Common Sense

Because what you really need with your morning coffee is my inane (yet somehow still witty) banter.

Fun, fun, fun. I get to review a movie I really enjoyed for a change. Too often of late, the movies I’ve gone to see were big disappointments. When we wanted to watch a serious drama and we rented Kingdom of Heaven, we found the story lacking and Orlando Bloom wasn’t up to the challenge of carrying the film without Liam Neeson (he’s either the gay guy from Elizabethtown or the gay guy supporting Johnny Depp. He is NOT leading man material.) When we watched X-Men: The Last Stand, I was disappointed by plot holes a script that was going for epic but just seemed crowded instead. I was just plain disappointed that they even made a The Da Vinci Code movie.

Dead & Breakfast did not disappoint.

It starts off like your typical Sci Fi Channel low-budget waste of time, but by the time the first body turns up, we’ve left Mammoth behind and are headed for Bruce Campbell territory. That’s a good place to be.

Actually, this movie reminded me of another great rental horror feature, Dead Alive! It’s also known as Braindead and was directed by Peter Jackson and shot in New Zealand. Really, really gory while also comic and lighthearted.

We get the same kind of excessive gore here in Dead, with zombies (the character with all the exposition keeps asserting that they are not actually zombies) being killed by any means necessary… chainsaws included. People killed with gardening shears and improvised shotguns also up the body count.

The premise is fairly easy. Three couples are travelling to a wedding in Galveston and get lost. One, Johnny (Oz Perkins), is the bride’s cousin and another, Kate (a very hot Bianca Lawson), is the maid of honor. The rest of the friends are along for the ride. Everyone knows everyone else, except for Melody (Gina Phillips), the vegan who speaks French and practices nonviolence, who is new to the group.

The gang get lost in the middle of the night and have to stop for the night at a local bed and breakfast. We get cameos from David Carradine (looking very Kill Bill) and Diedrich Bader as the owner Robert Wise and his French chef Henri. The folks at the gas station warned them that there had been some strange goings-on at the Wise place and it’s not long before the first corpse turns up.

Where this movie jumps off from your typical horror movie is the use of comedy. This movie plays like a comedy almost, just using the horror motif as device to get some black humor out into the world. Much like Shaun of the Dead, the zombies (if they are not zombies, then what are they Mr. Drifter?) taking over the town seems more like a plot point in a comedic troupes brainstorming session than the point of the film.

And it works. The elements that lift this above mere horror make it worth seeking out rather than ending up with it after a trip to the video store. From Zach Selwyn’s (a popular addition to Attack of the Show on G4) fun song lyrics to zombie line dancing (get this movie for no other reason than that), there are laughs, there is gore and you will find yourself enjoying every minute of it.

A quick note about zombies: I firmly believe that these are zombies. Whether it is a government-made chemical or being posessed by the spirit from a Kuman Thong (I love that word so much I had to say it out loud and giggle when I typed it), anything that re-animates a corpse and causes it to go after the body parts of living people is, in fact, a zombie. The creatures in 28 Days Later, however, were not zombies. After much debating, Space Monkey and I came to the only logical conclusion and that was that they were reverse vampires. The whole point of their existence was to give other people their tainted blood, not steal body parts. I am very firm on this.

Anyway, Dead also stars Jeremy Sisto and Portia de Rossi and you won’t be disappointed. Go get it. I give it 4 1/2 severed heads out of 5. It would have been all 5, but that would put it up there with The Godfather or something, and that’s just crazy.

Because what you really need with your morning coffee is my inane (yet somehow still witty) banter.

Fun, fun, fun. I get to review a movie I really enjoyed for a change. Too often of late, the movies I’ve gone to see were big disappointments. When we wanted to watch a serious drama and we rented Kingdom of Heaven, we found the story lacking and Orlando Bloom wasn’t up to the challenge of carrying the film without Liam Neeson (he’s either the gay guy from Elizabethtown or the gay guy supporting Johnny Depp. He is NOT leading man material.) When we watched X-Men: The Last Stand, I was disappointed by plot holes a script that was going for epic but just seemed crowded instead. I was just plain disappointed that they even made a The Da Vinci Code movie.

Dead & Breakfast did not disappoint.

It starts off like your typical Sci Fi Channel low-budget waste of time, but by the time the first body turns up, we’ve left Mammoth behind and are headed for Bruce Campbell territory. That’s a good place to be.

Actually, this movie reminded me of another great rental horror feature, Dead Alive! It’s also known as Braindead and was directed by Peter Jackson and shot in New Zealand. Really, really gory while also comic and lighthearted.

We get the same kind of excessive gore here in Dead, with zombies (the character with all the exposition keeps asserting that they are not actually zombies) being killed by any means necessary… chainsaws included. People killed with gardening shears and improvised shotguns also up the body count.

The premise is fairly easy. Three couples are travelling to a wedding in Galveston and get lost. One, Johnny (Oz Perkins), is the bride’s cousin and another, Kate (a very hot Bianca Lawson), is the maid of honor. The rest of the friends are along for the ride. Everyone knows everyone else, except for Melody (Gina Phillips), the vegan who speaks French and practices nonviolence, who is new to the group.

The gang get lost in the middle of the night and have to stop for the night at a local bed and breakfast. We get cameos from David Carradine (looking very Kill Bill) and Diedrich Bader as the owner Robert Wise and his French chef Henri. The folks at the gas station warned them that there had been some strange goings-on at the Wise place and it’s not long before the first corpse turns up.

Where this movie jumps off from your typical horror movie is the use of comedy. This movie plays like a comedy almost, just using the horror motif as device to get some black humor out into the world. Much like Shaun of the Dead, the zombies (if they are not zombies, then what are they Mr. Drifter?) taking over the town seems more like a plot point in a comedic troupes brainstorming session than the point of the film.

And it works. The elements that lift this above mere horror make it worth seeking out rather than ending up with it after a trip to the video store. From Zach Selwyn’s (a popular addition to Attack of the Show on G4) fun song lyrics to zombie line dancing (get this movie for no other reason than that), there are laughs, there is gore and you will find yourself enjoying every minute of it.

A quick note about zombies: I firmly believe that these are zombies. Whether it is a government-made chemical or being posessed by the spirit from a Kuman Thong (I love that word so much I had to say it out loud and giggle when I typed it), anything that re-animates a corpse and causes it to go after the body parts of living people is, in fact, a zombie. The creatures in 28 Days Later, however, were not zombies. After much debating, Space Monkey and I came to the only logical conclusion and that was that they were reverse vampires. The whole point of their existence was to give other people their tainted blood, not steal body parts. I am very firm on this.

Anyway, Dead also stars Jeremy Sisto and Portia de Rossi and you won’t be disappointed. Go get it. I give it 4 1/2 severed heads out of 5. It would have been all 5, but that would put it up there with The Godfather or something, and that’s just crazy.