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 Director
: Peter Jackson
Starring
: Timothy Balme, Diana Peņalver, Elizabeth Moody, Ian Watkin,
Brenda Kendall, Stuart Devenie.
Picture
: 1.66:1, DD 2.0, Single-Side Dual-Layer, Keep Case
Running
Time : 105 mins
The
story:
You'll laugh yourself sick!
On
a quiet street, in a small town, pure evil has come to stay.
Lionel, an innocent young man, is forced to care for domineering
mother and finds the task a whole lot more demanding after
she's bitten by the cursed Sumatran rat monkey. Passing
the point of death, Lionel's mother sucks friends and family
into her gruesome existence among the living dead and Lionel
is sent spiraling into a ghoulish nightmare.
The
summary:
Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame) is the creator
of Braindead - the undisputed king of gore. If you haven't
already heard of Braindead or Dead Alive as it's otherwise
known, then let me introduce you. This low budget New Zealand
film does not follow the conventional rules of horror. For
starters, there's very little fear or tension in the story,
little in the way of a plot (although it could be said this
is true of many films of the genre) and the cast are largely
unknown actors. Braindead is a basically a one-trick pony
and it makes no attempt to disguise this fact. What Braindead
has in abundance is gore - buckets and buckets of gore!
The film begins slowly, the acting is pretty atrocious and
you'd be forgiven for wanting to switch off after 15 minutes.
Persevere though, because things soon begin to hot up and
the laughable special-effects improve as the film progresses.
By the time the final half hour of the film arrives, there's
absolute carnage and mayhem on screen with limbs flying
everywhere as Lionel discovers the greatest tool in defeating
a zombie is the trusty lawnmower!
Jackson
has injected lots of humour into the story and it pretty
much pokes fun at itself throughout. The combination of
horror and humour work well together so you'll find that
despite the huge amounts of bloodshed and gore it's a pretty
lighthearted affair. Jackson clearly has a very creative
mind and manages to fit almost every aspect of the horror
genre into one film - a bonus to the viewer as you're never
quite sure what's going to happen next, or even what boundaries
Jackson is operating within. Things do get a little tasteless
from time to time especially when the 'chucky doll' baby
arrives and is promptly thrust into a blender! Oh well,
full credit to Jackson for sticking with his ideas and not
backing down.
Braindead
is available on region 1 (packaged under the name Dead Alive)
but this version has been cut and most of the gore has been
removed. We soon found this Spanish Import version which
is fully uncut and is probably the best version around.
The picture quality isn't great but for a low budget film
it's by no means terrible. There's an English language soundtrack
on here as well as the default Spanish one, but depending
on your DVD player, you may not be able to remove the Spanish
subtitles - I couldn't on mine, but you soon forget they
are there. Extra's are almost nonexistent and consist of
a 10 photo stills, a trailer and some text based notes (in
Spanish!). Still, all complaints aside, if you want the
uncut version of the film then this is the disc for you.
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Extras:
*
Trailers - Spanish language
trailer for Braindead, plus 2 additional Spanish trailers
for "El Dentista" and "Premutos" (which
look terrible by the way).
*
Photo Gallery - Not
much of a gallery, just 10 photo stills.
*
Production Notes - Spanish
language notes, but there's only 3 brief pages so you're
really not missing out on much. Listed separately under
the extras is also a Filmography's page (for Diana Peņalver
and Peter Jackson) plus a page listing the actors and yet
another page listing the production team.
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