Braindead/Dead Alive is the most insane zombie movie I've ever seen

I've seen my fair share of gory horror movies whether that be John Carpenter's The Thing or the 1988 remake of the The Blob but 1992's Braindead (called Dead Alive in North America) tops them all in the bloodshed department.One thing I had to wrap my head around is that Peter Jackson directed this. Before he became a household name with Lord of the Rings, Jackson was making low-budget horror movies in his native New Zealand. Braindead is basically the peak of this phase in his career. After this movie, Jackson would venture more into the mainstream with movies like Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners.Even though, the third act is what cemented Braindead as the most insane zombie for me, there's plenty of insanity in the first two acts as well. The movie begins on Skull Island (nice nod to King Kong) and this whole zombie plague begins with a bite from a grotesque rodent/primate hybrid which was the result of a bunch of rats raping a monkey.There's just so much ground to cover with this movie so I'll cover some highlights. You have bloody pus shooting into a bowl of custard, a priest who does kung fu, and a nurse zombie making out with the priest zombie which results in the priest zombies mouth being bitten off. Braindead is also a very funny movie with some great slapstick. The best of which comes from the main character Lionel taking the zombie baby to the park.But then we come to the third act and this is when all hell breaks loose. It's one thing for a movie to be gory and violent, but Braindead is creatively violent and gory. It's easy to chop off a zombie's head or blow out its brain with a bullet, but the kills and deaths in this movie are so entertaining to watch. One involves a woman being impaled on a light bulb and her head lights up like a lamp.Another thing I noticed is that even when zombies are incapacitated, they still show up in later scenes. For instance, one zombie gets half his head chopped off and it drops on the floor. The head shows up in later scenes and you see it get kicked around like a soccer ball and it eventually gets pulverized in a food processor.Another example includes the light bulb woman I mentioned earlier. You'll see Lionel trip over an electrical wire in the attic and then see the woman being raised higher and lower and eventually the bulb explodes and the woman's head gets engulfed in flames. Moments like that make everything feel more in the moment.While I haven't seen every zombie movie ever made, Braindead certainly rises to one of my favorites. I really wish Jackson could return his horror roots and make another low-budget horror movie; similar to how Sam Raimi made Drag Me to Hell after his Spider-Man movies, but I think those days are behind him. Still, the man has my respect for this movie and many others. via /r/movies https://ift.tt/LXYows4