Dead Alive (

1992

) ½

I always remember how I watched my favorite movies for the first time, whether it was sat on the ragged old couch in my dad's man-cave as was the case with Total Recall (1990), or in the first apartment I had in NYC, sipping a strong beer and taking in Harakiri (1962). I first saw Dead Alive when I was still in High school. It was Halloween night, and I and a couple of friends were clustered around the TV in my childhood den, for a double feature. We had just finished The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and been thoroughly traumatized by the horrific proceedings; we were ready for something a little lighter, and a lot more fun. Under the circumstances, It would have been hard to choose a better second feature then Dead Alive, which despite being quite possibly the goriest film in the annals of New Zealand history, is charming, light-hearted, and an absolute delight. We met each escalation of the film's conflict with gasps of disbelief, whole-bodied guffaws, and repeated shouts of “gross” and “did you see that shit?” Dead Alive is very much a film aimed at the adolescent male's sensibilities, embracing the edgy humor of the 1990s and early 2000s that would probably get you banned from polite society today. So, if your a boy between the ages of 13 and 21, go out and get this movie right now! Preferably with a couple of your peers, as a film like this is best when shared. If you don't fall into that category, you still probably should watch this movie too, because Dead Alive is the kind of masterpiece that transcends its niche target audience and truly has something for everyone.

We begin our story with a brief sequence there mostly to serves as a reminder about just how much Peter Jackson loves King Kong (1933) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). An explorer flees a remote island with a mysterious animal in a wooden crate. When the natives try to stop him, the explorer first shows his permit and when that fails to convince the barbarians of his good intentions, he whips out an Uzi and starts spraying lead. The natives are momentarily scattered, but as soon as they realize he doesn't have enough bullets to shoot all of them, they collect themselves and give chase, armed with blow-darts and spears. From there the scene transitions more or less into a straight homage to Indiana Jones's famous opening scene, as the explorer runs to his aids and shouts for them to “Start her up!” before fleeing amid a hail of darts and javelins (though Jackson didn't have the budget for a plane, so they have to rely on a jeep). The only problem is that in all the excitement, the explorer got a few scratches from the animal he was transporting. It seems like it is carrying some nasty diseases too because as soon as the native guides see the scratches they start lopping off limbs to keep the infection contained. First a leg, then an arm then the poor bloke's head when they discover a scratch on his forehead. The guides sell the animal to the Wellington Zoo to recoup their losses and the credits roll.

The prologue won't have much to do with the plot for some time, indeed after the title card, it seems like we've somehow stumbled into a completely different film. It's 1957 in Wellington New Zealand, and for the first 10 or so minutes we're almost exclusively focused on the blooming romance between a shy young man from a rich family, Lionel Cosgrove, and a supermarket checkout girl named Paquita. Initially, Paquita is not interested in him, regarding the meek young man as something of an unwanted nuisance. However, after a tarot card reading from her grandma, Paquita realizes that she and Lionel are fated lovers, and starts to go after him with a reckless abandon. The only problem is, the grandma's tarot deck also predicts a dangerous oppression will block their love, which turns out to be none other than Lionel's mom. To be fair, Lionel is such a big mama's boy that he's probably only a few years off from dressing up in her clothes and killing passing tourists in the shower (the creepy old Victorian house he lives in doesn't help matters any). One can understand his subservience and sympathize with his position because Vera Cosgrove is not so much a strong woman as a force of nature. Anybody she raised would probably wind up as much a spineless mama's boy as Lionel.

The film really kicks off in earnest when Paquita and Lionel go on a date to the zoo, where they run into the animal from the film's intro: the Sumatran Rat-Monkey. The Rat-Monkey (supposedly the product of rats from Skull Island raping local monkeys) is a stop motion abomination that terrorizes the other monkeys at the zoo with a violence that seems wholly gratuitous (a statement that could be applied to the entire movie now that I think about it). Vera is spying on the two young lovers and makes the mistake of getting too close to Rat-Monkey's cage, giving the nasty little beast a chance to bite her. Vera responds by caving the creature's head in with her high heels, and then implausibly affecting weakness and asking pitifully for Lionel to take her home. From there, her condition rapidly deteriorates: her speech becomes slow and robotic, her flesh begins to rot right off her face, and she starts to develop an unsettling voracious appetite for raw meat. Vera initially refuses all treatment though, because Nora Matheson, the president of the Woman's League of Wellington, is coming for lunch and Vera absolutely refuses to cancel. The luncheon scene is probably the point at which you'll either start laughing uncontrollably at Dead Alive or shut off the movie in disgust. It's about the most effective bit of gross-out comedy that I've ever seen, capturing that elusive quality of being both disturbing and laughably absurd. It's helped in no small part by Albert Matheson, Nora's husband, who is oblivious to all the grotesque things going on around him so long as his steak is well-cooked and who even goes so far as to demand a custard after the disastrous main course.

Once the Mathersons depart, Nora in abject terror and Albert with a cheerful smile, Vera gets much, much worse and makes the jump to a full-fledged zombie. Even Lionel concedes that there's cause for concern when she eats Paquita's dog (“Your mother ate my dog!?”) and turns the nurse Lionel calls into another zombie. Under the circumstances, I think I would call the cops and leave this mess to the proper authorities, but Lionel is a bit less savvy than me and so decides to keep the whole thing a secret. He locks up his mom and her nurse in the basement and keeps them sedated with tranquilizers he buys from the local veterinarian (actually an escaped Nazi war criminal, who still wears his SS uniform under his lab coat). Obviously, one mama's boy isn't going to be able to keep a secret like this concealed for long, but at least initially Lionel is lucky in that the people who discover the secret are all either immediately killed or turned into zombies themselves. Still, after a few days the number of zombies he's stuck hiding in the basement has ballooned to four, add into that a zombie baby (born almost immediately after two of the zombies have sex) and he's in for a real headache.

It must come as a relief for Lionel when his uncle Les discovers the whole sordid business and uses it as a chance to blackmail his nephew into giving him the house. Though, in retrospect holding a massive party there as a celebration before the zombies were cleared out may have been a mistake. To Lionel's credit, he was at least trying to put down the walking dead but when he accidentally gives them a stimulant instead of a toxin, meaning now he's got to deal with four unstoppable super zombies running rampant through the party, leaving a small army of regular zombies in their wake as they devour the guests. It's up to Lionel to clean up this mess, save the woman he loves, and finally cut the apron-strings his mom has kept him bound with for most of his adult life.

Dead Alive strikes the perfect balance of horror and comedy, not by toning down the disturbing imagery as some films do, but by ratcheting it up well past the point where your brain can take it seriously. Cutting off somebody's head is disturbing, splitting it in half with a pair of garden sheers, and leaving the top half to roam about on the floor harmlessly, is fucking hilarious. It's obvious from the start of the climactic sequence that Loony Tunes rules are now in effect. Take for instance the scene where one zombie gets disemboweled and then his guts leap out and try to strangle someone. There's an image that you just can't take seriously no matter how hard you try, the fact that the sentient pile of intestines has a cute, almost puppy-dog like face only makes the whole thing more ridiculous.

It's not so much the gore that makes Dead alive so memorable though, as the little touches with which Jackson deploys these gross-out effects. Certainly, everyone who has seen the movie will remember the scene where Lionel plows through a mob of zombies brandishing a lawnmower as an impromptu weapon (and probably tried to reenact it in a video game or two). Yet to my mind what really stands out is not the oceans of gore created in this scene but the fact that later on, the floor is so soaked with blood that Lionel cannot run away from a mob of zombies. His hoes keep slipping on all the blood and guts! The violence is cartoonish and ludicrous, but it has consistency and lingering effects. Once you accept the film's ludicrous premises, then it doesn't ask any more from your willing suspension of disbelief. Hell, the only point that I think departs from this is the scene where Lionel takes the zombie baby for a walk in the park. Why on earth would he bring the little bugger out in public when he's trying to lay low? It doesn't really make any sense but it's a nice enough visual gag that I'm willing to overlook the gaps in logic.