BRAINDEAD [1992] (or DEAD ALIVE if you're a Yank)

The second movie to go under the microscope is yet another blast from my past.

It was late on Friday April 1st when I last made the long drive home to Mayo.  I entered my room to find a mountain of packages from Amazon, which contained the first batch of movies and books I will be sharing my thoughts on over the next few weeks.  I was in the mood to watch something, it was late, and my youngest brother, Eamon, and his friend Alan were there.  What could I chose that was short and was guaranteed to entertain?  There was only one choice in what I had, Peter Jackson's 1992 splatsterpiece, Braindead.

  I first experienced this movie back in 1999.  When I saw it back then, I had a agenda; I wanted to know who the hell this Peter Jackson guy was.  The Lord of The Ring films had just been announced, and like most judgemental assholes, I was standing with my arms crossed as I shook my head in disapproval.  Who the hell did this guy think he was?  Still, I was willing to investigate a little before I completely wrote him off.  I worked in a record store at the time, and we had two of his movies in stock; Bad Taste and Braindead.  I proceeded to get my research on.

  I came away from them sure of one thing; this guy wasn't fit to read The Lord of The Rings, let alone bring it to the big screen.  Sure, both Bad Taste and Braindead were fun, but that was not the sensibility required to bring a story with the depth and breadth of Tolkien's Middle Earth to the big screen.

  When I said I did a little research, I wasn't lying - that was as far as I went.  This was in the days before the Internet had truly taken off.  I did not know or understand how to use it.  There was no Wikipedia, and I had never heard of a thing called IMDB.  A little more research would have revealed that Peter Jackson had also been nominated for an Oscar for the screenplay to Heavenly Creatures, and that he was also the man behind The Frighteners, which I had thoroughly enjoyed.  Looking back, I hold my hand up and freely admit that on that one occasion, I was almost kind of slightly wrong about something.  At least now that we have identified the exception, we can accept the rule...

  Revisiting Braindead in 2011 was a very different experience.  I wasn't watching this with critical eyes; I just wanted to be entertained, and entertainment is what this film delivers in barrels, waves, and floods - of blood!  Braindead is fantastic and demented in equal measures.  It is one of the most amped up movies you are ever likely to see.  It starts at a level of maniacal energy that most movies barely manage to climax with, and turns the intensity up from there.

  From the opening frame, this film is bonkers.  All of the characters are played in a hyper-real, exaggerated fashion, and the kinetic camera moves only enhance the mania.  This was a brilliant and vital approach.  Jackson and his crew wisely realised that they couldn't start off in the 'real world' if they wanted to bring this story to the places it goes.  It starts off pitched at about seven, and then goes all the way up to eleven, before it blows out the speakers, while still somehow managing to blare forth with ever increasing intensity.  Like a Weird Al Yankovic album.

  Immeasurable amounts of joy and effort went into realising the most over the top ways in which a human can be pulped.  There is no room for subtlety here.  Characters don't gets slashed, they are shredded.  This movie is the definition of splatstick.  People are are taken out in an ever escalating series of truly inspired fatalities.  I'm not going to describe any, because a major part of the fun of this film is the shocked laugh you can't contain as you say to yourself, 'They didn't just [insert over the top death here], did they...?'

  But none of this would have any impact if we weren't involved with the characters, and there is just as much fun to be had here.  The leads, Lionel (Timothy Balme) and Paquita (Diana Peñalver) are the most ordinary, as they need to be if we are to identify with them, but their relative normality is more than made up for by Mum (Elizabeth Moody), Uncle Les (Ian Watkin), 'Void' (Jed Brophy), the baby, and of course, the man with the best line in the movie, Father John McGruder (Stuart Devenie), who comes off like Father Ted channelling Ash from the Evil Dead, with a side order of Bruce Lee kicking you in the face!

  Believe it or not, there is more going on here than cascades of viscera.  With Jackson's earlier work, he had certainly proved himself a craftsman of mayhem, but he had tended to overlook story in the pursuit of shock.  With this, he really started to grow as a storyteller, without for a second compromising on the outrageous.  When you wipe away the blood, there is a simple but solid story at play here.  It keeps you engaged beyond the gore, and what really makes this film resonate beyond other blood drenched fare, is the subtext.  There is a Freudian undercurrent that, come the final encounter, makes you cringe on many levels.  I'm not going to claim that it's particularly deep - it's certainly not trying to be - but when you walk away from this, you have been as much mentally as viscerally violated!

Braindead has lost nothing with age (I don't want to hear any comments like, 'And much like Braindead you have unconvincing miniatures.'  You're so bloody immature.).

  My father came in from the pub during the penultimate sequence, just as Lionel brings his lawn mowing skills into play.  A keen mower of lawns himself, I'm sure he was looking for some pointers.  It doesn't matter what age you are, you always get a little uncomfortable when your parents catch you watching something you know they won't approve of.  However, even he couldn’t help but laugh, before he grimaced and turned away from the screen.
  Braindead is so ridiculous you can't really take offence at it.  It probably contains more gore than all of the other horror movies ever made combined, but it never feels gratuitous because the intention is to entertain.  This isn't mean-spirited torture porn; it's a live action cartoon.

Braindead was the last of Peter Jackson gory splatter work.  After this, he leaped forward as a narrative filmmaker, making the brilliant Heavenly Creatures and the fun, if uneven, The Frighteners, before he blew us all away with his Middle Earth trilogy.  Unfortunately, his movies have declined in quality since then.  King Kong had moments of brilliance, but was an overlong and self indulgent mess, and I haven't even seen The Lovely Bones, as everyone I know has advised me not to.  Fingers crossed he is back on form for The Hobbit, and whatever else he chooses to do.  However, nothing can change that the fact that with Braindead, not only did he deliver a wonderful swansong to his roots as a horror filmmaker, he also gave the world one of the pinnacles of the genre.
  You may wonder what this movie has to do with clowns.  Here's what:

I bet he has a cutting wit...  Thanks for the image, Johnny!

On a geeky side note, the opening scene is like a future flash of where Peter Jackson's career would go.  The physical location is the same used for The Path of The Dead in The Return of The King, but even more telling, the place where they find the Sumatran Rat-Monkey is Skull Island, which is home to none other than King Kong!

Next up is a charming tale about a filmmaker who sexually abuses the youngest lead in his movie.  Cue the canned laughter!