Brain Dead starts as a small meteorite crashes to Earth from outer space & lands directly on fisherman Bill's (Dennis Michael Tenney) head & lodges inside his brain where a parasitic alien black slime attaches itself & takes control of Bill turning him into a brain eating zombie. Two convicts the mild mannered Clarence (Joshua Benton) & the psychotic Bob (David Crane) can't believe their luck when their prison transport van gets a flat, Bob uses the situation to kill the guard & make his escape into the isolated woods where handcuffed together Clarence & Bob find a seemingly abandoned log cabin. Then two female hikers & a preacher & his assistant turn up seeking shelter, then the cabin comes under attack from various alien controlled zombies...
Produced & directed by Kevin Tenney who has had some degree of success in the low budget horror genre with the likes of Witchboard (1986), Night of the Demons (1988), Witchtrap (1989) & Endangered Species (2002) although he's not exactly a well known name, his latest effort is this rather unsubtle horror gore comedy alien zombie flick which has a certain tacky entertainment value but I am definitely not as impressed as the other IMDb user's who have written comments for it here. I would say Brain Dead steals it's title from the brilliant Peter Jackson horror gore comedy of the same name but lift's it's story straight from The Thing (1982) & The Evil Dead (1982) with it's body controlling alien & it's central concept of various teenage character's trapped in a log cabin in the woods terrorised by possessed (by aliens rather than evil spirits but still possessed all the same) zombies who try to pick them off one-by-one. In this review I have now mention three other horror films, Braindead (1992), The Thing & The Evil Dead & I have to say Brain Dead isn't anywhere near as good as any of them & while there are one or two fun moments I don't think it's that good a film. The script tries to be clever & funny which is fine if you find this moronic playground style humour amusing but I didn't, in fact I found it all rather predictable, stale & the timing just isn't right either. Almost all of the gags & humour fell flat for me, I didn't laugh once during this & the humour is so low brow that it feels like it was written by a five year old. There are big pacing problems too, the first half of the film is really slow going with all these character's meeting up & arguing & trying to be funny, the character's are really obvious stereotypes that are poor & feel like they belong in some cheap TV comedy sketch show. There's a man hating lesbian, a perverted preacher, a smooth wise-cracking hero & a comedy Sheriff. The twist at the end was obviously inspired (or ripped-off) from The Thing & overall while it has a few fun moments I can't get that excited about it.
There's some reasonable gore effects here, I say reasonable because they are played for laughs & bouncing rubber joke shop brains covered in slime lessen the impact. A guy has his head ripped in two & his brain falls out, a guy has his head shot off, a zombie smashes his fist through a woman's face & grabs her brain & she is seen staggering around with a hole in her face, someones arm is blown off, someone is shot in two, there are various decapitations & severed heads too. Quite brightly lit & shot Brain Dead isn't scary & is played for laughs more than suspense. All of the female leads get naked at some point or other whether it's skinny dipping or a needless shower scene Tenney always manages to find a reason. There's an unbelievably tacky shot in which the camera travels up a woman's skirt & a close-up of her vagina is seen & then the black alien slime spurts out of it onto the camera, that about sums up the level of sophistication in Brain Dead & the audience it's aiming for.
Filmed in California the production values are alright but it does look a bit cheap at times, it's well made enough I suppose but there's no particular stand-out feature. The acting is alright, some are worse than other's but they at least try. One of the worst filmmakers working in the horror genre today Jim Wynorski has a small cameo as the Sheriff but thankfully doesn't seem to have contributed anything behind the camera.
Brain Dead is a stupid horror comedy with added cheesy gore effects, I personally didn't find it funny at all but then maybe I just find this lowest common denominator type humour a little beneath my intelligence. It has one or two decent moments but the pacing is poor & the story is just a rip-off of better films.
Produced & directed by Kevin Tenney who has had some degree of success in the low budget horror genre with the likes of Witchboard (1986), Night of the Demons (1988), Witchtrap (1989) & Endangered Species (2002) although he's not exactly a well known name, his latest effort is this rather unsubtle horror gore comedy alien zombie flick which has a certain tacky entertainment value but I am definitely not as impressed as the other IMDb user's who have written comments for it here. I would say Brain Dead steals it's title from the brilliant Peter Jackson horror gore comedy of the same name but lift's it's story straight from The Thing (1982) & The Evil Dead (1982) with it's body controlling alien & it's central concept of various teenage character's trapped in a log cabin in the woods terrorised by possessed (by aliens rather than evil spirits but still possessed all the same) zombies who try to pick them off one-by-one. In this review I have now mention three other horror films, Braindead (1992), The Thing & The Evil Dead & I have to say Brain Dead isn't anywhere near as good as any of them & while there are one or two fun moments I don't think it's that good a film. The script tries to be clever & funny which is fine if you find this moronic playground style humour amusing but I didn't, in fact I found it all rather predictable, stale & the timing just isn't right either. Almost all of the gags & humour fell flat for me, I didn't laugh once during this & the humour is so low brow that it feels like it was written by a five year old. There are big pacing problems too, the first half of the film is really slow going with all these character's meeting up & arguing & trying to be funny, the character's are really obvious stereotypes that are poor & feel like they belong in some cheap TV comedy sketch show. There's a man hating lesbian, a perverted preacher, a smooth wise-cracking hero & a comedy Sheriff. The twist at the end was obviously inspired (or ripped-off) from The Thing & overall while it has a few fun moments I can't get that excited about it.
There's some reasonable gore effects here, I say reasonable because they are played for laughs & bouncing rubber joke shop brains covered in slime lessen the impact. A guy has his head ripped in two & his brain falls out, a guy has his head shot off, a zombie smashes his fist through a woman's face & grabs her brain & she is seen staggering around with a hole in her face, someones arm is blown off, someone is shot in two, there are various decapitations & severed heads too. Quite brightly lit & shot Brain Dead isn't scary & is played for laughs more than suspense. All of the female leads get naked at some point or other whether it's skinny dipping or a needless shower scene Tenney always manages to find a reason. There's an unbelievably tacky shot in which the camera travels up a woman's skirt & a close-up of her vagina is seen & then the black alien slime spurts out of it onto the camera, that about sums up the level of sophistication in Brain Dead & the audience it's aiming for.
Filmed in California the production values are alright but it does look a bit cheap at times, it's well made enough I suppose but there's no particular stand-out feature. The acting is alright, some are worse than other's but they at least try. One of the worst filmmakers working in the horror genre today Jim Wynorski has a small cameo as the Sheriff but thankfully doesn't seem to have contributed anything behind the camera.
Brain Dead is a stupid horror comedy with added cheesy gore effects, I personally didn't find it funny at all but then maybe I just find this lowest common denominator type humour a little beneath my intelligence. It has one or two decent moments but the pacing is poor & the story is just a rip-off of better films.