something, and they eat a monkey’s tail or something before biting Vera, who is visiting the zoo. The other practical set pieces are ridiculous and over-the-top, with excessive gore and way too much blood. I don’t necessarily go looking for this kind of thing but I guess I wouldn’t be a horror reviewer if I didn’t see this at least once. I did fast forward through the dinner sequence though, which combines gore with food and other bodily functions. I can just picture Peter Jackson having a little chuckle at his work, really pushing the envelope with his ideas, including a zombie baby and a kung fu priest. In my opinion, it’s hardly rewatchable because it’s so gross. It was often hard to see back in the day, often on at 3am on HBO and in the back of video stores. Many countires even banned this movie due to the excessive amount of red liquid and fake deaths on screen, which is not surprising given the scene where Lionel kills the zombies with a lawnmower. Yep, that’s right, a lawnmower. Guess you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.
Overall, this is a really unique movie. I’m not saying it’s bad or good, but it’s just unique. Everyone focuses on the gore but the tone is goofy and campy, maybe on purpose, to offset the blood and guts flying everywhere. There’s not just one remarkable gore scene, there’s at least three I can think of which are totally disgusting and made the movie’s reputation what it is. I found myself shaking my head and chuckling at how outrageous it was and how stupid the tone was. I’m not sure I understand Peter Jackson to be fair, but he’s one of the most creative guys in Hollywood, especially as you consider what he did in horror and fantasy. If you think Dead Alive is creative. Today, Dead Alive has been surpassed by other modern films like Evil Dead 2013 as really, really gory and bloody, as they follow in Peter Jackson’s footsteps and rise below the gruesome.
