Product Description

On a quiet street in a small town pure evil has come to stay. An innocent young man forced to care for his domineering mother finds the task a whole lot more demanding after shes bitten by the cursed sumatran rat-monkey. Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 08/16/2005 Starring: Timothy Balme Diana Penaliver Run time: 85 minutes Rating: R Director: Peter Jackson

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4958 in DVD
• Brand: Lions Gate
• Released on: 1998-09-09
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 97 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
If you're not a connoisseur of graphic horror and gruesome gore, you'd better steer clear of this wicked 1992 horror-comedy from the demented mind and delirious camera of New Zealand-born writer-director Peter Jackson. However, if nonstop mayhem and extreme violence are your idea of great entertainment, you're sure to appreciate Jackson's gleefully inventive approach to a story that can judiciously be described as sick, twisted, and totally outrageous. The movie's central character is a poor schmuck named Lionel who's practically enslaved to his domineering mother. But when ol' Mum gets bitten by a rare and poisonous rat monkey from Skull Island and is turned into a flesh-eating zombie, Lionel has the unfortunate task of keeping Mama happy while fending off all the other zombies that result from her voracious feeding frenzies. If you've read this far, you'll either be crying out for censorship or eagerly awaiting your first viewing (or second, or third...) of this wildly clever and audaciously uninhibited movie. And while director Jackson would later achieve critical success with his fact-based drama Heavenly Creatures, his talent is readily evident in this earlier effort. If you find this kind of thing even remotely appealing, consider Dead Alive a must-see movie. --Jeff Shannon

Amazon.com
Peter Jackson proves that if gory is funny, then excessive gory is downright hysterical. As our hapless hero wades through an ankle-deep puddle of blood and entrails, brandishing a lawnmower like a portable Cuisinart at the climax of this zombie-fest, you'll either be screaming with laughter or fleeing in disgust. Timothy Balme stars as the shy mama's boy Lionel, whose controlling shrew of a mother (Elizabeth Moody) starts rotting away, literally, with a vague supernatural disease. Mother dies but refuses to stay down, rising as a flesh-eating zombie infecting everyone she bites. Lionel tries to hide her in the basement, but the victims keep piling up and finally break out when Lionel's blackmailing uncle (a grotesque, leering Ian Watkin) throws a party in the house. It's snack time as the guests become undead hors d'oeuvres and rise again as hungry soldiers of the new zombie army marching on Lionel and his girl Pacquita (the lovely Diana Penalver). New Zealand goremeister Jackson pulls out all stops in this truly outrageous sanguinary comedy, from gross-out gags of oozing puss and rotting body parts at a formal dinner to slapstick antics as Lionel tries to keep his flesh-hungry mother sedated during the funeral to the final Freudian showdown between a now-monstrous mother and the newly liberated Lionel. If you like your horror with a sense of humor or your comedy with gristle, then wade through this taboo-busting bucket of blood. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

As Outrageous as Advertised
As you likely know, if you're reading this, Dead Alive is fairly widely regarded as the goriest movie ever made. Having not seen every movie ever made I'm not prepared to declare it as such, but it's certainly the goriest movie I've ever seen. By far. To give you a bit of perspective, I would say Day of the Dead and Riki-Oh probably come closest of the films I've seen, and Dead Alive has got to be at least 5 times gorier than either of those films.(And that's probably a conservative estimate) This fact alone should make it mandatory viewing for anyone interested in Horror films.(Of course, this isn't actually a horror film; I don't think it genuinely tries to be scary even once. But, the gore-comedy is primarily of interest to horror fans, naturally)

As one would expect, this film has it's roots in Re-Animator and the Evil Dead films, but it manages to find it's own style and tone. Evil Dead II was wildly over-the-top and energetic while Re-Animator was pretty subdued and deadpan much of the time. Dead Alive, directed by the now highly famed and lauded Peter Jackson, is somewhere in between, certainly not as controlled as Re-Animator, but nowhere near as flat out weird and kinetic as Evil Dead II.(at least not from beginning to end.) And yeah it's pretty funny, though perhaps the majority of the non-gore related humor tends to fall flat. It's also more purely good-natured and fun-loving than any of those films.(Perhaps this is related to their New Zealand accents) I don't know if it's necessarily better than any of those films, it's a tough call, but they're all in the same league, and fans of one ought to like the others.

Inspiration is frequently in short supply in the non-zombie related scenes, but their are enough zombie scenes that it doesn't matter too much. The characters are extremely broad caricatures, including the cute, naive love interest, the dorky, buttoned down hero, the evil controlling mother and the conniving, greedy and chauvinistic uncle. Naturally characters don't matter a whole helluva lot in this film, but, for what it's worth, both Paquita and Lionel are reasonably likable as the protagonist. The film ain't much on plot either, as it's pretty much just a series of comic scenes involving Lionel's attempts to keep the zombie outbreak a secret, and then their collective attempts to simply destroy them. Personally, I find this structural format to be perfectly fine. The less plot the better, when it comes to this sort of film.

The gore is so ridiculous and over-the-top that it's hard to imagine how anyone could be offended by it, though it is quite gross at times. The gore itself particularly reminds of the original Evil Dead, as it emphasizes goo and moistness, and the zombies look fairly reminiscent of the demon-possessed individuals from that film. Although the gore isn't nor is it trying to be realistic, the execution is often more professional and well done than I would've anticipated. Going into too many specifics would be terribly time consuming, but their are a few things that demand pointing out. The single best gore effect would have to be towards the beginning of the film, when the nurse gets her head ripped off. (most of the way, anyway) And, the much famed lawnmower massacre towards the end of the film is classic, and has some surprisingly nicely done effects to go along with the sheer over-the-top insanity of the scene.(The effects I'm referring, in specific, to some of the shots of the limbs getting shredded into nothingness) And, the stop-motion animated sumatran rat monkey is quite fun as well.

Yeah, this movie is pretty great. Not quite the all time highpoint in gore, in my mind, however. I think that Riki-Oh is funnier on the gore front, and am more impressed by some more serious films that display more realistic gore. But Dead Alive still does what it does very well.

An acquired taste, but I enjoyed it.
You might come in with the wrong expectations for this movie, it's primarily reputation is for it's gore. Which is deserved, even in the more widely available slightly-tamed down version that's more commonly available in the US, by the end of the film nearly every inch of the screen is covered in blood and guts. But don't neccesarily expect something frightening because of this, the movie is overall more funny than scary, from the ridiculous premise for the zombies' origin (a cursed Samarian rat-monkey imported to New Zealand) to the myriad bizarre and quirky characters and of course a lot of gross-out humor. At times it almost resembles what would happen if Monty Python made a zombie movie and ran as far with the blood and gore as they possibly could.

You'll enjoy this movie if the following apply to you:

1) the phrases "karate priest", "baby zombie", and "rat-monkey" piqued your interest.

2) You liked Evil Dead II and Army Of Darkness, and are definitely not in the camp that the series went downhill once Sam Raimi started adding in comic elements

3) You're not at all squeamish about blood and relish completely over-the-top bordering on implausible gory death scenes.

4) You have a general taste for cheesy b-movies.

THE BLOODIEST FILM IN CINEMATIC HISTORY!!!
Words just cannot describe this unbelievable gore-fest from New Zealand. Peter Jackson has totally outdone himself with an incredible zombie flick that's sure to make you wanna laugh your butt off! The prostetic make-up and special gore-effects by Richard Taylor were amazing. I don't think I've ever seen half of a body jump on somebody and spill out it's bodly organs all over the place, or half of a head getting kicked around all over the place get thrown into a blender. The nearly millions of gallons of blood just pour and pour and pour. This is one not to be missed by any gorehound fan out there!!! WARNING: THIS MOTION PICTURE CONTAINS NON-STOP SCENES OF EXTREME GRAPHIC VIOLENCE AND GORE. THIS FILM IS NOT FOR THE FAINT AT HEART. WATCH AT YOUR OWN RISK!!! Please avoid the HORRIBLY CHOPPED UP R-rated version at all costs! Stick with the US UNRATED version. If possible, see if you can find the Japanese Import of "Dead Alive" entitled "Braindead" because it runs nearly 10 minutes longer than the US UNRATED VERSION and contains much more gore.