31 Days, 31 Screams: Day 23 (Dead Alive)

You've got red on you.

This is one I never would have watched on my own. One of the very few suggestions I got for this entire project. So, thanks for that, Thom. What I've been directed to here is a hidden alley in between two familiar houses, a space between spaces in which I've found a secret history that occupies two times at once. It's 1957 avec 1992, and we've gone to the other side of the globe. Somewhere in New Zealand, where the zombies still roam. It's a double secret history, in fact; this is Dead Alive. A movie which, if Wikipedia is to be believed, will go on to inspire Shaun Of The Dead. You know, that film I'm quite fond of. It was directed by a fellow named Peter Jackson, who would go on to make some very long films about Lord Of The Rings and make about ten trillion dollars doing so. There's actually a third secret history lurking here, right when the film opens: Skull Island. Peter Jackson will go on to make a Skull Island filled with monsters and other prehistoric terrors and a really goddamned gigantic ape, but here all it has are natives and a rare specimen: a Sumatran rat monkey. Whatever it is, its bite seems concerning enough for a guide's explorers to hack off extremities upon discovering that he's been bitten. Despite this, the thing goes off to the zoo. Okay, we can guess how this will go since we know this is a zombie movie. Still, surprises are to be had.

For one, this movie is hilarious. I praised Shaun Of The Dead because it was very witty, but this movie is some sort of dark comedy gold. Eventually our hero, Lionel, must deal with the fact that his mother has been bitten by a gross stop-motion Sumatran rat monkey and is starting to decay and ooze everywhere and eat her own ear if it should fall into custard. Once his mother and the nurse treating her turn into zombies, you'd expect the plague to spread typically from there. No. No, Lionel just keeps them locked up in his cellar and occasionally is forced to shoot them up with tranquilizers that he gets from a presumed Nazi war criminal veterinarian in order to keep them from roaming about. This doesn't work because she gets out and is buried and still comes back after that, turning a bunch of hooligans into zombies. Then... and I can't believe this happened, but it bears documentation for any of you who have not seen this and need to know joy in your life, the priest who buried Lionel's mother comes out to see what the commotion is, sees zombies, and starts to karate fight them after yelling "I KICK ASS FOR THE LORD!". It's the most over the top shit, topped only by what the priest does after he gets turned into a zombie and shacked up at Lionel's place. Again, there is no easy way to put this. He has sex with the nurse and the nurse instantly gives birth to a horribly deformed zombie baby. Who Lionel then actually takes to the park in a stroller and tries to play it off as having a normal child. It's fucking hilarious.

Dead Alive's other claim to fame is the gore. There's a bunch of gross shit in the first hour or so, but the climax is the ultimate display of Liking It When The Red Water Comes Out. Lionel tries to mercy-kill all the zombies with poison, but the poison turned out to be fucking animal stimulant and they all come back as super zombies and fuck up everyone at the party upstairs. It's here that shit gets over the top and bloody and had my mouth dropping at just how far it went with this madness. You have Lionel's uncle rapidly hacking up a bunch of zombies with kitchen knives, a zombie's guts falling out of him and still pursuing Lionel like an animal, the zombie baby tearing its way through someone's head... and the lawnmower. Lionel holding a fucking gas lawnmower up and ramming it blade first into a horde of zombies, getting drenched in blood in the process. You can't help but admire it. Oh, and then his mom becomes a big fat naked zombie dinosaur or some shit and tries to shove Lionel back into the womb. You can't make this shit up. Dead Alive is... well, it's great. It mostly avoids all the tired old zombie tropes, and the two unique things it has going for it are being jaw-droppingly hilarious/absurd, and the Red Ocean That Comes Out. If you can handle your gore, you gotta see this one. I'm very glad I did.

Now, I forgot halfway into this writeup that Dead Alive was supposed to be tomorrow's, and the movie I watched on Saturday night was supposed to be today's. Eh, the hell with it. Tomorrow is another childhood fear.