(Some Spoilers) What seems at first like a "The Hills have Eyes" rip-off "Alive or Dead" is in fact in a class of its own. The film "Alive or Dead" starts off with busty and talkative Maria having a hot session of phone sex with her hot and horny, off camera, boyfriend Terry.
With the battery of her cellphone losing juice Maria also finds herself stuck in the middle of the desert with two, not one, flat tires. It's then that the action starts with Maria instead of staying in the safety of her locked SUV wanders out in the night to check out an abandoned school-bus with the words, in blood, "help me" written of the side-window.
The film then take you into a minefield of ridiculous situations involving Maria and her now friend, who was found tied up and hooded inside the school bus, and ally Sarah. All this leaves you more confused by the time the movie is over then you were before it even started!
The film has more then its share of nuts and they seem to pop up every few minutes just to both introduce themselves to the audience and then get killed off. There's first the unstable and creepy bus driver who we later find out is a happily married family man with a pregnant wife, Gretchen, back home. What he and Gretchen have to do with the other,if not the major, nut-case in the film Frank is very vague and left up in the air and to the confused viewers imagination by the films writers and director.
Frank whom you at first thought was a real cool and straight up guy and in fact the hero of the movie later turned out to be a cannibalistic murderer who ate among others, one of the other nut cases to pop up unexpectedly in the film, the mad monk-like Howard's young daughter back in 1982!
There's also the cute and cuddly but very undernourished boy cannibal Bubbles who's face looks like a pizza pie, with extra extra cheese, that was left in the oven long after it was already done. Bubbles is always seen munching on the-by then-dead bus driver's hand and pointing at his wedding ring which he offers to the amazed and terrified two girls Maria & Sarah as some kind of present. It wasn't until almost at the end of the movie that you realized that, with her wearing the identical wedding ring, the bus driver and Gretchen were in fact married!
***MAJOR SPOILERS*** Of all the confusion in the movie the connection between Frank Gretchen and the bus driver is the most confusing of all. Were then given to understand that it was non other then Sarah's recently deceased father Dr. Benson who delivered Farnk some 40 years ago and that's the reason that the bus driver had it in for Sarah in, this is just my take in this crazy mixed up mess of a movie, Frank not the bus driver being the one whom impregnated his wife Gretchen!
This suspicion seemed to be confirmed by Gretchen herself when after being rescued by Sarah begged her to kill her before it was to late! The too late was in her giving birth to the deranged cannibalistic and murderous Frank's offspring!
With the battery of her cellphone losing juice Maria also finds herself stuck in the middle of the desert with two, not one, flat tires. It's then that the action starts with Maria instead of staying in the safety of her locked SUV wanders out in the night to check out an abandoned school-bus with the words, in blood, "help me" written of the side-window.
The film then take you into a minefield of ridiculous situations involving Maria and her now friend, who was found tied up and hooded inside the school bus, and ally Sarah. All this leaves you more confused by the time the movie is over then you were before it even started!
The film has more then its share of nuts and they seem to pop up every few minutes just to both introduce themselves to the audience and then get killed off. There's first the unstable and creepy bus driver who we later find out is a happily married family man with a pregnant wife, Gretchen, back home. What he and Gretchen have to do with the other,if not the major, nut-case in the film Frank is very vague and left up in the air and to the confused viewers imagination by the films writers and director.
Frank whom you at first thought was a real cool and straight up guy and in fact the hero of the movie later turned out to be a cannibalistic murderer who ate among others, one of the other nut cases to pop up unexpectedly in the film, the mad monk-like Howard's young daughter back in 1982!
There's also the cute and cuddly but very undernourished boy cannibal Bubbles who's face looks like a pizza pie, with extra extra cheese, that was left in the oven long after it was already done. Bubbles is always seen munching on the-by then-dead bus driver's hand and pointing at his wedding ring which he offers to the amazed and terrified two girls Maria & Sarah as some kind of present. It wasn't until almost at the end of the movie that you realized that, with her wearing the identical wedding ring, the bus driver and Gretchen were in fact married!
***MAJOR SPOILERS*** Of all the confusion in the movie the connection between Frank Gretchen and the bus driver is the most confusing of all. Were then given to understand that it was non other then Sarah's recently deceased father Dr. Benson who delivered Farnk some 40 years ago and that's the reason that the bus driver had it in for Sarah in, this is just my take in this crazy mixed up mess of a movie, Frank not the bus driver being the one whom impregnated his wife Gretchen!
This suspicion seemed to be confirmed by Gretchen herself when after being rescued by Sarah begged her to kill her before it was to late! The too late was in her giving birth to the deranged cannibalistic and murderous Frank's offspring!