That horror discussion podcast by the people who make Welcome to Night Vale watched Dead Alive, an early Peter Jackson film that I’d never seen, and so here we are.

Honestly, I have very little to say. Except for the fact that Army of Darkness came out a year later, I would say this movie was heavily influenced by that one. …but it is probably fair to say it was influenced by Evil Dead 2, so, kind of the same thing in some ways. I was also thinking that the precipitating scene on Skull Island was funny, in that they used the King Kong island name for their insufficiently spooky setting to catch a monkey with a zombie disease amidst cliched natives. But no, Jackson is on record for loving King Kong well enough to make its second remake, so, that actually tracks.

I could probably go on, but really what this reads as is a movie made by someone without a lot of budget[1] but with a lot of love for schlock cinema. It certainly doesn’t have the polish of The Frighteners, is nowhere near the seriousness of Heavenly Creatures, and doesn’t have the budget that the Tolkien-based movies spent on fireworks alone. But you can still see the talent underlying it all. And bravo on whoever saw that talent in prospect rather than retrospect and gave him more money for the next thing he made. It worked out pretty well.

Oh, um, other than forward and backward looking influences, I’ve said nothing. It’s basically a horror movie that aspires to be a romantic comedy, except the hero’s mother keeps getting in the way. …I had intended to say more, but, no, that really sums it up.

[1] And most of it spent on building WETA[2] so they could do a little stop motion animation, with all the funds left over going to several industrial barrels full of gore.
[2] I have no idea when WETA happened, so don’t quote me on this timeline in wikipedia or anything.