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I Kick Ass for the Lord, minus a little
If you ask me, the best kind of zombie movies are the ones with the human element. It's the ones with the human element. The ones which ask: "how would people really react when the end comes along?" Stuff like 28 Days Later and the Walking Dead series.

Dead Alive, aka Braindead everywhere else, is not one of those zombie movies. Not even a little bit. In fact I'm hesitant to say even that, seeing as how that would imply it was even trying to be one of those zombie movies. And when I think about it, it's a bit of a shame because beneath continent sized amount of fridge logic and the balls to the wall third-act, there is actually something of a heartfelt story about the oppressiveness of properness and the reliance one can have on the status quo, but that's not what I'm here to talk about.

Made in 1990 by Peter Jackson, Dead Alive tells the tale of a young New Zealander by the name of Lionel who officially has to win the award for most awesome use of a lawn mower in the history of cinema, ever. The movie, more or less starts with Lionel pretty much being his mom's slave. When Lionel starts the dating the town's stereotypical gypsy/romani-girl. His mother get's suspicious and follows them to the zoo. While there, she gets bitten by a "Rat Monkey," and, it's pretty much around this point that logic decides that it wants to sit this one out. Mommy's bite eventually causes her to expire, but quickly unexpires after that (surprise, surprise).

If you haven't caught it from the description, I think this movie is a boatload of fun. Between the the zombie baby, the zombie sex-scene that spawned the zombie baby, the priest who kick's ass for the lord (hence the title of this entry), and crazy third act, this movie is really fun. And speaking of blood, this movie has it and entrails by the truckload.

What I like so much about this movie is that it pretty much eschuse the whole zombie apocalypse trope entirely. For example, pretty much the whole second act is devoted to keeping the his zombified mother and various other people that she's zombified occupied, feeding them porridge and letting them watch tv, wacky stuff like that.

Bottom line: if you're into this kinda thing, then you'll love this movie. If you like movies, you'll be able to appreciate this movies. Just do yourself a favor and lower your expectations accordingly.
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