Dead Alive

UPC: 031398144366

Studio: Lionsgate

MPAA Rating: NR   Contains:[Violence, Adult Situations, Not For Children, Profanity, Gore]

Summary: Director Peter Jackson's second feature cheerfully trumps the gross-out quotient of his splatterfest debut, the appropriately named Bad Taste. The tone is cartoonishly comic, and the premise is simple: The village dweeb (Timothy Balme) is trying to maintain a budding romance with the sweet Paquita (Diana Penalver) while concealing the fact that his overbearing mum (Elizabeth Moody, in an amazing good-sport performance) is a flesh-eating zombie. (She owes her condition to a bite from a "Sumatran Rat Monkey" at the local zoo.) Complicating matters even further is Les, a greedy uncle (Ian Watkin), who suspects that his sister has died and is eager to occupy her elegantly furnished Victorian mansion. The climax is a housewarming party Les throws to celebrate his "inheritance;" what he really gets is his comeuppance, thanks to his sister and her similarly afflicted zombie pals, who burst out of their basement prison to turn the guests into appetizers. Our hero finally cuts a wide swath through the zombie party crashers with the help of a rotary blade lawn mower, leaving the house awash in blood and body parts in order to save his romance. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi

Category: Horror

Features: Theatrical Trailer

Dead Alive

Format: Blu-ray

Release Date: 10/04/2011

Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Alternate Wide Screen

Audio: DHMA null

Runtime: 97 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) English

Subtitles: English,Spanish

Tom Wiener

If a gorier movie than Dead Alive has been made, it's hard to imagine it. On the other hand, if a funnier horror film than Dead Alive has been made, only a few candidates would qualify. (Return of the Living Dead would be one.) Peter Jackson and his collaborators have no constraints about piling up one outrageous sight gag involving body parts and gruesome dispatchings after another, and even if this kind of comedy isn't for all tastes, it does provide a smorgasboard of laughs for those who love their humor dark and exaggerated. Like the great animator Tex Avery, Jackson has a wicked eye for gags that stretch our conception of what bodies can do. He also understands that simply killing zombies with a shot to the head -- as in the grandfather of modern zombie horror films, Night of the Living Dead -- is elegantly simple, but pretty boring, too. Kitchen appliances and household tools figure heavily in the slaughterhouse of a party that is the raison d'etre of the film, but it's the power lawnmower finale which reduces everyone to a mere blade of grass in the lawn of life. Jackson realized that he had gone as far as he could with this genre and his next film, Heavenly Creatures, was a well-crafted psychological thriller which retained his eye for arresting visuals. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Peter Vere-Jones  Actor 
Brian Sergent  Actor 
Duncan Smith  Actor 
Frances Walsh  Actor 
Forrest J. Ackerman  Actor 
Ken Hammon  Actor 
James Grant  Actor 
Peter Jackson  Actor 
George Port  Actor 
Tony Hiles  Actor 
Jim Booth  Actor 
Chris Short  Actor 
Jamie Selkirk  Actor 
Sarah Scott Davis  Actor 
Nick Ward  Actor 
Angela Louise Robinson  Actor 
James Booth  Producer 
Peter Jackson  Director 
Peter Jackson  Screenwriter 
Jim Booth  Producer 
Peter Dasent  Composer (Music Score) 
Frances Walsh  Screenwriter 
Stephen Sinclair  Screenwriter 
Timothy Balme  Actor 
Diana Penalver  Actor 
Elizabeth Moody  Actor 
Ian Watkin  Actor 
Brenda Kendall  Actor 
Stuart Devenie  Actor 
Davina Whitehouse  Actor 

Country: New Zealand