dead alive

For years, I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen that Evil Dead 2 (1987) is one of the most influential movies of the last 30 years. Like Citizen Kane (yep, I just went there) it showed an entire generation of filmmakers that they could do anything with a movie camera. No tripod, no problem! Just tape the darn thing down on a plank of wood and start shooting. Sam Raimi’s film proved that in the videotape era, the rules of traditional Hollywood filmmaking no longer applied. No one learned that lesson better than Peter Jackson, starting with his underground New Zealand horror productions and culminating with his most unlikely Academy Award sweep in 2004. Dead Alive (his third feature) is a variant on the Evil Dead horror-comedy formula, only with an emphasis on gore and special effects that makes Raimi’s film look like an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba. And it’s most certainly not for everyone. It’s easy to spot Jackson’s talent; he gives the camera free reign to swoop, spin and shoot right up his actors’ nostrils. And the gross-out showmanship reaches manic levels of ambition that top themselves with each new gag. It’s like Charlie Chaplin in a slaughterhouse. Yet for all the gruesome, rotting, pus-filled action on display, Dead Alive is played strictly for laughs; a demo-reel for the emerging director’s creative team that made their similarly-styled (although much less bloody) Hollywood debut with The Frighteners five years later. The fans that followed Jackson to his Lord of the Rings success will be thrilled to have Dead Alive on blu-ray. Curiosity seekers might want to dip their toe in the water first.