Braindead aka Dead Alive (1992)

Reposted from November 2005



This lovely New Zealandish movie, titled Braindead in its home country, redefined zombie movies for me. Zombies aren't always your shuffling, stupid undead. They're also not your genetic/disease mutation that has super-human strength. These zombies were caused by an evil rat monkey from Africa. It bites poor Lionel's beloved mother and she prompty pusses up into a zombie. Did I forget to mention? These are no average dried up corpses. They drip, bleed, ooze, chunk, and all sorts of nasty shit. Once Lionel's mother bites the nurse who comes to help her, a full level 4 epidemic breaks out. Lionel, in the sake of her mother's good name, imprisons the initial seed zombies in the basement using animal tranquilizers, but you know that can't last forever. The zombies even go after each other. This is one of the goriest movies I have ever seen. It takes quite a bit to make the BigKilla cringe from a scene. But I almost did... once. I was loving it though. I never thought a lawnmower could make such an effective weapon against zombies. The special effects are amazing, even by current standards. Dead Alive is fucked up, and I loved it.








- Braindead @ Wikipedia
- Braindead @ IMDB