Tuesday 22 October 2013

Represent New Zealand: Braindead (1992)

From http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lis2bj7oI61qfen0ho1_500.jpg

Dir. Peter Jackson

The tone of the film is perfectly set up before the film actually starts. There's an image of the New Zealand flag. An image of a young Queen Elizabeth II on a horse in regal clothes. It suits the ridiculous tone of the film and explains so much about why Braindead became as it is. It's not just because it's still one of the goriest films ever made and so over-the-top in its content. It's because it still does this while being so jovial. So quaint. British idiosyncrasies twisted around and rebuilt through a new viewpoint of a former British colony. That throughout it, for all the bizarre dismemberment, it feels so middle class in tone, which makes it funnier. Set in fifties New Zealand, Lionel (Timothy Balme) is a likable young man who has the potential for eternal happiness when the young Spanish woman who works at the nearby grocer's, Paquita (Diana Peñalver), takes immense interest in him romantically and pulls him out of his shell, the predictions of her grandmother through tarot cards about literal eternal happiness making her adamant about sparking the relationship. Unfortunately Lionel's sole surviving relative in his close family, his mother (Elizabeth Moody), is domineering and controlling of him, wishing him to be there for her beck and call, and certainly she's not happy when his attention is directed to Paquita. This situation is made worse when Mum is accidentally bitten by the newest exhibit at the zoo, the horrifying (but, brilliantly, stop motion) Sumatran rat-monkey. Shown in the pre-credits to be acquired by the zoo through gruesome cost, the rat-monkey's bite causes a victim to decay will still alive, die and become a member of the living dead with the ability to survive even being hacked to pieces. The zombification of Mum forces Lionel to become a social outcast, breaking Paquita's heart in the process and pushing her away, as he is stuck with his sleazy uncle (Ian Watkin) swooping it to try and acquire all the wealth his late sister had, and a basement of ever increasing numbers of zombies. As zombie cinema has taught us, infections can spread quite quickly and Lionel already has a few undead occupants, without rent needing to be paid, in his house without potential ones being created through the party his uncle wants to start.

From http://stagevu.com/img/thumbnail/knlhzclvpchbbig.jpg

The fifties setting is immediately ingenious. The absurdity of such events taking place in a socially well-to-do, humble pie era of New Zealand, moral and refined, makes this splatter comedy and the gruel that takes place funnier. The film takes advantage of the idiosyncratic absurdities of this, and like Bad Taste (1987), plays up its country of origin's culture for humour as well. And it's a splatter comedy with a capital S. What you get in Braindead is the closest thing to carnivalesque in terms of this kind of splatter cinema outside of something of Re Animator (1985). Instead of hierarchy behind turned upside down as in a carnival, the human body is turned upside down in its function and form here. Gunge from an open orifice should not be eaten in custard but is. Legs should not be able to walk by themselves without the torso but a pair do. Intestines can preen at themselves in the bathroom mirror despite having no mind to function for themselves let alone eyes to actually look at themselves. If a severed limb can be used in a comedic way, it will. What is seen in Braindead is foul and twisted, but it's played with in such a comedic deadpan tone that it elicits giggles as well as shock. That it plays with such a serious tone that is yet so easy to find amusing - the use of a radio play within the film for audio related humour shows more of what Jackson clearly wanted the film to be like - makes it better.

From http://www.meangoblin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/peter-jackson-braindead-a.jpg
It also helps that this was when, frankly, Peter Jackson's films has the most of his personality. Some of the jokes in this final film in his splattick trilogy are just as childish and tasteless as in Bad Taste and Meet The Feebles (1989), such as what is clearly a former Nazi turned drug pushing veterinarian, but he was never pretentious, never sophomoric, and has such an imagination that, alongside friends and other individuals who made these films with him, brought such surprising things to be seen you never though you would see. Say I was spoilt, but Braindead was one of the first of cult horror films I saw when I was eighteen or slightly younger and started searching for them, but most other horror films haven't topped what this film did still. It's not just that the final quarter is the goriest, ridiculous and jaw dropping things I've seen still, including the infamous lawnmower massacre, but that it never lagged before then, as ridiculous in the first three halves, and that it was able to keeping topping what happened earlier on for something even better. You cannot say, even if you say the film's simplistic, that the end peters out or it was a drag to get to the famous end scenes. It makes the romance between Lionel and Paquita legitimately dramatic, and uses the oedipal plot with Lionel's Mum to top everything before the actual climax. I thought, even on another viewing, that it would be impossible to top sequences that left so much fake blood soaked into the set floors that it was still there when everything was cleaned up and other productions were being filmed on it. Somehow Braindead manages to top this with the end of the Oedipal plotline that will leave your jaw on the floor further. The carnivalesque body horror and complete sacrilege displayed with how the body should work and be treated continually goes further and further, managing to not run out of steam halfway through because, like a Looney Tunes cartoon, it is playful and willing to be as surreal even for cheap jokes. Even the repeating kicking in the testicles of the Uncle character, for a cheap overused joke, is still funny on the third time because the set-up for how they happen is as much of the joke too.

From http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/6900000/Dead-Alive-aka-Braindead-1992-Stills-horror-movies-6933691-630-335.jpg

There is very much the sense that Jackson couldn't really go further than this. Braindead succeeds majestically, but he made two tasteless and creative films before this and, on the third swing, learnt enough to create a homerun in terms of the final creation. I'll admit this could go against my complete frozen attitude to the more acclaimed Jackson of now, but I am willing to explore the films I've yet to see that have no involvement with J. R. R. Tolkien whatsoever. The thing is, Jackson didn't necessarily need to drop the adolescent but imaginative tone of those early splatter works regardless if he did need to move on. A different tone of horror film could have been enough, but keep his willingness to improvise. Why I may have nearly fallen asleep in rewatching The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) is that Jackson was choosing material, to his detriment, that forced him to have to be as faithful to the original source as possible and not allowed to be the prankster he clearly was with his first films. And frankly, while I will give them a try, hasn't he been making films for the last decade that was adapted from other peoples' work instead of his own ideas? It makes one disappointed that his id has been straight jacketed into being respectable. His first film Bad Taste felt far more like a creation of passion in its ramshackle lunacy and its creativity. Braindead is that film made with more craft and more skill, and I continue to feel resistant about viewing his newer films, even if interest is still there, because it feels like he may have lost the point. 

From http://www.nerdlikeyou.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/brain-dead-entertainment-nerd-like-you-1024x576.jpg

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