Newsgroups: alt.cult-movies,rec.arts.movies,alt.tasteless
Subject: Braindead Review - minor spoilers
From: tfarmer@datamark.co.nz (Thomas Farmer)
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 20:35:34 GMT
Organization: Datamark International Ltd.


Braindead - The Movie

A review by Thomas Beagle

Some plot spoilers - shouldn't spoil the film in any way.


Did 'Bad Taste' make you feel like raiding McDonalds after the
film?  Did 'Meet the Feebles' make you wonder what Kermit
*really* got up to after the show was over?

'Braindead', the third movie from Peter Jackson, is the best of the
lot.  It has humour, adventure, romance, action, and bodily
fluids.  Lots of bodily fluids.

The film is set in suburban New Zealand in the 1950's.  Lionel, a
quiet man in his twenties (?), lives with his domineering mother.
Life is not very exciting for Lionel until he meets Paquita, a
charming girl who works in the local store.  They go to the zoo
together and see a strange rat-monkey ("Vicious little shit")
that has been brought back from Sumatra and is now in Newtown
zoo.

Lionel's mother has followed them to the zoo to spy.  While
watching the happy couple, she is bitten by the monkey.  She
falls sick and, after a disastrous social enagagement, dies.
Unfortunately for Lionel, dying will not let you escape from the
poison of the sumatran rat-monkey and she comes back to life as
a zombie!

You can probably guess the plot of the rest of the film.
Lionel's attempts to keep the growing family of zombies under
control.  His failure.  The party.  The blood.  The body parts.
The final solution.

This film is more than just a zombie movie.  It's more than a
hilariously funny splatter movie.  It's even more than a love
story with zombies playing the bit parts and other stagger-on
roles.

From the Rinso soap-powder packet (now discontinued) to the old
cars and trams, 1950's New Zealand is portrayed with loving
attention to detail.  The first shot of the film is of a New
Zealand flag waving in the breeze while the national anthem is
played.  The period feel added a lot to the film and gave it a
bit more depth.

The acting is uniformly very good.  You can split the
characters into two types - the normal people such as the nurse,
the rugby bore, the head of the Wellington Ladies Welfare
League, and Paquita's father.  These people are all
very convincing and well acted.

Then we get to the slightly more odd characters such as the
reverend martial artist, the nazi veterinarian, and the mad
funeral directors assistant - played by Peter Jackson himself.
These over-the-top characters are all played with great verve,
but none of the actors go too far - the director's too busy doing
it for them!

I thought it was a good sign when one of the credits displayed at
the start of the film was for 'Creature and Gore Effects'.  The
special effects are excellent and can't have been cheap.  The
blood bill alone would have been horrendous!  We see lots of
bodily parts, odd fluids, dismembered people, and some really
good make up.  Some of the zombie effects are excellent - I can
particularly recommend the seemingly sentient digestive-system
creature.

Overall, the film works very well.  Peter Jackson described it as
a love story and he's not entirely wrong.  It's just that this
love story has more bodies than anything since Romeo and Juliet.
(Hmmm, what would Shakespeare have done with a modern special
effects budget?)

See this film!  On the -4 to +4 scale, I give it a high +3.

BTW, Peter Jackson's next film will not be a splatter movie.  It
will be about the Parker-Hume murder.  This is the story of two
teenage girls who form a relationship.  Their parents become
worried and try to break them up.  They are not happy about this
idea and murder one of their mothers with a large brick.  I'm
glad to see that we will at least get some blood.

-- 
    Thomas Farmer | tfarmer@datamark.co.nz    or | Amiga 2.04, AIX 3.1
Datamark Intl Ltd | tfarmer@cavebbs.welly.gen.nz | Win 3.1, OS/2 2.0
 Technical Writer | 			Vote MMP!
    & PC Wrangler |     A beagle a day keeps the doctor at bay.
Newsgroups: alt.cult-movies