Hello again Empire! Its been a while has it not? I've been juggling school, YouTube, social media, and this wiki for a while now. I have also made the decision to change the title of the article series to Johnos Reviews because that more closely represents what I do on it anyways. Not to mention the fact that it is no longer a daily thing. Now that we have that out of the way, lets get to the movie. Before going on to bring the works of J.R.R. Tolkien to life in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, he produced a goofy and extremely gory zombie horror/comedy called Dead Alive. This movie has things it did wrong, but many more things it did right. Lets take a look.
The Plot[]
We open on a retrieval mission on Skull Island (which is weird, since Jackson also directed the King Kong remake). They came to get the rare and mystical Rat Monkey. If it bites someone, they slowly zombify. They flee from the natives but in the process one of the men is bitten. First a bite is found on his hand, so they chop off his hand. Then they see another bite on his other arm, so they cut that off too. Then they see a bite on his head, which, of coarse, they cut off as well. The Rat Monkey is then taken to a zoo in New Zealand. There we meet our protagonists. We have a Latin girl named Paquita, who is told by her fortune teller mother that a man will come into her life soon who she will fall in love with. What she gets is the skiddish Lionel, who lives in perpetual fear of his mother. Lionel and Paquita start going out soon after. They go to the zoo where the Rat Monkey is. They see it kill a normal monkey in the adjacent cage for an apple core. We then find out, as Lionel and Paquita calm down on a nearby bench, that Lionel's mother followed him. She gets too close to the Rat Monkey's cage and is bitten. She squashes the little bugger's head with her heel. She slowly starts to rot and zombify. Some guests come over for dinner and she and Lionel try desperately to conceal her rotting state. The next day she dies and fully becomes a zombie. She eats Paquita's dog, then tries to attack Lionel. A nurse comes from nearby to help but she gets partially decapitated. Lionel then tries to fight of the zombified pair, while Paquita is completely oblivious to everything going on downstairs. He then manages to lock them both in the basement. This is one of the things that I didn't like about the film. He keeps it a secret right up until the end. That was some major horse shit. But anyway, he finds that he can put them to sleep with tranquilizers, but only temporarily. One day, he leaves home to visit Paquita, and his mother breaks out and follows him. She is hit by a trolley and sent flying through the window of Paquita's family's store. Then we see Lionel's mother's funeral. Obviously some crazy and comical things go down here, but I've come to question if it was all necessary. He tries to tranquilize her before she runs amok during the funeral, which I understand, but he does it after she is already in the coffin, which is made of some pretty solid materials, as well as being screwed shut. She only breaks free after he removes the screws. If she couldn't get out of just the coffin, and she was about to be buried six feet under the ground, why the hell would you even need to tranquilize her in the first place? Anyway, he has a brief tussle with her that ends up going out into the church in front of everyone. Both luckily and unluckily, he manages to get her with the syringe before anyone sees a corpse wrestling him. The downside is he looks like a total wacko. After she is buried, again pretty unnecessary, he digs up her grave to tranquilize her again. Shes in the fucking ground already! Just leave it alone! She only gets out because he digs her up! (Sorry, I just thought I'd add what I yelled at the TV when this happened.) He is then attacked by a gang of muggers. They beat him up and the leader pees on the grave. Lionel's mother then reaches out of the grave and grabs the poor guy by his dong. She then tears him apart and throws him. He then becomes a zombie and infects another member of the gang. Lionel is then cornered by three zombies. But then, and I'm not joking, the priest comes from nowhere and starts kung-fu fighting the zombies while spouting cheesy one-liners. Its definitely the highlight of the film. He kicks the head off of the gang underling, but it lands on his neck and bites him. He then lunges at the gang leader in a final attempt to finish him, but is deflected and is impaled on a statue. Let us have a moment of silence for the coolest Christian to ever live... Now back to the silly movie. Lionel then takes all of the remaining zombies home. He tries to feed them food with tranquilizer, but they make a hilarious mess of things. The gang leader tries to eat with a spoon, but he stabs it out the back of his head and one of the others eats the food off the spoon, the priest and the nurse start to come on to one another(that's weird, I know), its just goofy. Then Lionel's uncle comes along, saying he deserves the inheritance from the will. Lionel gets him out of the house without him finding the zombies. Lionel then moves them to the basement and ties them to the chairs. He and Paquita don't see each other anymore, as Lionel is getting driven crazy by the whole mess. One day, Lionel comes back to find the basement door open. The zombies are still there, and asleep. But Lionel's uncle shows up. He thinks that Lionel killed all of these people. He then threatens to call the police if he doesn't give him the inheritance. Lionel agrees. Then his uncle invites a whole bunch of people over for a party. Paquita walks in after she sees that there is a party there. Lionel's uncle tries to flirt with her but he kicks him in the balls. That becomes a running gag in the chaotic climax soon to come. She finds the zombies and Lionel in the basement. They then decide to use poison on them and bury them down there. But, instead of using poison, they accidentally give them steroids or something and they come back stronger and faster. They break out and start attacking the party. The chaos that follows would take too long to describe in detail, but its a hilarious and gory mess, I can tell you that much for sure. At the end of it all, there is still one zombie that hasn't shown up yet: Mother. She has mutated into a big ugly monster.Lionel and Paquita battle her on the roof as the house begins to burn down due to an explosion during the chaos. It opens up and swallows Lionel whole, but he tears his way out. Mother then falls through the roof and Lionel and Paquita ride a telephone wire as a zipline to safety. The End.
What I Thought.[]
Though the plot takes some explaining, its pretty straightforward if you watch it. I thought it was really good for what it was. I enjoy a good gory movie, and this one delivered. There was also the comedy, which I didn't really expect, which really held the crazy plot together. The characters are likable, they each have their little quirks and goofy habits. And there is gore galore. It's definitely one of the goriest films ever made. They had to take out most of the blood during the climax to keep an R rating. They substituted the blood with pink goo and plenty of body parts and organs. Great film to watch on a Friday night with friends or alone.
Afterword[]
Not bad. 8/10. I had lots of fun watching it, and I guarantee you will too. Now on to other things. The new schedule is as follows: When I see a new movie that I haven't seen before, I'll immediately do a review afterwards. Even if it takes me all night I'll keep working until its done. Does that work for y'all? I hope so because that's all I can offer at this time. Also, on special occasions, I'll review a movie I've already seen. Well that's all for today I guess. Its 2:30 in the morning here right now and I have to be up in a few hours to get ready for school. Have a good one out there! BYE!!!!