aka Braindead

• Directed by Peter Jackson
• Written by Stephen Sinclair, Frances Walsh and Peter Jackson
• Starring
  • Timothy Balme
  • Diana Penalver
  • Elizabeth Moody
  • Ian Watkin
  • Stuart Devenie

It was a learning experience in tolerance and diversity, the kind that we all must confront sooner or later, I suppose. I went over to my friend Don’s house with a couple of movies, intending to educate him in the finer points of zombie cinema; the tapes I took with me were Dead Alive and the original Night of the Living Dead (since Don has been an erstwhile film student, I thought his ignorance in the latter an unconscionable omission). We decided to watch the funny one first.

Don made it about twenty minutes into the movie, before he simply turned on the couch and put his finger in his ear. “I’m just going to look at you,” he said. “I think the story’s cute, and I can see how it’s funny, but it’s honestly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen, and if I watch any more I’m seriously afraid I might throw up.”

“No, you have to watch!” I said. “He’s about to serve the custard!”

“No!” Don said. “Please! I don’t want to see it! I like pudding!”

Aw, the happy couple (on a rare occasion when both are smiling and neither is covered in gore).

This, then, was my lesson: One can be an intelligent and thoughtful observer of cinema, with a terrific sense of humor, and still Dead Alive won’t sit well. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s a brilliant movie, and I’m sorry that Don won’t be able to see it.

We open on Skull Island (just off Sumatra) in 1957, where a croc-hunter type and his hired lackeys are trying to transport a snarling something in a bamboo cage off the island. The painted and bone-nosed tribesmen don’t appreciate the exploitation of their native fauna, so it takes some running and leaping and machine-gun shooting to get the cargo to the waiting jeep, and along the way said croc-hunter type gets scratched by the cage’s occupant. His porter-types panic at that, and take extreme measures to “purify” their boss — there’s a scratch on his hand, so they chop his hand off with a machete. And there’s a scratch on his other shoulder, so they take his arm off at the shoulder. And there’s a scratch on his forehead, so…

Roll credits, as the little critter is transported to its final destination on New Zealand.

Our story proper concerns Lionel (Timothy Balme), a twenty-something nebbish who bears more than a passing resemblance to a young Anthony Perkins. And the similarities are more than facial; Lionel is firmly under the thumb of his demanding, bitchy, ostentatious, socially-obsessed mother (Elizabeth Moody), who controls every aspect of Lionel’s life. Things, however, start to change when the pining-for-a-man girl at the corner store, Paquita (Diana Penalver) is informed by her tarot-reading grandmother that her One True Romance will soon enter her life, to be identified by the symbol of the moon and star; Lionel fulfills the omen when he spills the licorice and pencils at the store counter, which obligingly form the moon-and-stars symbol.

“Yo quiero the damned Taco Bell, already!”

Thanks to Paquita’s somewhat forward pursuit (hey, it’s in the stars, man, might as well acquiesce), Lionel agrees to accompany her to the zoo on a (gasp!) date. Nothing as romantic as monkeys frolicking, right? Well, that’s what Paquitya thinks, until one of the monkeys is torn apart through the bars by the occupant of the next cage — the mystery creature from the first scene, a Sumatran Rat Monkey (a stop-motion critter that looks like the world’s most evil chihuahua). But that’s not the most evil thing to intrude on their date; Mum also shows up, looking to deep-six the relationship in the offing. And she does interrupt, although not in the manner she had hoped; the Rat Monkey leans out through the bars and bites her arm. (Mum gets back at it by crushing its head very completely under her heel.) Alas, Lionel is enlisted to take his poor injured mother home.

Over night, though, Mother’s injury gets seriously infected — as in, spurting-bloody-pus infected. By morning, her tongue is swollen, her face is getting scabby, and the craterous wound on her arm is pulsing. Yet when the president of the Women’s League comes by for a scheduled luncheon (Mum having just been elected treasurer), the social show must go on. Mum scrambles to her makeup table, smears a makeup brush across her face — and a big flap of skin peels off. Ever the dutiful son, Lionel grabs the Elmer’s Mucilage to re-affix it. (This, by the way, is the point at which Don decided to stop watching.)

Naturally, the infamous custard scene comes next — in which Mum’s wound spurts pus from beneath the bandage into the bowl of the President’s husband (who, eyes closed in enjoyment, scoops it right up). That’s one of those “This lunch can’t get any worse” moments, which naturally gets worse when Mum’s ear falls off into her own bowl, and she nonchalantly eats it herself.

That’s one hell of an exfoliant.

Still hungry, I suppose, she also eats Paquita’s dog when she comes to call, at which point it finally appears time to call the local nurse in. Too late, Mother expires in Lionel’s arms — and then promptly comes back to life and rips the nurse’s head almost completely off. The nurse then comes back (the Rat Monkey infection having spread, see), and Lionel, not knowing what to do, trundles both zombies off to the basement before Paquita sees them.

Ever the dutiful son, Lionel’s determined to keep his mother’s undead status from becoming embarrassing her, so he manages to get a jug of tranquilizer from a Nazi veterinarian (one of the movie’s best throwaway characters) to keep them sedated in the basement. Unfortunately, Mum gets out, but conveniently wanders in front of a bus, allowing her to be discovered as dead. But Lionel knows better, which leads to further hijinx as he tries to make sure she stays sedated during her own funeral. (She’s getting really nasty by now, abetted by the careless undertaker who forgot to turn off the embalming machine. Green embalming fluid bursting from her orifices, popping her eyeballs out — Don should really be glad he stopped watching way back when.)

Naturally, Lionel has to come back to disinter her that night in order to keep her in line, at which time he runs afoul of a quartet of young toughs who apparently like hanging out drinking in the cemetery at night. Mum bursts from her grave and makes short work of a couple of them, though — aided and abetted by Father McGruder (Stuart Devenie), the world’s foremost kung-fu Catholic priest. (“I kick ass for the Lord!”) It’s a five-minute martial-arts interlude, as he high-kicks the two zombies resulting from Mum’s earlier attack, unfortunately, he doesn’t survive the encounter. So Lionel is now tending four zombies: Mum, the nurse, Father McGruder, and Void, one of the young toughs. (The other zombie delinquent was completely dismembered by Father McGruder’s kung-fu, in a scene more than a little reminiscent of Monty Python’s Holy Grail.)

That’s supposed to be “sucking face,” not “chewing face.”

So, let’s see how life is for poor Lionel. He’s caring for a growing number of zombie corpses in the basement (including a zombie child, offspring of zombie nurse’s and zombie priest’s undead lust, and the most annoying rugrat in the entire world), he’s harried and sleepless, his relationship with Paquita has fallen apart… how else could life possibly suck?

Oh, that’s right. His John Goodmanesque Uncle Les (Ian Watkin) has been nosing about, looking for his share of the inheritance. He discovers the cellar full of stiffs (while sedated, thus looking like nothing but rotting corpses), and threatens to call the police unless Lionel gives him all the money and the house.

Things all come to a head when Uncle Les invites a whole house of victims — uh, friends for a big party. Paquita ends up in the basement with Lionel, discovers the whole secret, and helps give him the strength to administer poison to the already living-impaired. At least, the label says “poison,” and it turns out to be true — it’s not fit for human consumption. Because, you see, the “poison” is an animal stimulant.

And this is where the entrails hit the fan.

“Who needs Smith & Wesson? I’ve got Black & Decker!”

Zombies! The zombies burst out of their shallow grave in the basement and accost partygoers, who instantly revive as more zombies! Paquita and Lionel and a shrinking number of survivors desperately try to fend off the flesh-lusting undead! For half an hour, we get to see zombies disemboweled (which doesn’t help — the torso, the legs, and the innards are each animate), electrocuted, food-processed, cleaved and chopped, and beat upon with weapons ranging from garden shears to garden gnomes. The centerpiece of it all is the infamous lawnmower scene, in which Lionel fires up his trusty pushmower and runs back and forth through a room of zombies, chopping and grinding and pureeing until the entire room is coated in a thick-sprayed layer of chunky gore.

Yup. It’s a good thing Don opted out when he did.

In the end, Lionel manages to solve the mystery of his father’s disappearance and separate himself from his mother’s domineering influence in a finale full of the same womb/rebirth imagery that made up the final scene of Bad Taste. (Forgive me for suspecting that maybe, just maybe, Jackson’s got a few issues with his own mother.) True love reigns supreme, and the people who deserve to live happily ever after do so.

All through, it’s very apparent to those whose stomachs aren’t churning that the whole thing’s being played for laughs. Cartoony touches keep the grisly from becoming critty. In one scene, Lionel ends up running in place like a Looney Toons character due to the slippery blood on the floor; in another, Uncle Les chops and hews with a kitchen knive in each hand, like some crazed ginsu chef (undercranked for added comedic effect). Throughout the entire lawmower scene and several others, a severed half-head gets kicked all over the bloody floor like a hockey puck, making odd expressions through its Buddy Holly glasses. In many ways, this movie is a continuation of the film-making goals Jackson exhibited in Bad Taste — a warped, real-world version of the uber-violent antics we’re all familiar with from Saturday morning cartoons. When given the choice, I always recommend people see the unrated version, because a held-back version would actually be more disturbing; the action here needs to be so far-out, so over-the-top, that it can’t possibly be taken seriously.

As I found out, it’s not a movie for everyone. But if you can stand the grue, you’re in for a gutbusting treat.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 41, give-or-take (plus 1 Sumatran Rat Monkey and 1 dog)
• breasts: 2 — and ooh, they ain’t pretty
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 1
• godawful hairpieces: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on one of the Hercules/Xena series: 8 (plus 3 who worked on the crew)