Have You Ever Watched: Dead Alive aka Braindead
This is the twelfth in a recurring series I will be doing highlighting obscure, unknown, forgotten and underrated horror movies. The goal is to bring to light great horror of yesterday and today that is just not on most people’s radar. Just assume spoilers will be included. Enjoy.
Since the beginning of the genre, horror films have always had shocking moments. A scene, a plot, an effect, something that would make an audience member say to someone, “You gotta see this”. 1925; Lon Chaney finally reveals the face of the monster in Phantom of the Opera. Or in 1960 with the French film Eyes without a Face, a doctor who cuts off women’s faces to attach to his disfigured daughters face was shocking enough for someone to demand, “You gotta see this”. This shock and awe is certainly what drove so many people to see the The Exorcist back in 1973, the news reports alone of people shrieking and vomiting in the theater must have done wonders for box office performance.
These shocking scenes in movies are what draw people to the genre. I remember as a kid before the internet was a thing you always knew a guy who knew a guy who had a copy of Faces of Death or maybe the local family video store had an import of Cannibal Holocaust. Whatever the case maybe there is always the one movie, that one scene that you cherish and tell everyone you know, “You gotta check this out”. This is the spirit of this series at Horror Bound and to me there is one movie I pressure my friends, horror fans or not, to watch and that’s Dead Alive aka Brain Dead.
Have you ever watched Dead Alive? No? OMG, let me tell you about it.
Released in 1992 and directed by Peter Jackson, yeah that Peter Jackson, Dead Alive aka Braindead is the goriest horror film of all time. Period. Full stop. The sheer amount of blood shed and the piles of dead bodies in this film are more than Fulci and Lenzi’s entire works combined. How this one got past the censors is beyond me and how I am able to watch it over and over again without losing my lunch is also a mystery.
Now, this is a zombie story of sorts but there is no Venus probe, trioxin toxin and definitely no voodoo witch doctor. Instead the zombies in this film are caused by the bite of a sumatran rat monkey. Also unlike standard zombie fare the zombies in Dead Alive are uninterested in brains or eating people. These zombies mostly focus on maiming others in horrendous ways, accented by amazing special effects. For instance, after the main character Lionel’s mother is bitten by the monkey she begins to zombie transform by oozing puss and having her ear fall off into her soup which she promptly eats. Shortly after eating a dog, she falls down the stairs and is pronounced dead by the live-in nurse.
Suddenly she wakes and jams her fingers into the nurses cheeks and pulls her head off backwards opening her like a can of beans. Now I know I just blew through three fairly gruesome scenes quickly but I assure you, each and every one of them is one of those, “You gotta see this scene” types. First, her puss filled, squirting bloody arm will make your skin crawl but eating her own ear? Next level and just when you think you’ve seen the worst of it she swallows a dog whole and Lionel slowly and deliberately pulls it out of her mouth. The whole thing is a bloody, slobbery, wet mess that sounds moist and squishy, the cherry on top being Lionel’s girlfriend screaming at the top of her lungs, “Your mom ate my dog!”
And then there’s the Kung Fu Priest. Lionel’s mother is not dead she’s simply sedated via needle up the nose. That evening she is buried and Lionel goes to dig her up for some weird reason and he encounters some classic 80’s punks pissing on her grave. The mother awakens, starts ripping the punks to shreds and this commotion awakens the Priest who just happens to know Kung Fu.
Certainly this is the, “You gotta see this” scene right? Wrong! Lionel takes all the zombies home. The mother, the nurse, the Kung Fu Priest and the punk and does the most logical thing, feeds them scrambled eggs for breakfast. This is the nastiest scene in the whole movie. The nurse with the peeled back head has trouble eating the eggs because her head isn’t connected so it oozes out her neck. Lionel tips her head back and drops the egg goop directly into her open throat, complete with gurgling. Meanwhile the punk tries to use the spoon and just jabs it through the back of his head and the mother pulls the eggs off the bloody spoon and eats them. And the Priest? Well the Priest is groping the nurse and making eyes at her. Spoiler alert. They fuck. Double spoiler alert, they have a baby. Triple spoiler alert, Lionel takes the ugly thing to the park to swing and fights it. Who saw this and thought Peter Jackson was best to direct Lord of the Rings?
Now you would think that’s it. Nothing could be more absurd. You’d be wrong! For unknown reasons Lionel’s uncle has a house party and people get infected with the bite. I literally could spend the next 1,000 words of this article explaining the hundreds of absurd deaths but I’ll keep it simple and call out my favorite three:
The punk punches his fist through the back of a woman’s head and his fist comes out of her mouth. He then continues trying to kill people with this woman attached to his arm.
The mutant baby climbs into another woman and then rips her face open from the inside. His arms pop out her ears then he splits her face revealing his goofy smile.
The uncle gets his spine ripped out by the mutated giant mother and then walks around with his spine sticking high in the air. His intestines become autonomous and try to choke Lionel.
Pause on the 20 foot tall giant mutant zombie mother because these zombies gotta die. What’s the best way for mass zombie death? Well, grab the lawn mower and strap it to your chest. The words insane and bloody do not do this scene justice. Lionel kills easily 100 zombies and leaves a pile of body parts 5 feet high.
Okay, back to the giant mutant zombie mother. Well...She grabs Lionel and puts him back in the womb.
Yeah. You gotta see this.
Dead Alive aka Braindead is the bloodiest, nastiest, goriest most absurd over the top insane horror film you will ever see. The entire movie from start to finish is an oh shit crazy moment that demands repeat viewings. The constant escalation of insanity is admirable as you think you’ve seen it all and then Lionel is un-birthed. When I started this series there were a few films that I knew I just absolutely had to cover. This is one of them. Watch it. Recommend it. Repeat.
Want more Peter Jackson films? Why not read Peyton’s deep dive into Dead Alive HERE.
Want more from this series? Just search below;
