Peter Jackson's BRAINDEAD

Braindead rocks hard. There's so many great scenes in it I'm not going to list them but I do think when the intestines come to life to chase Lionel is fantastic, especially when it start checking itself out in the mirror.

Class in a glass.

People don't like 'Brain Dead'?
Could someone give a brief precis of their arguments?

I want names.

I'm unimpressed with it. I fully expected to love this after hearing the raves of a friend who caught it at a theater in New York. As soon as it hit video I picked it up, but found myself getting bored and impatient. I think the pacing is off. There's just too much over the top gore. So much, it doesn't leave a lasting impact. My favorite part is "I kick ass for the Lord!", a relatively tame scene. But beyond that, I can't find a good reason to watch this again.

I loved this film when I was in my early teens. I watched it religiously and made every single one of my friends sit through it. There's lots of brilliant stuff in it and Jackson's visual style really came into its own with this film. It's quite a leap forward from BAD TASTE to BRAINDEAD. There needs to be a special edition DVD sometime because I'd like to add this one to my collection but all these crummy bare bones discs won't do.

BTW, has anyone here seen the Blockbuster version? It's supposedly about 60 minutes long!

Yes and you don't like Dawn any more. I think you're in the wrong part of the horror genre.

Brain Dead is a masterpiece in gore. The lawnmower scene is testament to that.

I did and shut it off about 15 minutes in. They cut out practically everything. And the edits are horrible.

I think we are different people.

He should've cut Saruman.

And yet I loved Bad Taste.
Go figure.

I like this flick as well. Of course I know it as "Dead-Alive". However, the baby in the blender was a bit much though.

To call this film genius is an insult to a ton of other, better movies. I have this movie and I like it. But it is by no means genius.

I love zombie movies, but I'm sorry, I hated this flick. "Walking dead" movies, are the last of the horror genre, that are still able to put a good scare into me. So I guess I don't like how campy everything was. I like the feeling of dread that I get from a serious zombie film, like the film's plot is only slightly out of the realm of possibility.

But everything, the hott z0mbi3 s3xx0rz, followed by the birth of the "garbage pail kid" a few hours later, & the grand finale where "mother" grows into this giant cartoonish thing & shoves her son inside - - - wait a minute, I'm having an eye-roll flashback...


*cough, cough*

Sorry. I'm not hacking on anyone for liking it, I just PERSONALLY don't get it. Maybe somebody could explain it's "genius" to me. I might be able to look at it with a different perspective...

^^^^ Yeah, it's a comedy, dude. You appear to have missed that.


They actually had Braindead: The Musical here, with songs by Fran Walsh. The first 5 rows ended up soaked in blood. All good stuff.

Best bit was when the female lead of the musical was interviewed on TV and asked how she got the role and she replied, 'I had to suck a LOT of dick...'


For NZers, it has other amusing bits, like several of the minor characters are played by newsreaders. This was weirdly continued in The Frighteners where the serial killer couple were named after a newsreading pairing...I have NO idea why.

Me love this film.
I thought the fist going through the lady's head and out her mouth was too much though.
That crossed the line from blackest of humours to sexual-violence. That's the point it stopped being funny.
But it got right back on track again with the baby in the blender.

Well, I knew it was billed as a Horror/Comedy. I guess I didn't care for the ratio of one to the other.

I DID, however, like 'Shaun Of The Dead'.

*shrugs*

It's a comedy. It is using gross-out Horror stuff as a means to comedy. It only looks like a horror film on the surface, underneath it is a comedy. That's why i don't like the fist-through-the-lady shot - it stops being comedy and starts being horror.
Comedy.

I've seen BRAINDEAD a good thirty times, and that fist shot makes me jump EVERY time. Crazy.



I think this film is the perfect gauge olf whether someone is going to be my friend or not. I show this to them, and if they can't stand it, see ya later.

can i be your friend?
I killed a frog with a lawnmower once. it was sitting in the grass and i didn't see it. it was one of those manual, mechanical ones, and when i had finished thre was a leg on one of the blades. the frog was sitting amongst the freshly cut grass very calmly, sans leg.
I felt bad.
My friend picked it up with a spade and flung it over the fence, onto railway lines.
I didn't mean to do it!

It was great in parts...stodgy in others.
Far too much padding.
When it was good it was very good though, with the lawnmower scene still being pretty much at the top of the 'how much gore can one scene hold' stakes.
But, this scene is so fantastic and over the top it makes the 'Mother Muppet' finale seem weak when compared to it. It kind of blows it's load slightly too early.

I thought "Bad Taste" was superior and a much more leaner and as such more consistently entertaining beast.
"Meet the Feebles" is also more entertaining as a whole because it pushes so many of the right politically incorrect buttons.

Seen it? I own It! My friend bought it for me when he was working at the store, and I gotta say, it's bloody awful. Almost all of the good stuff is cut out, you can see all of the hard edits where gore was rtemoved. It's the kind of butchery that I would fear from Wal-Mart.

And don't forget the other reason why you should love this movie: Forrest J. Ackerman as the picture-taking guy in the zoo.

It's official...I love New Zealanders!

***... as the chatter in the room quiets down, the squeaking of a chair followed by the clearing of a throat breaks the post-discussion silence"***

BRAINDEAD is tedious ... as a matter of fact, it is a complete bore ... and for those fimmakers who have laid they necks out, sincerly poured their deepest fears and phobias into their films, and have actually attempted to represent the great genre of horror the way it should be ( and the fans of them ), BRAINDEAD is an insult ...

Horror does not need to resort to self-mockery ... heck, I think it's agreed on that this cop-out of a film isn't even "horror", so why is it even being discussed here ???

I hope you won't take this as an insult elmie, but are you a goth?

It's a very funny film to watch as a teenager, esp with a J or two, and PJ sure is a master of special effects.

But calling it "genius".... is not knowing the meaning of that word. Or having an exceptionally narrow view of the world.

Maybe it's a cultural thing, but I found Braindead to be extremely clever and a neat little riff on the nature of repression, especially repression by looking 'decent' for society. Add to it the controlling pressure a jealous mother can put on her son when she sees him as a husband replacement - there's a surprising amount going on there for what superficially looks like a splatter comedy.

I am surprised anyone doesn't like it - it's one of those films like The Thing and Kairo that I thought everyone loved once they'd seen it...

Ooo! Fun!
So: do the zombies represent freedom from culturally imposed repression, or the ultimate expression of it?
After all, his mother tries to hide her zombiefication, yet equally she turns into the ultimate zombie.
Also, what does the lawnmower scene mean if the zombies are a metaphor for freedom?

I like it when the priest has sex with the nurse.

The zombies are a metaphor for oppresion by an old dead society. The son yearns to break free and move forward but he's held back by the shackles of the past (his mother, the priest, the criminal). The girl symbolizes freedom and the future. The forces pulling him backward are symbolized most fully by the giant mother's womb at the end. Ultimately, our protagonist must finally put these old forces to rest, obliterate them completely before he can be born anew and move on with his life.

So what of the mother being offended by her increased zombiefication? is she being held back too?
And what of the priest and the nurse throwing off their inhibitions when they turn into zombies and start getting it on?
important questions for an important film, i am sure you will agree.

Indeed. There are many layers to be unfolded here.
Perhaps zombification is a revealing process of sorts. Each zombie reacts differently. While the priest and the nurse revel in their primal selves, the mother is offended at her self awareness. She continues to deny and repress her true self, even as a zombie.

And it is only at the end, when she opens her womb that she finally accpets her true desires - to have never let her son leave her body at all.
This leaves the possibility that Lionel, if bitten, might become a hero zombie.
Zombiefication as a means to true self-awareness. beats spending 30 years up a tibetan mountain.
Thus is all conscious thought a barrier to turthful expression?
And what of the intestines? what does this tell us about the nature of the self?

TG, not only is that not an insult, but your question ( and how it was prefaced ) gave me a good chuckle ...

I'm usually hesitant to put a label on something ( esp myself ... yikes ), but I can say with absolute certainty that NO, I'm not a goth ...

Serious about my horror, yes, but goth ??? nope ...

Hey, I don't mean for my posts to offend anyone, things always come off harsher in writing anyway.

But to me, Mozart was a genius. Einstein. Orson Welles. Da Vinci. Bobbi Fisher. Maybe the Beatles, and probably Kubrick. People actually far, far ahead of anyone else in their field.

I'm just nitpicking about the use of a word that's become meaningless over the years, esp when applied to one fun piece of work. Otherwise there must be at least 50 works of genius that come out every year, seems a bit too much to me.

Take Zoolander, such an hilarious film with an incisive criticism of the fashion industry and maybe the only American film in years to make Child Labour an issue. Will Ferrel represents the US President, a puppet of industrial lobbies (first scene) backed by the Secret Services (Milla Jovovitch) who actively repress democracy in third world countries, as symbolised by the President of Malaysia. Stiller and Owen represent the self-obsessed materialistic US consumers who will one day overthrow the current lobby-directed democracy in the interest of everyone who suffers around the world.

Zoolander is actually a biting anti-capitalist film!

It's a work of genius just like Brain Dead!

Fair enough.

Hey everyone,
DDD has Dead Alive for $7.97.
Which is the better version - Dead Alive or Braindead (which can be found only on E-bay)??
I've never seen this film the whole way through and I'd like to pick up the uncut version.
Thanks!!

Braindead


Although quite why there isn't a region 4 special edition - considering Jackson LIVES in region 4 - is totally beyond me. Especially in the wake of Lord of the Rings...