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The
Dead Hate The Living! review by Lee Peterson
When a low-budget film crew shooting in an abandoned hospital stumble upon a real corpse, they do what any self-respecting low-budget film crew would do--they use it in their movie. Before you can say, "low-budget film crews shouldn't play with dead things" the Rob Zombie-lookalike corpse is accidentally brought back to life, a portal of the dead is opened, and the hospital is chock-full of face-smashing, intestine-ripping zombies! The plot is streamlined and the proceedings never get too serious, so when the chunks hit the fan, it's 90 minutes of rock-'em, sock-'em twisted fun. Shot for $150,000 on a ten day schedule, Dave Parker's debut feature gets plenty of bang for the buck, and the fun script shoots out horror film in-jokes like an arterial spray. There's a great Dawn of the Dead gag with a prop machete; characters are constantly mentioning Tom Savini, Sam Raimi and Lucio Fulci (a Fulci Lives bumpersticker even makes an appearance), and the filmmakers aspire to win a Fangoria Chainsaw Award! There are 2(!) major homages to Fulci's The Beyond (I'm not gonna spoil the surprise—watch for them yourself), a Make Them Die Slowly reference, and, while in the middle of fighting off marauding zombies, one character asks, "What would Bruce Campbell do?"! Full Moon's video transfer (a DVD is due in March) is presented full-screen, and looks as good as Full Moon's product usually does. The EC Comics-styled photography (by Tom Callaway) is suitably garish, with lots of bright blues, purples, and of course, reds. There's supposedly a new "Full Moon Videozone" video magazine included, but there wasn't one on my screener copy. The Dead Hate the Living! may not be the next Evil Dead (or even the next Return of the Living Dead), but all things considered, if you want a horror/comedy that doesn't treat you like a moron, you could do a hell of a lot worse. Besides, how can you not love a film where one of the leads wears a Blackest Heart Media t-shirt?! OFFICIAL
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What's
this? A Full Moon Picture without a killer puppet or a demonic toy
in sight? A refreshing change of pace in itself, but better
still, The Dead Hate the Living! is a balls-to-the-wall zombie
epic that shows an obvious love for the genre.
