Braindead / Dead Alive (1992)

Episode 188, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig:  And I’m Craig.

Todd:  Today, we’re hitting another request. This is from Vincent requesting this all the way from Norway. He asked us to do Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead, better known stateside as Dead Alive due to the fact that there’s another horror film called Brain Dead, which we should probably do sometime. Dead Alive. Now, Craig, I have a really I have to full disclosure here. This is one of my favorite movies. In college, I stumbled across this movie. Absolutely loved it.  This is my first introduction to Peter Jackson. And as soon as I saw this movie, I got it on VHS. I showed it to all my friends. I’ve watched it. I don’t know, so many times. You know, I’m not the kind of guy who rewatches movies, generally. Yeah. And aside from some of those when I was a kid, you know, you would just tend to rewatch movies.  I don’t usually do that. But as far as horror movies go, I think I could kinda name on one hand, probably this movie, Evil Dead, Sorority House Massacre 2, maybe Army of Darkness that I’ve seen more than 2 or 3 times. Mhmm. And I will actually think about just popping in. That is how special this movie is for me. So it’s gonna be very hard for me to be a 100% objective about this.

Craig:  That’s okay.

Todd:  But coming back to it, I actually hadn’t seen it in years. I probably haven’t seen it for a good 8 or 9 years. So I actually was a little surprised at some of the things I’d forgotten about it. But for me, it would just made it even more charming. So that’s my history with this movie. How about you?

Craig:  I don’t know. I know I’ve seen it before. When you said let’s do Brain Dead, I was like, oh, I’ve never seen that. You’re like and you said it was Peter Jackson. And I said, wait, it’s not the one with the Sumatran rat monkey, is it? And you’re like, yeah, yeah it is. It’s the one. It’s because it’s because I

Vincent:  only knew it

Todd:  as Dead Alive.

Craig:  I didn’t know, that that wasn’t the original title. And I don’t remember when I first saw it. Maybe in college or graduate school, something like that. Gosh, I don’t really have I had some memories, like, I I remembered some of the effects and stuff. I remembered it being super, super bloody, which it is. It’s really gory. And I remembered it being funny. This time around, watching it, I don’t know.  I’m glad that you’re going to be super enthusiastic about it because I feel bad saying this because I feel like any good horror fan should just be, like, peeing their pants about this movie. Because it is so good in so many ways and like it’s innovative and creative and it’s clearly made with a lot of love. I don’t know. I just don’t know if I was in the wrong state of mind yesterday and by wrong state of mind, I mean sober. Wow. And I don’t know. Like, it was good. I still appreciated a lot of it.  I just I didn’t love it.

Todd:  But I’m

Craig:  gonna pretend like I did. No.

Todd:  You gotta be completely honest.

Craig:  I feel like I feel like I should. Like, it’s one of those movies that I can watch. I’m like, oh, you should love this. Put me in such a butthole. So I don’t know. Maybe talking about it that this happens sometimes. Sometimes when I talk about something with you, I I appreciate it more. So we’ll see.

Todd:  This is gonna be good for me because it’s gonna be a good counterpoint. It’s gonna force me to have reevaluate things in a way I wouldn’t have normally. And so it’s gonna hopefully add some much needed depth to our usual shallow conversation. You know, when I first stumbled out of this movie, Peter Jackson wasn’t really a household name. Mhmm. Now we everybody, he’s so famous. He’s Oh, yeah. Especially for taking on that incredible project of Lord of the Rings, which was very, very well received.  Yeah. Then he went and did his dream project, King Kong, which, depending on who you talk to, it’s overly long and, maybe just a little too grandiose. And then he went on to do The Hobbit movies. And I’m not sure I’ve ever talked to anybody who didn’t think that The Hobbit movies, which is a case of where he took this extremely simple and quite nice and well regarded story, and just went overboard with expanding into this complex three film thing. I guess he was trying to provide a nice lead up to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yeah. But, Todd, I watched the second Hobbit movie, and I could barely get through it. And I didn’t even I know.  Bother to watch the third one. It’s just insane.

Craig:  Were there 3? I don’t remember. I thought there were only 2. But, anyway 3? Yeah. Yeah. I agree. But The Lord of the Rings, I mean Oh. All the attention all the attention it gets, it it Todd deserves it. I mean, those were great movies.  And I love Peter Jackson’s King Kong. I love it. Like, I I I weep at the end. Oh, good. Like, I am an emotional wreck at the end of that movie. I love it.

Todd:  He’s always been kind of accused of of well, lately, especially, and even with King Kong, I think, was accused a little bit of preferring spectacle over almost anything else. I mean, he’s got I don’t know. You know, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. He’s really good at doing this action stuff. Mhmm. It’s just all this complex action and things. It got a little ridiculous in some of these movies. I remember in The Hobbit movie where they’re, like, riding down the water at a barrels and people are, like, straddling 2 barrels and stuff while they’re fighting.  And it’s, like, oh, come on. It it gets a little silly.

Craig:  I remember that.

Todd:  But it has its roots in these kind of films. In fact, once I got to know him from this movie, I went back and saw his even earlier films. And Peter Jackson is a total film geek. He’s a guy after my own heart. He’s the kinda guy who grew up just enamored with stop motion and with special effects and makeup effects and practical stuff. And that was kind of his entree into the films. Like, his very first movie, Bad Taste, which is also very similar to this on a much smaller scale, very low budget, but it’s about aliens kind of invading this small New Zealand town. It’s got a lot of gore, a lot of gross out stuff, but very inventive.  Really makes a lot of use of the low budget. And for its low budget, it has these goofy, but they still work practical effects in it. And he went from that movie to make this insane have you heard of Meet the Feebles?

Craig:  I’ve heard of it and I wanna see it, but I haven’t seen it.

Todd:  It’s hard to find. Now not anymore, of course. You can find anything on the Internet. But at the time that I was looking for it, it was very hard to find. I had to, like, order it special. I think it was, like, an imported VHS or something. Uh-huh. But it is basically the Muppets on crack.  It’s the Muppets, but it’s taken this total twist and there’s, like, a bunny that just has sex with tons of women that, like, there’s, like, a Kermit the Frogish type character that’s strung out on heroin. It’s this total dysfunctional, hilarious, and in totally bad taste, Muppets. And so, it’s funny that he goes from these kind of movies. And I I you know, Dead Alive isn’t too far from that as far as taste goes. But then he comes into these very mainstream film. He did Heavenly Creatures before he ever did,

Craig:  Oh, I forgot about that.

Todd:  Yeah. So he’s got he’s got a range, and he’s a very, very good story teller. And he partners up with a woman named Fran Walsh, who, right, you know, in a lot of these films was his co writer and, was very responsible for the making The Lord of Rings as good as they were. And I the one thing I have to say about this movie, especially going back and seeing it again, is it is a very, I think, very well constructed story. Mhmm. It’s got a good plot. It starts out super interesting. It never lets up, but it builds in a very natural and interesting way, compounding these problem after problem on this character.  Mhmm. It’s never boring. And it just you don’t really it’s not super predictable either. Like, you really don’t know where it’s gonna go. And I just think it’s a great example. If I were teaching, like, screenwriting to students, I would hold up this screenplay as an example of a very well constructed story for the screen.

Craig:  Sure. Yeah. I I I mean, I liked it. The thing is, you know, I I say that I just wasn’t super in love with it. But I don’t really have anything bad to say about it. I I the I didn’t think that it had really any problems. I thought that it was very charming. The lead guy, the his character’s name is Lionel.  He’s played by Tim the bomb, of course. I don’t know any of these actors because they’re New Zealand actors. And I don’t know

Todd:  I I Who cares about them anyway? You know?

Craig:  Or I know. I didn’t even look into their history. I don’t know. But, you know, he’s a good looking guy, but still kind of like a guy next door kinda guy. And Yeah. But, you know, he finds himself in these, you know, terrible situations. And and you root for him, like, because he is such a nice guy. And the plot is, like you said, it’s not incredibly complex or anything, but it does stay interesting and it builds.  And I was always interested in what was going to come next and how he was gonna deal with these things that were coming up. I agree with you. It’s it’s well written.

Todd:  It’s charming and endearing in this way that, well, I would say at its heart, it’s the story of a man’s love for his mother.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  You know? And and that’s what’s so endearing about this character is he’s just this kind of pathetic, but charming and easygoing kind of guy who’s clearly overshadowed by his mother, who is Uh-huh. This total witch. Right. Very stereotypical. Actually, every character in this movie and part of what makes it so fun is just the cartoonish nature of it. And that really goes back to the characters, like, every single one of them. Even though they’re this sort of stereotype, they still feel very human and real. Don’t they? I feel like that.  I mean, the mother, maybe not. And some of it, like the priest and all that. Of course, they’re very cartoonish. But this guy

Craig:  And my uncle. Yeah.

Todd:  Yeah. But but still, like, it’s not distracting. You know? It doesn’t it just feels fun and not, Yeah. Not like poor writing or or poor acting or anything like that. The very first scene is a bit it kind of introduces the Sumatran rat monkey.

Craig:  Yeah. I love that. Which we don’t find out until later, but, like, they later somebody says, yeah. They say that, like, the rats from the slave ships, like, got off the boat and raped the tree monkeys. It made the sumat rat monkeys. And you see this thing. And what is it? Is it it’s is it stop motion? Is that I mean, you only see it for a little while, but it’s stop motion. It’s so ugly, but it’s hilarious.

Todd:  Yeah. It’s hilariously ugly. It’s somebody it’s stop motion that somebody did in a basement somewhere, but, you know, it’s still kinda cute and it’s disgusting.

Craig:  It looks it looks like a rat monkey. Yeah.

Todd:  Absolutely. Not like anything that somebody would wanna bring back to a zoo. Let’s put it that way.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  But but that’s exactly what this is. We’re on Skull Island, I think.

Craig:  Yeah. Because that’s that’s King Kong’s Island.

Todd:  Yeah. Exactly. It’s cool.

Vincent:  He had

Todd:  this, you know, clearly he loved King Kong so much. He had

Vincent:  this throwback. Little would he know he’d go on to direct King Kong. Right.

Todd:  That’s so cool.

Craig:  They could have called King Kong, like, rat monkey 2. Curse of the Kong or something.

Todd:  I think he would’ve had a much narrower audience if he’d done that. Anyway, there’s this guy. I guess he’s a zoologist. And he has this permit that he can come in from the New Zealand government and take a specimen back. And he’s got this rat monkey in a cage. We don’t really see it because the cage is very enclosed. But they’re running from natives. It’s all quite stereotypical.  But, also, this is set back in the past. And that was one thing I forgot about this movie is it takes place, like, in the fifties.

Craig:  Is it? The fifties? I couldn’t I wrote it down. Yeah. Yeah. You’re right. 1957.

Todd:  Mhmm. And so, you know, their natives are chasing him, blah blah blah, and they’re escaping. And he gets on they get in the truck, and he’s got his local tour guide with him, and they take off. But in the midst of all of this drama, he ends up getting bit through the cage by this rat monkey. And as soon as the his guides see that he’s bit by this monkey, suddenly they screech to a halt. They kick him out of the truck and they point at his, at his arm and goes, you have the bite. And, he’s like, what? What? What? And they hack off his hand. And then they’re like, there’s over there.  And they see a scratch on his arm, and they cut off his other arm. And then they look at his head, and they see there’s a scratch on his head. And they cut off his head, and then we get the credits. So, clearly, there’s something wrong with the getting a bite from the Sumatran Sumatran rat monkey.

Craig:  But Mhmm.

Todd:  It doesn’t stop those guys from making sure that thing makes it back to New Zealand and getting their money out of it before they before they go. So this ends up in the zoo. That’s the opening to the movie. Meanwhile, we go to this guy. Actually, it starts out really more focused on this woman. She’s, like, a Mhmm. A Spanish gal, very young, cute, runs a little shop. She’s enamored by this guy who comes by and gives deliveries to them.  And his her older, like, grandmother type character pulls her in the back and says, let me read your fortune. And she’s going to read this fortune because she noticed that her granddaughter or whatever maybe daughter, I don’t know, likes this guy.

Vincent:  There will be one romance, and it shall last forever, and you will become

Todd:  And she lays it out a couple cards down and and the girl goes, well, what’s this card? And it’s like the doom card or something like that. And she’s like, oh, that’s nothing. That’s nothing. She just starts to put her cards away. So she thinks it’s about this guy. But pretty soon, the main character, Lionel, comes into the shop and he’s this total buffoon. Like, he’s bumping into things and knocking fruit down and everything like that. And she’s just a little, put off by him until some of the things that he knocks over turn out in that shape of the star and the crescent.  It’s like 2 pencils and, like, a piece of licorice or something. And as soon as she sees this, like, her whole attitude towards him completely changes. And now, she’s like, I’ve gotta get with this guy. And he’s like, probably never been approached by a woman before. And so he just sort of backs out of the shop. And so the next part of this movie is her just constantly imposing herself upon this guy who really just would rather take care of his mother. And it’s not like he wouldn’t want to be with her, but it seems like his mother is just a full time project, and he has no time in his life for anything else.

Vincent:  Well, it’s

Craig:  funny because that’s what that’s one of the things that makes him so endearing. The first guy, the the sexy delivery guy or whatever, like, he’s this hunky guy and she’s taken with him and then she’s not taken with Lionel at first, but then eventually she is. But, you know, he’s just awkward. I think he’s a really handsome guy. Like

Todd:  He is.

Craig:  Yeah. I I think that the only reason that he hasn’t had girlfriends or whatever is because he’s so put upon by his mother. Not only because he feels, I guess, you know, it’s his mom, so he wants to take care of her, but she totally exploits that too and she’s incredibly controlling. When she even finds out that there’s a girl interested in him, doesn’t she, like, forbid him to see her?

Todd:  Something like that. What she calls her, a sweaty, greasy Sweat

Craig:  shop girl.

Todd:  Girl. Yeah. I’m like, I forbid you to see her. That kind of thing. Yeah.

Craig:  You feel bad for him. It was it it felt like there were definite, Norman Bates type. You know? Like, he’s not a crazy psychopath, but you feel like give it a couple years

Todd:  and Right.

Craig:  Maybe he could be. Because that’s, you know, that’s what it seems like. It’s that kind of mother son relationship where she’s just incredibly controlling. And the actress that plays her, Elizabeth Moody, she’s again, I don’t recall ever having seen her or anything, but she’s got kind of a Bette Davis vibe. Like, she doesn’t look like Bette Davis, but she’s just kind of got that kind of husky voice and

Clip:  There’s a beacon. Right. There, under the bridge. Horrid little creature scuttled right in front of me. I thought I told you to spray this house.

Craig:  And she guilts him all the time, like, that he’s not good enough to her and he’s not taking care of her when, really, he’s bending over backwards to Yeah. Satisfy her every whim. But, yeah, that’s what I mean, and that’s what it becomes. Paquita really, really is, putting the moves on him. And he’s interested.

Vincent:  Mhmm.

Craig:  But, the mom has got a close eye on it and she doesn’t like it. But Paquita somehow convinces Lionel to take her to the zoo. Like, he just mentions the zoo and she’s like, yeah, I’d love to go. Thanks for inviting me. Like, not exactly in those words, but like she totally invites herself.

Vincent:  Yeah.

Craig:  And so they go off to the zoo and they have a funny little like it’s so many parts of it, especially here in the beginning are played so light. Yeah. Like it’s like, oh, here’s a fun little zoo day. Funny, you know, music in the background. It feels kind of very fifties romance. And they go around the zoo and they see all the animals and it’s all very cute. And then they see the monkey house and they’re watching

Vincent:  these cute monkeys when all

Craig:  of a sudden, this Why

Todd:  Why would you even have it in the zoo? It’s not even pleasant to look at. There’s

Craig:  Oh, god. No. It’s hideous.

Todd:  And, the mother has been following them out there because, again, she’s very controlling. And, she ends up against the cage and gets her arm bitten by this Sumatran rat monkey right on her wrist. And she lets out a scream, and he finds her, and they take her home.

Craig:  Not before she she stomps it.

Todd:  That’s right. She’s such a nice touch in this movie that she herself is almost a worse character than anybody else. Yeah. She just stomps it dead with her heel of her thing. So the rat monkey’s dead. They go back home. And this begins the mother’s slow and very comical deterioration. And it’s really deep because you hate this mom, so it’s fun to kinda see these things happen to her.  There’s really very little sympathy for her character in this movie. She’s super excited that she has become the, she’s a candidate for the president of this women’s organization

Vincent:  Uh-huh.

Todd:  That is told to us earlier on. And so after he brings her home, and he goes up, and he’s sitting by her bed, and she just looks like hell. And he unwraps the bandage on her arm, and she has this this wound that’s like it has a heartbeat of its own. It’s pulsing, and it’s, like It’s

Craig:  a kid.

Todd:  Starting to ooze things. And he’s got this little, cotton ball that he’s using to dab it, and it’s doing absolutely nothing. And it’s so funny. And then come come to the door, all of a sudden, are 2 representatives from this league that are going to talk with her. And so it’s, like, her big day. And he’s, like, we should probably tell them to go home. And she’s, like, no. And she throws them out of the way and goes to the goes to the mirror to start putting on her makeup for them.  And the first thing she does is try to put on some eyeliner or something. I don’t know what it was. And a piece of skin just, like, peels off her face and she just looks in the mirror and goes, He goes,

Craig:  oh, Todd. It’s so gross.

Todd:  It’s so gross, but it’s so funny. And and he, just being the doting son, barely skips a beat. He goes and gets, like, some some glue and tries to paste it back on. And this is the kind of thing this is the shtick for the movie. Right? It’s just him increasingly trying to control the situation as it’s slowly spiraling out of control. It’s very reminiscent, actually, of Evil Dead in that way. Right? I mean

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  Very reminiscent of Evil Dead, where Bruce Campbell just, like, gets piled upon and piled upon massive problems after another and ends up covered in gore and just at his wits end by the end of it. Yeah. But for this one, it’s just so charming because it his love for his mother never wavers, even though she becomes this huge, you know, monster by the end of it. He still is trying to salvage the situation. He just doesn’t know what else to do. So, Yeah. They go down, and then they have and what I the other thing I kinda like about this movie is it starts out with this truly gross out stuff, like, kind of stomach churning, disgusting things, like this scene where they’re having dinner. And it’s comical.  It’s super comical. But this husband and wife who have come to visit are sitting across from each other at the table, and they’re bickering a little bit while the son is sitting at the end of the table, and the mom is at the other end of the table, and she’s clearly completely gone. Like, she can’t even, like, put stuff in her mouth. There are pieces of her falling apart, and they’re all trying to be rather polite about it and act as though it’s not going on.

Craig:  Well, the husband is just completely oblivious. Yeah. Like, the wife notices these things, but the husband doesn’t notice anything. The wife tries to get them out of there at some point, and, the husband’s like, before dessert? And and so the guy brings out this custard and and or Lionel brings it out, and the guy’s like, oh, it’s been forever since I’ve had a good custard. And he starts eating it. He’s like, it’s so good. And then, like, the mom just, like it’s just so gross. Like, the puss just, like, squirts out of her into his custard, and then he keeps eating it.  Like, it almost makes me wanna throw up just talking about it.

Todd:  It’s so disgusting.

Craig:  And then her freaking the mom’s ear falls off into her custard and she eats that. And, like, the wife is seeing all this. It’s so it’s really gross. If you have a hard time with gore, don’t watch this movie because it is it really is stomach churning. I’m usually okay with gore. The older I get, the harder it is for me for some reason. Yeah. It’s really, really gross.

Todd:  The earlier stuff where the pus is oozing out and people are eating it and that kind of stuff is really, really hard to watch. And then it kind of becomes this comical gore fest that’s so over the top cartoonish that it’s just fun. I don’t know. I just I that’s what I would say. It just becomes really fun. It’s not quite as gross unless you’re really sensitive to it. Yeah. My wife could never watch this movie in in a million years.  Right. The people have said this is the bloodiest movie ever made. You know, who knows? How do you measure that sort of thing? They said by just pure gallons of blood, the final scene in this movie used, like, 300 liters of fake blood alone. And I would put it up there. I don’t I honestly I’m not sure we’ve seen a gorier movie than this one. Have we?

Craig:  Oh, gosh. I don’t know. I mean, the Evil Dead movies are pretty gory.

Todd:  The But even still

Craig:  The and the the Evil Dead remake was pretty gory. I’m pretty sure I’ve read that that record has been broken.

Todd:  Broken by something else?

Craig:  By something else. But whatever. I mean, it’s it’s tons of blood and gore throughout.

Todd:  And it’s purely for the sake of it. I mean, and it’s bald on its face. Like, there are moments in here that are like, you know, some of these older Chinese kung fu movies, you know, where blood will just literally just spray like a fire hose out of someone’s arm or, you know, whatever.

Craig:  Right. Right. It just

Todd:  gets hilarious. It’s hilariously over the top in that way. So that happens and they go and I don’t know. I mean, we don’t have to go beat by beat through every single scene in this film. But basically, what happens is eventually his mother gets more and more sick and still the girl’s coming over and she’s trying to put the moves on him.

Craig:  And the mom eats her dog, her big dog. I thought that was so funny. In, like, 30 like, it’s I don’t know. It’s like a like a golden retriever and something like that. And, like it runs up the stairs and you hear I don’t know if you hear like the dog yelp or the mom screams or something and they run up there and the son sees something sticking out of her mouth, and he pulls out. I don’t know if it was the dog’s tail or its leg or what, but, like, the insinuation was that she ate the whole damn dog in, like, 30 seconds. Seconds.

Vincent:  He pulls

Todd:  it’s this long scene. It’s at least 10 seconds long where he pulls this whole hairy thing out of her mouth intact. And then the girl says, your mother ate my dog. And he says, well, she didn’t eat all of it. And the camera pans out, and there’s this huge mess on the bed of, like, the bones and the rest of the dog. It is so funny. And, actually, apparently, the Spanish title of this movie is which literally translates

Craig:  You’re mommy my dog. That’s hilarious.

Todd:  Yeah. Oh, gosh. Dude.

Craig:  I guess, Paquita sees the mom or they’re like, she’s really sick. You need to call the nurse. So the nurse comes over and she’s like, oh, it’s bad. We need to call for an ambulance. While the nurse is calling for an ambulance, the mom dies. Paquita’s upstairs. She doesn’t know the mom has died. She’s packing an overnight bag for her or something.  And the nurse is like, it’s okay, talking to, Lionel. It’s okay, you know, everything’s gonna be all right. There are lots of people that care about you. We’re gonna get you through this. And then, from behind, the mom wakes up, but she’s like a zombie now. And somehow, she cuts the woman’s throat, like, all the way to the back of her spine. Not all the way through, but like Todd her spine so that, like, her head, like, flops back but is still connected. And they use that gag for the rest of the movie.  She’ll write her head, but then at key points that will, like, fall over backwards. Like, oh, it’s so funny.

Todd:  Yeah. Like, her head is like a PEZ dispenser or something.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then the nurse becomes a mom Todd, and they both attack Lytle. And he ends up throwing them both in the basement and then Paquita comes down and she’s like, where’s your mom? And he’s like, they went to the hospital. And she’s like, well, I didn’t even hear the ambulance. And he’s, well, the nurse took her in her car and he just tries to get rid of her which he does. You know, a lot of things happen.

Todd:  They have a funeral for the mom. I don’t remember how but, eventually, he kind of decides she’s sort of decides she’s dead or

Craig:  No. She’s not dead. He goes to some weird doctor. Like, I didn’t even really understand this. German

Todd:  guy. Yeah. Clearly, one of these, like, used to be a Nazi doctor probably and hide now he’s in hiding. It’s It’s another joke.

Craig:  Right. And and he’s only in it for a minute, but Lionel bribes him and and gets some, I guess, like heavy duty tranquilizers. And he keeps tranquil izing his mom and the nun.

Todd:  That’s right.

Craig:  But eventually the mom gets out and she just walks down the street, like, it seems like they’re kind of trying to make it out that when these zombies are zombies, like, they’re kind of mindless and they’ll just eat anything, but then there are other times when they’re, like, driven by something.

Vincent:  Yeah.

Craig:  Like, the mom still is driven to keep Paquita away from Lynel.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  So she breaks out of the house and but she just makes a beeline straight for Paquita’s shop. And right before she gets there, she gets hit by a trolley and thrown through the glass window. And they think she’s dead. Like, we only hear it in exposition dialogue. Like, the priest is talking to somebody and they say that Lionel wanted to take her home. He kept insisting that she wasn’t dead, but they insisted and they took her to the hospital. And now they’re going to bury her, but Lionel’s like sneaking around trying to get to the body because he knows he has to keep it tranked, otherwise she’s gonna wake up, which eventually she does. And she attacks him and, like, they burst into the funeral.  And it looks like he’s

Todd:  Well, there’s this hilarious scene in the bag because they’re late getting mom’s body to the funeral because the funeral directors

Craig:  Oh, Todd. Yeah.

Todd:  They you know, they’ve got this machine that they’re and, of course, it’s it’s not the way it really is. It’s this total cartoonish, like, machine that’s supposed to, I guess, pump the embalming fluid into her. Yeah. But because of the state she’s in, like, the embalming fluid is, like, squirting, like, out her nose and her eyes, and it’s just Oh,

Craig:  it’s so gross.

Todd:  Total mess everywhere. And, apparently, Peter Jackson is there as the assistant. That’s his cameo in the movie as the assistant’s being a bomber.

Craig:  I didn’t notice.

Todd:  They just, like, pop her eyes back in. And, I mean, it’s it’s so cartoonish

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  And put her in her coffin. But then when she’s outside waiting, you know, meanwhile, the service is starting and the coffin hasn’t been pushed out yet. But the priest starts the service, and he’s in the back, getting ready to push the coffin out, Lionel is. And, suddenly, her his mother bursts out of the coffin again. She’s alive, and he tranquilizes her. But in the process, he’s struggling with her, and they fall through basically like a stained glass door into into the ceremony. And it looks like, you know, this poor guy couldn’t let his mother go, and there he is with her dead body and his arms around her. It’s just horrible joke at his ex you know, at his expense.  And people are saying, like, well, we knew he was attached to his mom, but, oh, this is a little too far. Anyway, they end up at a funeral, and they do bury the body. And at the end of the funeral, as everybody goes away, as happens in a lot of these movies. Right? We’ve talked about this before. Somebody approaches them after the funeral, and it’s an a long lost uncle. It’s big, kind of fat, really overbearing Skeesy. Skeezy guy, who is basically trying to get in on the inheritance.

Craig:  Right. And he’s so gross. Like, he made me so uncomfortable. Like, he’s hitting on Paquita at the ceremony. The actor I mean, I get you gotta give him credit, I suppose, for doing a good job because he just made me squirm. Like, ugh. Yeah. Like, you are so disgusting.

Vincent:  Well

Todd:  and something that Peter Jackson does with the cinematography, and you’ll see it in Dead Alive, you’ll see it a lot in his earlier stuff, Bad Taste Has It, he really zooms in on things. Right? He he has a very kinetic camera movements and he really likes to do this deal. And I guess somebody else who who did this was, Bob Clark.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  Not to the extent that Peter Jackson does it. Peter Jackson does it for comic effect, clearly. But, you know, you get this wide angle lens on the camera, but then you zoom up into somebody’s face and, not zoom, but dolly up into somebody’s face. Mhmm. Todd distorts them a little bit. It really gets in there. And then if they’re really mugging for it, you know, it just enhances that whole cartoonish villain type effect on this guy. As well as, you know, surprise on other people and and the goofiness that that’s going on.  I really like it in this movie. And, again, whenever this guy’s on screen, it seems like his face is just filling it and you hate him. Mhmm. Because he’s just even skeezier when you’re right up close to him. You gotta be there, you know. It makes you uncomfortable.

Craig:  And if I remember correctly, he’s always shot just kind of a little bit from below.

Todd:  Yeah. That’s right.

Craig:  So like, you’re always kind of looking up at him a little bit, which makes him a more imposing and, yeah. I mean, it’s it’s good. Yeah. This, you know, Jackson, even though this is one of his early films, he he’s a filmmaker. He he knows what he’s doing.

Todd:  He really does. So then, you know, we’ve got 3 little plots going. We’ve got Paquita, who is really trying to put the moves, and we’ve got this sort of developing romance there. We have this uncle who is trying to weasel his way into some inheritance because he was left out of the will and everything was left to the son. And then we have the son who has to deal with this while he’s trying to hide and handle more and more people becoming zombies, that he’s throwing down into the basement.

Craig:  Right. Because okay. So because after this it’s only because one one of my favorite lines is in this scene that I wanna talk about it. But, like, I right after the funeral, like, that night, funeral, like, that night, Lionel goes to dig up his mom, and then, like, this group of thugs just shows up. They call him a necrophiliac and start, you know, kinda Taking him? Smacking him around a little bit. And now what was coming a mile away, like, it’s totally projected, but it’s still funny. Like, the main thug goes and takes a piss on the mom’s Craig. And of course, her hand reaches up out of the grave and grabs his dick and, like, pulls him down.  It almost looks like he’s humping the grave.

Todd:  While blood is just spraying like a fire hose out from

Craig:  any direction.

Todd:  How many movies, by the way, have we seen where someone has taken a piss on a grave and then a hand is shot up and grabbed their dick? At least 3.

Craig:  At least. It’s like

Todd:  it’s I think it’s at least 3. We can we can put this down as a trope by now. I really do feel like like that.

Craig:  I think it it must be, like, some kind of, you know, guy fear. Fear. That these these filmmakers keep memorializing. Like, we’re all super afraid that some dead Todd gonna grab our junk. But

Todd:  Some urban legend don’t get in a grave at midnight. Yeah.

Craig:  And and so oh, but so that leads up to my favorite line. The the priest hears what’s going on and he comes and he sees all these thugs and everything that’s going on. He jumps down off like a mausoleum and says, evil is a must. Stay back, boy. This calls for divine intervention. And then he, like, Kung Fu fights them. Oh my gosh.

Todd:  Total Kung Fu fight. It was

Craig:  so funny.

Todd:  And it’s good action too.

Craig:  Like, he’s

Todd:  actually really good. He’s really fighting these guys. I don’t I mean, if there was a stuntman in here doing this instead of the actor, it was very well cut because it really looked to me like the actor was doing these roundhouse kicks and everything. Throughout all this, the other thugs are turning into zombies because they get bit by the mom, and then they bite each other, and there’s all this fighting. And the fighting gets really hilarious because he’ll, like, kick off a guy’s arm, and then he’ll, like, kick off his other arm, and he’ll kick his head off. And, I mean, there’s just blood going everywhere. It’s just insane. But by the end of it, he does this flying kick towards one dude who ends up lifting him, kind of, up in the air as he goes by.  And he ends up impaled on one of these tombstones that has a sculpture of an angel or something pointing up. And Mhmm. His finger pointing straight up is going straight through, his body. So the priest is dead, but then, of course, comes back to life as a zombie because he’s been bit as well. So

Craig:  Yeah. And so now he’s hosting, like, this household of zombies. Like you see them sitting around the dinner table and he’s feeding them. Yeah.

Todd:  It’s so hilarious.

Craig:  Yeah. It’s it’s really funny. And the uncle comes over Todd try to convince him that he should share his inheritance or whatever. And while he’s talking to the uncle, you start hearing sex noises. And eventually, once he gets rid of the uncle, he goes back in and finds the priest and the nurse boning, which is really funny. But what’s even funnier is that, like, 3 hours later, she has a zombie baby.

Todd:  Like, what more could they possibly throw into this movie. Right? And then it turns out there’s a hell of a lot more.

Craig:  The zombie baby is so funny because sometimes it’s a puppet, and sometimes it looks like they like, a like, a grown person, like, in a baby costume running around, Like, it’s like, they use he used, like, forced perspective or something

Todd:  to But not very well.

Craig:  No. But to kinda try to make it look small, but it doesn’t really. And, it’s just really funny. And the baby is just pure comic relief like it. It’s just laughing all the time and just Hijinks and

Todd:  it’s so cute and again what I really like about this movie is the pacing of it And I really like the fact that okay. So Evil Dead is just it has its moments where it kinda comes down, but there’s this it’s still kinda scary. Right? It still got this sort of impending doom feeling to it. This movie, it’s like all this crazy stuff happens, and there’s more zombies. But then, now he’s got them sitting around a dinner table trying to feed them. You know, like, trying to act as if everything is normal. And the movie even takes us out of the house after a while. Like, he’s going to get more tranquilizers, and he runs into her, and, you know, they kinda have a moment.  And, I mean, it’s just interesting how the the movie really keeps you guessing and really lets up. I mean, it it lets up on the the scary and the gore or whatever, and, brings you back into, like, his hilarious sort of situation. Again, I just keep saying it, but it’s just a very cartoony kind of Mhmm. It is. Movie. Right? It’s just it’s so improbable. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s hilarious, to watch this going on.  But we know. I mean, this is rooted in every Bugs Bunny cartoon we’ve ever seen. You know what I mean? It’s it’s

Craig:  just Yeah. Yeah.

Todd:  It’s very familiar territory, and it’s really welcome here.

Craig:  There’s a scene where it for no explainable reason, he decides to take the baby to the park in a pram. And he’s got like barbed wire over the pram so like the baby can’t get out or whatever. And it’s like he’s watching the other park moms to see what you’re supposed to do with the baby, and he’s trying to do it with this zombie baby. But the zombie baby, of course, is just bad.

Todd:  What’s funny is when we see the perspective from the baby and it looks like he’s taken these precautions, he’s actually put, like, a barbed wire net over Yeah. The brand that you can’t see. It’s hilarious.

Craig:  It’s a really really goofy scene and it kind of is a pause in the narrative. I read that Jackson finished under budget, like $45,000 under budget. And so he used that money to shoot this scene. Now he considers it his favorite scene of the movie. And it is ridiculous, but it it’s very it’s like mister Bean or something.

Todd:  Yeah. It’s total mister Bean. You’re right. Absolutely.

Craig:  And it is really funny, but you can kind of tell that it was added in last minute. Like like it’s it’s completely unnecessary to the plot. It’s it’s just for fun. It’s just for goofy sight gags.

Todd:  Well, and it’s in such bad taste because eventually, like, the baby, like, gets out and he grabs the baby and he’s fighting with it and he’s, like, bashing it against the ground and, like, up against the swing set stuff and mothers are just looking on horrified. The stuffs it in the bag and kind of backs away.

Craig:  It’s it’s horrible. He walks by the other moms and he’s like, hyperactive.

Todd:  Anyway, all these zombies end up piling up in the basement. In the meantime, the uncle comes over and he, is again vying for what he thinks he is due for his inheritance. He eventually discovers these zombie bodies and things in the basement and he decides that he needs to call the police. And so, he calls the police or he’s in the middle of doing it, and he’s, like, or I can just let all this go if you give me the house and the money. Right. And the son’s like, okay. I’ll give you the house and the money. So he hangs up the phone.  And then, about a scene later, suddenly, people start piling into the house because, it turns out that the uncle told some people that he now had this house, and all these people are coming over to have a big party. It’s a housewarming kind of celebration in this new mansion. So you it’s it’s so funny. But, again, this is what I say. It’s just this perfect build because you know what’s coming. Right? You got this huge house full of people. It’s gonna become absolute mayhem here in no time. And then that’s exactly what happens.

Craig:  Yeah. That’s the final act is this party. Because of course, the zombies break out and infiltrate the party. And at first, like, people don’t realize that they’re gonna

Todd:  bloodbath.

Craig:  And, everybody I mean, this whole house full of, I don’t know, a 100 or more people. The zombie infection just spreads like wildfire. It’s really like, it’s totally improbable, but Lionel and Paquita and the uncle somehow managed to keep from being bitten. I I really like Paquita in this whole scene because she’s just kinda kicking ass and taking names, like, the whole time. And they’re not even together. Like, Lionel’s off doing his own thing. Like, he ends up I don’t remember why he ended up in the attic. I don’t remember if he got chased there.

Todd:  No. It’s just a it’s just a huge Keystone Cops type thing. It’s just one scene after another and and the neat thing about is that every scene is totally different, and it’s kind of like a new site gag. Like, there are people who are getting pulled apart, and there’s 1 zombie who gets pulled apart and all his insides come out But then all of his intestines become an entity of their own and they even like

Vincent:  fart and Yeah, it’s

Craig:  like a smiling rectum.

Todd:  It even like farts like they’re just all these tiny little things and it’s so it’s creeping around. And one girl who we had seen earlier in the movie is, like, fighting some other girl that we’d seen earlier in the movie who’s a zombie, and she, like, throws her against a wall where there’s a light bulb sticking out. And her head Improbably gets impaled on this light bulb, but now it’s glowing from the inside and there’s just constant all this stuff is just happening and it’s so entertaining to watch and it is an absolute achievement Mhmm. In in practical effects. I mean, some of these things, you you see them going on, and you’re like, man, this was before CGI. Mhmm. And some of this stuff is really convincing. I mean, most of it is.  It’s it’s quite good. But you’re right. He ends up in the attic, and I think it’s that intestine insides monster or whatever, that’s attacking him up there. And as he falls through the ceiling, it’s also sort of he’s wrapped up in these intestines. So he’s just hanging and swinging over this crowd by these intestines.

Craig:  But before that, up in the attic, he finds some remains. And and, like, I feel like he has, a flashback or something. He had told Paquita earlier that his dad had drowned in the sea after rescuing him. And that he had these vague memories of it or whatever. Now this scene really confused me because at first, I thought that the remains that he found were his real mom.

Todd:  Yeah. That’s what I thought Todd, that she was a fake mom.

Craig:  Yeah. And that, like, the mother that he thought was his mother was an imposter for the money or whatever. I don’t know. But that’s that’s not it. As it turns out, the dad had been a philanderer and his mother had killed both his dad and his dad’s lover. So you know, I guess that just further vilifies the mom. I don’t know, she’s nasty anyway so I don’t know why that’s important. But yeah, he ends up hanging by the well, he’s he’s actually hanging by an electrical cord.

Todd:  Oh, yeah. But that thing is snaking down it.

Craig:  Right. Right. Exactly. And, Todd, I I don’t remember exactly

Todd:  what happened. Bunch of stuff happens.

Vincent:  Yeah.

Craig:  He ends up outside. It’s it’s long. I mean, this this

Todd:  this It’s 30 minutes.

Craig:  Yeah. And it’s all action for that whole 30 minutes. It’s fighting and and effects and gore, and it goes on for a really long time. And it’s still going on and like he’s like swinging from the ceiling. He sees Paquita getting attacked and the nurse and the priest are humping again and, the uncle ends up in the basement and he ends up getting killed by the mom, who we only see her hands at this point, but she’s clearly become this giant zombie monster. And then after Lionel gets down, I don’t remember how he gets down, but the next time we see him, he bursts through the door very Bruce Campbell style.

Todd:  Yes.

Craig:  Holding the lawnmower. Mhmm. And he’s got like, he’s got a rope so it’s kind of like slung around his neck so that he can hold it so that the blades are held out in front of him. And he just goes on a rampage, you know, using this lawnmower to kill all these zombies. And it’s just buckets, gallons upon gallons of blood everywhere. It’s just one of the bloodiest things I’ve ever seen.

Todd:  It it is so funny and it’s cool and it’s over the top insane. And I know that it inspired later on, like, at least a video game or 2. I think, I don’t remember. It was probably in the late nineties or early it was in the early 2000s when I think the PlayStation 3 first came out. There was a pretty notorious zombie game for that that came out just it was the first time we had all these high frame rates, and we could we could handle a lot of things on the screen at once. And there was one of these games where you were stuck in a shopping mall, and there’s a zombie horde. You could get a lawnmower weapon in this, game. And you know it was pulled straight from this movie.  Mhmm. Just pulling this lawnmower up and just mowing through zombies. It’s it’s crazy. It’s just, like, when you think this movie can’t get any more extreme and over the top, they throw this insane idea of a guy just holding up a lawnmower and mowing through these zombies at you. Yeah. It just build after build after build. I just love it. It’s just so it’s just smart.  And he’s basically taking care of everything in the place, except for his mom, who emerges from the basement as this gigantic 2 story tall monster. And she’s, like, got these giant sagging breasts. And, it’s a really impressive effect for for this film, really.

Craig:  Oh, yeah. I don’t know how they did it. You know, do you like was it really that large? Like it was it that large of a prop or

Todd:  I think there were pieces of it that were, but then there’s a scene where, you know, they run up the stairs and they’re kind of on the balcony and she climbs up the stairs after them and certainly, that’s some kind of composite where they had a miniature some kind of matte thing going on. There’s no way that, yeah, that that they had something so big in the same frame as them, you know, standing next to it. But it was super convincing. It was really, really good.

Craig:  Obviously, this came first, but it reminded me of the end of Witching and Bitching. Yes. That’s right. When that giant whatever it was, that giant witch or whatever. Yeah. Very similar with the really big butt and the big saggy boobs and but it looks great. And they she chases them up to the roof and she’s trying to throw Paquita off the roof and Lionel’s trying to fight her, but at one point, you know, he says, you don’t scare me, mom. And she, like, pitches the ceiling and rips open her stomach so he slides into her stomach like

Todd:  It gets very Freudian. Yeah. Uh-huh. She’s like reenters her womb, you know? Right.

Craig:  And, and and the mom is actually like her face kind of looked like her human face. I mean, obviously really really distorted but kinda looked like her human face. But it’s starting to peel away and she’s starting to look like a giant Sumatran rat monkey.

Todd:  Mhmm.

Craig:  But he bursts out of her belly and saves pakita. What happens to the mom? Does she just kind of fall into the house?

Todd:  Yeah. She just kind of falls apart because he bursts out of her. I mean, one thing we failed to mention is not super important, but he has this magical charm with them that the old woman gave him that’s that same, crescent and star or whatever. And that’s what he uses to stab his way out. And it must have some effect on her in a magical way, so that she just, like, he spills out of her in just a pile of gore.

Vincent:  And her

Todd:  face falls apart, and all parts of her start to fall apart. And then she’s still hanging by the edge of the of the building. And he gets down there, and they’re they’re holding each other. And he ends up sliding down. I guess it’s like an electrical line or something that’s attached to the building Yeah. Away from away from the house. And that’s that’s basically how it ends. Right? Everything just kinda collapses and all the evil is gone and they And the house

Craig:  burns down. Right?

Todd:  Yeah. It’s it’s it’s funny. I mean, it’s a very like I said, just when you think it can’t get more over the Todd, they end up having this final scene on the top of a roof where people are dangling. You know, I mean, it’s it’s so classic. I just think this movie is great. I just love every minute of it. It’s so much fun to watch and it’s It

Craig:  is fun. I think that it

Todd:  would be It’s never boring.

Craig:  I don’t know. I think that I would have had a lot more fun watching it with you or with other people.

Todd:  Mhmm.

Craig:  I I don’t wanna make it sound like I’m some kinda lush or something, but, you know.

Todd:  A little bit of alcohol.

Craig:  A couple yeah. A couple of beers and sit around and laugh with your friends. Sitting on your couch on a Saturday afternoon watching it on my computer, it wasn’t really

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  The greatest I get it. Environment. But but I definitely appreciate it for what it was. And and I would definitely recommend it to anybody who likes horror.

Todd:  If you’ve never seen this before and you’re inspired by our talk to go out and watch it, you absolutely have to get the unrated version. You cannot watch the r rated version because it is cut so much. There’s at least 10, maybe 15 minutes cut out of the r rated version. And I actually made this mistake in college where I I told my friends, oh, I got this great movie, and I ended up renting what turned out to be the r rated version. And so much was missing that this was actually a case of where the movie almost didn’t make sense. Mhmm. Because think about it. I mean, the movie most of the movie is super bloody and gory.  If you cut out most of that, you just get these choppy scenes that Yeah. Don’t connect so well with each other. And it’s really it was really disappointing to watch. I ended up shutting it off, and I’m, like, forget it, guys. We’re not gonna watch it tonight. You gotta go out. You gotta get the unrated version, to see this in its full glory and appreciate, you know, what we’ve just talked about.

Craig:  As of today, it’s available to watch for free on YouTube. That’s where I watched it.

Todd:  Oh, there you go. Well, great. Alright. Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. Thank you, Vincent, for the request. If you have a request, you can reach us on our website 2 guys dot redfortynet.com. Leave us a comment there, or just search us online. You can find our Facebook page as well.  On that website, you’ll find all of our back episodes. And if you like our podcast, please share it with a friend. We love getting new listeners. Until next time. I’m Todd

Craig:  And I’m Craig.

Todd:  With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.