This is one of my favourite ‘horror’ movies as from a disturbingly young age i’ve been a gore and zombie movie fan, and this definitely rates as one of the goriest films ever. Braindead, after Jackson’s previous two low budget efforts, is remarkable in 2 ways: firstly, that it keeps the gore and stomach churning qualities of Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles (which can be seen to a smaller extent in his groundbreaking LOTR trilogy), but raise them to unbelievable levels. Secondly because, unlike his previous films, this one shows some semblance of emotions other than fear and disgust as we feel sympathy towards the main 2 characters. This relationship would feature in all his following films to date, such as Heavenly Creatures. But this movie does not try to be anything other than fun; gory, bloody, clever, funny fun. From the opening scene you know this is going to be a blood spattered mess as a man is quickly chopped limb from limb because he carries the disease which zombifies. and it does not disappoint, as every body part you can think of is cut off or gobbled up, lakes of intestines flow like lakes of blood, one zombie shoves a spoon through his own head in a failed attempt to eat in a more dignifies way. a zombie baby is kicked joyfully around a public park, and a lawn mower is used in a lovely, cleansing manner.

The plot mixes romance with shlock, and features all manner of fun relationships- a nervous man with his overbearing mother, the same man with the local sultry temptress, etc and has a lot of fun with each especially as characters begin to die and come back. A deadly rat monkey is stolen from a forbidden island and brought to a zoo in New Zealand for reasons unknown and irreleant. Meanwhile local momma’s boy Lionel is under the thumb- forced to look after the house while his aging mother goes about her daily business. He stumbles across a beautiful foreign girl, Paquita, and starts a relationship with her which his mother does not approve of. A date to the zoo leads to his mother being bitten by the freak creature from the start, which soon leads to her death and rebirth as a zombie. Naturally all hell breaks loose and it is up to Lionel to finally break out of the womb and start his own life.

Unfortunately the DVD has no features- it would be nice if there was a retrospective of some sort, especially now as Jackson is a household name. One day,



Feel free to comment on the movie- is this the goriest film you’ve ever seen? Is this amongst the best examples of blending horror with comedy?

Tell it like it is!


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