Peter Jackson's “DEAD ALIVE”

A Movie Review by Dennis D. McDonald

I’m not sure what this says about me and my taste in movies, but I think this film is some type of masterpiece.

I’d say that even if I didn’t know the director was Peter Jackson.

Normally I don’t go in for zombie films — not enough humor, bad dialog, dimensionless teenagers. This one is special. There must be more mutilations-per-minute than any other film ever made. The amount of blood spilled must be measured in hundreds (thousands?) of gallons.

But it’s funny and you can’t take it at all seriously — as long as you have a strong stomach. It’s as if Jackson made a list of a couple of dozen key gross-out sequences from horror movies and then tried to answer the question, “How can we make this ten times more gross, revolting, disgusting and sick - yet still remain funny?”

There must be something very strange indeed in the water in Wellington New Zealand!

This film reminded me of one of my long term vacation goals — to take my family to New Zealand some day. I’d like to see firsthand some of the places used as settings for Jackson’s films. My son, for example, who recommended this film to me, says he recognizes some of the “Sumatra” scenery at the beginning of this film as having been used in “Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King.”