Thank you for taking a minute from accusing each other of being violent and counter-violent, and clicking over here to read about horror movies. It means a lot to me, and whether your schedule for marching in the streets is all booked up with defending or condemning statues of dead racists, I've got a reason for you to take to the streets that has nothing to do with any of that.
I am, of course, talking about the Louisville Zombie Walk, which is just over a week away. On Aug. 26 at 8:29 p.m., I will sound the alarm and unleash some 40,000 living dead on Bardstown Road. Come join us. Bring the kids.
To put you in the mood, this week's Thursday Thriller is Dead Alive.
This 1992 splatter comedy was directed by Peter Jackson, who later gained international notoriety for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I prefer Dead Alive. In fact, it's one of my all-time favorites.
It's about a love-hungry girl named Paquita (Diana Penalver). Her grandmother (Davina Whitehouse) reads her fortune in tarot cards one day and tells her that she will find true love with a Norman Batesy type named Lionel (Timothy Balme) who has an overbearing mother (Elizabeth Moody).
Mum
is so bad she follows Paquita and Lionel to the zoo on their first
date and gets herself bitten by a Sumatran rat monkey and seizes the
opportunity to turn Lionel's attention back on her.
The monkey bite makes her very ill. Her ear falls off into her custard while she's eating. She finally dies and gets up and kills her nurse, so Lionel locks his two zombies in the basement while he steps out to buy some tranquillizers from a Nazi scientist to keep them quiet.
Add to this mix a greedy uncle who wants a cut of Lionel's inheritance, and you wind up with the bloodiest third act I've seen outside of Japan.
Eventually,
Mum gets buried and Lionel meets some rockabilly hooligans one night
in the cemetery. Mum escapes her grave and kills them, and Lionel is
at the mercy of the zombie greasers. Luckily, Father McGruder (Stuart
Devenie) hears the ruckus and leaps into the fray.
If
the priest-on-zombie kung fu sequence that follows does not make you
smile, you may feel free to stop the movie and never read this blog
again because you clearly don't understand the nature of basic joy
and you're way beyond my help.
Maybe you should consider church or opiate addiction.
Before
you know it, Lionel has a cellar full of rowdy zombies, and they
start to multiply. Yes, zombie priest and zombie nurse get it on and
make a baby zombie who runs amok during a casual stroll in the park.
Dead Alive is as disgusting as it is hilarious, a zombie comedy that gets it right. It streams on YouTube.
No comments:
Post a Comment