7.8 | / 10 |
Users | 3.6 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Lionel, an innocent young man, is forced to care for domineering mother and finds the task a whole lot more demanding after she's bitten by the cursed Sumatran rat monkey. Passing the point of death, Lionel's mother sucks friends and family into her gruesome existence among the living dead and Lionel is sent spiraling into a ghoulish nightmare.
Starring: Timothy Balme, Diana Peñalver, Elizabeth Moody, Brenda Kendall, Stuart DevenieHorror | 100% |
Dark humor | 19% |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English, English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Peter Jackson is on record as stating that at least part of the genesis for his decision to attempt the Lord of the Rings trilogy was the fact that he had a roomful (maybe two rooms-ful) of high end computers sitting around after he finished The Frighteners, and he had to figure out a way to make his investment in all that processing power pay off. One has to wonder if anything similar may have inspired his early gore-fest Dead Alive, originally released under the title Brain Dead. This is certainly the effort of a director “still in training,” as it were, and while it’s often a riot of visual invention, it’s haphazard at best and often amateurishly chaotic at worst, which is not to say that the film isn’t insanely enjoyable. This weird mix of Alien and Psycho within the confines of a typical zombie film has more blood and guts than had probably ever been seen in New Zealand before, and in fact in its completely unexpurgated version Dead Alive is still banned it at least one European country. This United States cut (no pun intended) of the film is only slightly edited, and retains most of what has brought the film its peculiar acclaim, acclaim centered around the film’s undeniable manic comic energy as well as its nonstop profusion of dismemberments, deaths, decapitations and other “d”’s too numerous to mention. If the film may never quite escape its “not ready for prime time” feeling, it’s a fascinating early exercise for Jackson as a co-writer and director, and it proves that even early on, Jackson was trying to stretch the envelope in terms of visual effects (many if not most of them practical in this film) as well as a very inventive directorial style.
Dead Alive oozes onto Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This was obviously about as far from the mega-budgets of Lord of the Rings as might be possible, and it shows. The print here is very grainy, soft and offers fairly substandard color a lot of the time, with an overall milky quality that deprives the image of suitably strong contrast. Some of the close-ups reveal some excellent fine detail, but it's usually within the context of a wider, all inclusive softness that never really lets up for the bulk of the film. The worst element here is mosquito noise, which dots several sequences, especially the fantastic "ass kicking" segment in the graveyard at night. I never owned the DVD release of Dead Alive, and so can't offer an authoritative opinion about how this Blu-ray compares to that release, but my hunch is there is a decent if not overwhelming uptick in saturation (no pun intended, considering this film's proclivities) but a perhaps less than overwhelming uptick in sharpness and clarity.
No towering Howard Shore score on this Blu-ray, which features audio in a decent lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix. Instead there's a kind of cheesy (one assumes intentionally so) piano and synth score by Peter Dasent, who was Jackson's frequent collaborator in his early films. Otherwise the film consists of lots of gooey sound effects mixed in with various other more aggressive sounds (like that lawnmower mentioned above) that add up to a fairly raucous sonic experience, despite the obvious narrowness of the track. Fidelity is excellent here, though the film basically has only two approaches, fairly quiet and then completely boisterously over the top loudness. Effects and dialogue are decently prioritized, but this film could have really popped (again, no pun intended, considering what goes on in several sequences) with a surround repurposing.
Theatrical Trailer (HD; 1:49)
Dead Alive is undeniably laugh out loud funny a lot of the time, but it's also just plain stupid at other times. It is in fact somewhat reminiscent of any given episode of Saturday Night Live where really inventive bits will smash up against stinkers with fair regularity. But the film is a really interesting look at a director still in learning mode, and for historical reasons it may be more important than for any intrinsic value it may hold. This Blu-ray has a less than stellar image, due no doubt to the low budget source elements, but it also misses the mark on a couple of other scores. First of all, there's the longer, original version of the film which is (as unbelievable as it may sound) even gorier than this version. Second, and more importantly, this film is crying out for a Jackson commentary, which is nowhere to be found. All of that said, there's something inarguably charming (in a very bloody way) about Dead Alive, and for Jackson completists if for no one else, this release (with caveats noted) comes Recommended.
1986
Director's Cut
1986
1987
Collector's Edition
2006
2013
2013
Special Edition
1982
Unrated Director's Cut
2006
1984
2015
Collector's Edition
1981
Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn
1987
2019
2014
1990
2015
2015
2013
1994
2006