31 Days of Horror: Braindead

Well with Zombieland opening to great reviews and a zombie walk for the food bank going on, I guess today is a zombie kind of day.

Braindead from 1992 is also known in the America's as Dead Alive. This is the third film from a certain New Zealander director that some how managed to go on to win an Oscar for a certain epic trilogy in 2004.

It's not the scariest zombie movie out but it's most certainly the goriest and one of the funniest. The movie used over 300 liters of fake movie blood and at times pumped out five gallons of blood per second on screen it's one of my favorites of the horror / comedy genre.

After an entertaining opening about an explorer who captures a rare Sumatran Rat-Monkey (whose bite is extremely deadly) the film moves to Wellington, New Zealand and introduces us to Lionel Cosgrove (Timothy Balme) whose mother (Elizabeth Moody) is an overbearing monster. He sneaks out one day to flirt with the local shopkeeper's sexy daughter, Paquita (Diana Peñalver) at the local zoo. Mother follows them and is bitten by the very same Sumatran Rat-Monkey that we see at the start of the film. She starts to get very sick and develops a sudden hungry for flesh. Her condition gets worse until she dies and then comes back. Lionel goes to great lengths to keep his mother's condition a secret and to cover up after her - indiscretions.

This movie is very wrong at times and there's at least one scene which will guarantee that you will never eat pudding / cream again. Ever. The ending is one of the bloodiest you will ever see. And to top it all off - the film is extremely funny at times - if you have a very twisted sense of humour. The best way to see this film is to watch the original uncut film which ran at 104 minutes. For some reason the US release ran at a mere 85 minutes with second unrated 97 minute version. For a director who has released extra long extended cut versions of The Lord of the Rings and a unnecessary extended cut of his already long King Kong remake, it's really strange that the 104 minute version isn't available in North America.