| The Dead Hate the Living Released: 1999 MPAA Rating: R Genre: Zombie Nuts and Bolts: A team of low budget filmmakers decides to make a horror movie inside the remains of an abandoned facility. Before long however, they discover that a twisted scientist had found a way to bring the dead back to life. A zombie himself, the mad Eibon wants to take over the world and bring everyone over into the lands of the Dead. Summary: Okay. So we start the party off with a guy named Eibon. Eibon is basically an anorexic looking version of Rob Zombie. Eibon is talking into a video recorder about his experiments which he seems to feel are something of a success. Yup, that’s right kiddies, good ole Doctor Eib has discovered a way to bring the dead back to life. How MIT missed this guy, I’ll never know. Anyway, as Eib is chatting along one of his experiments breaks out of a containment cell and attacks him. The camera equipment is knocked askew and we are led to believe that the good doctor is now zombie chow. Flash forward a month later. We find the extremely curvy yet adequately brainless doctor Sarah Ross examining a corpse in the morgue. As she peruses the yellowing bugger, she speaks into the micro-recorder uttering some of the most un-convincing forensic tech-talk I have ever heard. Chicky really needs to watch a few more episodes of ER. Anyway, she makes the mistake of turning around and thus averting her gaze from said corpse. You know what this means. Yup. No sooner does she turn around than the candy-coated corpsicle is gone. He of course pops up behind her and slits her throat open with a foreign object. Pay attention kiddies, this is where it gets interesting. The zombie takes the lovely mortician and hoists her up onto the examining table where he proceeds to hump the shit out of her. Yeah boy! That’s what I’M talking about. Bodily fluids are exchanged and the doc comes back to life just in time to engage in a little nighttime fireside necro-coitus. Then we hear someone shout the words, “CUT!” Now we find out that it’s really just a b-rated movie being filmed in an abandoned facility. The zombie is actually a shit-for-brains wannabe Brando named Eric and Doctor Sarah is actually Shelly Poe, the sister of the film’s director David. The three chat for a bit until David and Shelly’s other sibling Nina stumbles in. Apparently Nina was meant to play the part of Doctor Dead Fuckum. She’s pretty pissed off about it and does her level best to ostracize everyone involved in the film’s production. It’s about this time that we meet the rest of the crew. There’s Paul, David’s best friend. Paul is the FX guru who harbors a bizarre lust for Shelly. There’s also Marcus, another FX maven who spends more time acting like a twitchy virgin then an actual human being capable of 80 heartbeats per minute. And of course, what would cinema be if we didn’t have the token black Jamaican pot-smoking cameraman? Finally, we have Topaz. Topaz is a bad ass Goth-girl wannabe who harbors the feminine version of a boner for director David Poe. Some time passes and Shelly and Eric wander into an unexplored section of the facility. This is actually the empty laboratory of Doctor Eibon. They find the videotape but believe that the footage is actually just part of David’s movie stock. The rest of the gang gathers downstairs and they find a large iron coffin propped up against a wall. David is exuberant and wants to use it as part of his set. They open the coffin and out falls the cold corpse of Eibon himself. Needless to say, the group is freaked out. David gets the zany idea of using the corpse as a prop for his film. Shelly is so appalled by this idea that she quits the project. She storms out of the room and Marcus chases after her. Meanwhile, David begins filming again. He directs actor Eric to the coffin and has him open it while spouting a bunch of gibberish from a nearly non-existent script. He fucks with the coffin mechanics and a great purple light brings Eibon back to life. The zombie Eibon grabs Eric and pulls him into the portal within the coffin. He is expelled minutes later in a wash of blood. Eibon emerges fully from the coffin’s otherworldly rift with two of his zombie heavies in tow. Their names are Gaunt and Maggot, but for all intents and purposes I’ll refer to them as Tall guy and Fat Ass. The Scoobies beat feet and get the hell out of dodge. Eibon sends his zombies after them. At this point, we learn a little bit more about the good doctor. Apparently he was once a normal sod married to a young woman named Ellie. Ellie had contracted cancer and Eibon was unable to save her. He instead turned towards his science in an effort to bring her back to life. Let’s just say it only partially worked. Now while we let Eibon continue with his melodramatic flashback lets turn back to the Scoobies. Tall guy ambles down a hallway chasing Paul and Chas the pot-smoking director of photography. They try to escape through a doorway but Fat ass cuts them off. Fatty rips Chas’s head off and Paul is forced to use Chas’s headless body to deflect the axe wielding Tall guy. Now while all this is going one, Eibon uses his coffin-device to turn Eric into a zombie. David’s sister Nina stumbles into the lab looking for her brother. Instead she is confronted by Eric and Fat Ass. Fatty twists her head off as if he were cracking open a 40. Ironically enough, Nina was fated to lose her head as part of David’s movie. While Eibon cozies up to the bleeding head, Eric shambles to another part of the facility. He comes upon Shelly who for some reason hasn’t gathered enough sense to get the hell out of town. Shelly doesn’t realize that he is dead since he is supposed to be in zombie makeup anyway. Eric attacks her and takes to her face like Monistat to a yeast infection. Meanwhile, David and Topaz have locked themselves up in one of the other lab rooms. They find the zombified remains of good ole Ellie Eibon. Ellie’s zombie drones on about how the dead hate the living (Hence the film title). Topaz gets tired of this nonsense and pops her like a puss filled zit. They run out into the hall where they find Marcus. The three race around a bit until they find their path cut off by Tall Guy and Fat Ass. Marcus tries to run interference, but Fat Ass plows his fist through the kid’s solar plexus. Marcus’ death is not in vain however as David and Topaz gain the chance to get away. At this point the two run into Paul. Paul has discovered that when they first activated the coffin device it somehow shunted the entire building into another world. Even if they were to escape from the lab they would be stuck in an alien dimension. They meet back up at the set where they find Eibon and a new host of zombies. A big ole donnybrook ensues and blood and snot are flying everywhere. The boys do pretty well, but Topaz gets nabbed and taken back to Eibon’s private lab. David and Paul retreat to another part of the facility to plot out a course of action. They use some of Paul’s FX equipment to make themselves look like zombies. This is where typical cinematic zombie lore changes. Apparently a zombie can’t sniff out its own like your typical Romero zombie. David and Paul successfully negotiate a maze of zombies as if they were zombies themselves. They find Eibon’s lab and try to rescue Topaz. Paul lures Tall Guy, Fat Ass and a few others into an adjoining corridor where he sets them on fire. However, Paul wasn’t counting on the return of Shelly. Shelly in the meantime had been turned into a zombie-whore by the now undead Eric. Shelly rips a huge chunk of flesh out of Paul’s neck and he dies soon after. Meanwhile, David uses a gun he found to take care of Eibon. The last of the zombies are defeated and the two lovers are free to finally leave the facility. Oops. That’s right…they’re no longer on Earth are they? As David and Topaz open the doors to the outside they find themselves on the edge of a vast purple mountaintop in some weird macabre death dimension. Acting/Dialogue: And the Academy award for best actor goes to…awww who am I kidding? The acting sucks. The only one who was even marginally convincing was Jamie Donahue as Topaz. The character of Paul is probably the real anti-show stopper here. His dialogue is so forced and inflated that he actually makes Keanu Reeves look good. Scary, eh? The biggest disappointment probably came from Matt Stephens who played the diabolical Doctor Eibon. I’ll give him props though. He tried. Maybe he tried a little too hard. I guess he was going for this whole Rob Zombie/Alice Cooper angle but ultimately he just comes off as a tired old carnival barker. I can definitely see him doing music videos though. Gore: I’m not sure where I stand as far as the gore. There’s plenty of it, that’s for certain. At times it comes off looking REALLY impressive and at other times it is really quite shameful. Marcus’ head-wound makeup looked pretty hot. And the zombies themselves were phenomenal; especially Maggot. But the FX really tanked when it came to the character of Eric. Even when he truly became a zombie, his face looked like little more than spray-painted latex. Maybe they shouldn’t have gone for that exposed skull bit. It threw the whole effect off kilter. The most unforgivable special effects took place when Paul set the three main zombies on fire. The flames were obviously animated and even the production crew of Dark Shadows could have probably cobbled together more convincing looking pyrotechnics. Guilty Pleasures: Alas, yet ANOTHER film with zero female nudity. I’m seeing that a lot lately. What the hell are wrong with movie producers these days? Is there not STILL a market for shameless exploitation cinema? Bah! The ladies however may take partial delight in seeing Benjamin P Morris (Eric) coated head to toe in yellow paint and wearing what amounts to a diaper. There are however a few non T&A guilty pleasures to be found. On David’s set you will find a faux tombstone that reads “Lucio Fulci, 1927-1996”. If you are even reading this review than you already know that Fulci was the famed Giallo director responsible for such hits as Zombi 2, City of the Living Dead and New York Ripper. We also see a facsimile of the infamous Lemarchant box of Hellraiser fame resting on a desktop in Eibon’s office. There are also frequent references to genre luminaries Sam Raimi, Tom Savini, George Romero, Bruce Campbell, John Carpenter, David Warbeck and of course, Fulci himself. The Good: Ahhh…another soon-to-be classic ‘So Bad Its Good’ type of film. If you’re a fan of the Return of the Living Dead series or just schlock cinema in general, then you’ll probably take squeamish delight in this film. Realistically, it doesn’t take much to make an engaging zombie flick. Just make sure you have plenty of able-bodied victims lying about. The most captivating thing about this film is the title. What’s NOT to love about a film called The Dead Hate The Living? It’s the sort of title that grabs you by the short and curlies and no matter how hard you try you just can’t muster the courage to put the rental back onto the shelf. The film has an appropriate build up. From the onset, you pretty much know what you are in for and can adequately judge the cheese factor within the first couple of minutes. I liked the approach that they took with the whole movie producer shtick. A simple gimmick, but not one that I think has been overused. I enjoyed the fact that the fate of the characters paralleled their significance to David’s script. Nina was meant to have her character’s head ripped off and as such she was decrapitated in real life. Eric’s final zombie-look is strikingly similar to the make-up job that Paul had done on him. He also brings Shelly back to undead life just like he did in David’s movie. The cream of the crop is Maggot. He’s the beauty who’s face graces the cover of the video box. He is played by NFL star Andre ‘Doc’ Newman and is scary looking enough to earn him a seat at the big boy’s table next to Pinhead, Candyman and Leatherface. He’s got this really cool growl, which reminds me a lot of the voice-overs used for Lou Ferigno’s character in the Incredible Hulk. On the breathing side of the spectrum, Topaz is the resident cake taker. She is hot, brash and ballsy. Her only downfall is that she’s got the hots for Ben Affleck look-alike Eric Clawson (David Poe). Although the camera work is a bit choppy, you can see her doing her fair share of ass kicking during the scrimmage scene on the movie set. One of my favorite scenes involves the death of Marcus. Marcus is kind of a joke to begin with so you really don’t feel bad when he gets it. As mentioned in the summary, he is confronted by Maggot and begins sputtering inane drivel. Maggot punches his fist through Marcus’ back killing him. He then proceeds to drag Marcus’ corpse out of the room by its entrails. That was TRULY a Romero moment and is hands-down the highlight of the whole film. On top of that, there’s a really kick ass soundtrack provided by various death/punk bands including Penis Flytrap (Love that name). Penis gives us such timeless classics like Cemetery Girl and the title track Dead Hate the Living. The Dead Hate the Living has a real 80s feel to it and a slightly cartoon-like sense of humor. Is it a film that will be remembered by horror buffs 20 years from now? Probably not. But for what it is, it’s not a half-ass poor way to kill two hours. The Bad: Okay, I think I’ve dick stroked this movie enough. You may have noticed that this little pearl never made it into the theaters. There’s a reason for that. I believe that there is a federal mandate, which stipulates that a movie’s overall budget must be at least equal or greater than the price of admission. And when one factors in the cost of inflation there is no way that this flick would have ever graced the big-screen. The sad thing is, director Dave Parker isn’t even a real director! He’s a line editor or a gaffer or some other obscure production company staff official. Hell, he could’ve been the guy pumping my gas last week for all I know. In either event, he decided not to spend the three bucks for lunch at Full Moon’s employee cafeteria and instead banked it in order to hire four or five nobodies to play parts in his film. Now before everyone comes down on me for ripping on Parker, let me preface this by saying: I LIKE Full Moon movies! They are great, cheap quirky classics designed to appeal to genre fans and not solely to the MTV generation. That being said, I feel that The Dead Hate the Living REALLY falls below Full Moon’s usual standards of excellence. But to be honest, I was just so fucking shocked that they were making a movie that didn’t involve psychopathic action figures that I nearly came in my boxers with anticipation! Despite its varied visceral accomplishments, this one really just loses steam at the wrong moments. The promising characters aren’t given a chance to strut their stuff and the one-trick ponies hug way too much of the spotlight. The biggest problem with any movie like this is that Parker failed to endear his audience to the characters. David is pretty much a dick and it pains me to know that he survives to see the end of the movie. Paul and Nina are just so damned annoying that it will literally cause you hemorrhoidal flare-up knowing that they don’t buy it until the film’s second act. On top of that, Eibon fails as a master villain. He is meant to be spooky and menacing while brandishing a zest for life that only Charlie Manson could appreciate. But instead, he comes off as comical. And not even Jim Carey ha-ha comical. I mean Pee-Wee Herman punching his dick in a movie theater comical. If Eibon had started jumping up and down while lip-synching the lyrics to Living Dead Girl, I would have at least had a miniscule amount of respect for him. Unfortunately, his presence is fairly dominating in this flick and he really takes the attention away from the film’s main Oscar nominees, Gaunt and Maggot. But don’t take my word for it. Cough up a few bucks, rent this fucker, cannonball a fifth of vodka and have a blast. Great Lines: What would Bruce Campbell do? –David Poe Overall Rating: 5 out of 10 severed heads. A gratuitously placed nipple would’ve likely bumped this one to a six. |
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