Trailer
Plot summary
A zoo official and his crew take a Sumatran rat-monkey from Skull Island, where the natives demand its return, and ship the creature, a hybrid bred from tree monkeys and plague-carrying rats, to Wellington Zoo. Lionel Cosgrove is a meek young man who shares a Victorian mansion in Hataitai with his domineering mother, Vera. To her dismay, he falls for Paquita María Sánchez, a shopkeeper's daughter of Spanish Romani descent. Vera follows the pair on their date at the zoo, where the rat-monkey bites her and she bludgeons it with her heel. Lionel brings his ailing mother home, and Paquita's grandmother visits with a lucky pendant for him.
Cast
- Elizabeth Brimilcombeas Zombie Mum
- Glenis Levestamas Nora Matheson
- Lewis Roweas Mr. Matheson
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Dead Alive (1992)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Director Peter Jackson shot the film on cheaper Super 16mm rather than 35mm so more of the small budget could go toward effects, and reportedly used about 300 litres of fake blood for the climactic lawn-mower massacre scene.
- After release, the film was sued in the case Bradley v WingNut Films Ltd for showing images of the plaintiffs' real family tombstone without permission, and the case became part of a line of rulings that helped establish invasion-of-privacy law in New Zealand.
- The film's gore got it banned outright in South Korea and Singapore, and in Germany both the uncut version and several cut versions remain banned, with public screenings still illegal there; Finland lifted its own ban in 2001.
- Britain's censor board actually considered giving the extremely gory film a lower 15 rating because the violence seemed so cartoonish and comical, before settling on an 18 simply because of the sheer amount of gore.
- Actor Simon Pegg wrote in his autobiography that this film was one of the main influences on his own 2004 zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead.
- The film had to be retitled Dead Alive for its US release because another movie already held the rights to the nearly identical title Brain Dead.
