Braindead (1992)

Mother's boy Lionel Cosgrove is 25 and never been kissed until he meets the beautiful Paquita. But Lionel's bizarre family includes a cannibalistic mother and Selwyn, the infant from Hell. For the loving couple their relationship is the beginning of an endless nightmare!

Braindead is the Third film directed by Peter Jackson, and is the second film in which he played a cameo appearance (look out for the Undertaker's crazy assistant). Starring Timothy Balme as Lionel Cosgrove, this film is a comical, gore feast, zombie flick. The farcical nature of the film is the reason that the British and Australian critics left the original uncut, they didn't see that anyone would take it seriously! Unfortuantly in Germany the film was seriously cut.

The budget of $3 million allowed Jackson to experiment with some particularly gruesome effects, above all the grand finale, the flymo! (Over 300 liters of blood were pumped out of that lethal piece of lawn care equipment!) In fact Jackson's favorite scene, the baby in the park, was only shot because there was some money left in the budget.

Just how did they achieve all that gore? with pork fat, latex, sisal, polyfoam, human hair, ultra slime and hundreds of gallons of maple syrup!

Brain Dead Vs Dead Alive

1. Braindead opens with a closeup of the New Zealand flag, which then changes to the Queen riding accross a courtyard, finishing with a close up her on horseback. God Save The Queen is playing in the background. The opening sequence in Sumatra that begins Dead Alive follows.

2. After Lionel agrees to let Les have the money and the house, we see the music for the party get turned on and Void breaking free from his bonds. In Braindead a party guest lets Void out of the basement, and for his trouble gets headbutted.

3. During the party Void enters the living room and attacks a guest. Lionel intervenes by hitting Void around the head with a Jack Daniels bottle and then pours the contents down Voids throat.

4. After the Zombies have been let out of the basement, there is a short sequence where a guest with glasses is chased around a room by 2 zombies before he is finally caught and bitten. (In Dead Alive you can see the very end of this sequence just before the camera switches to Paquita stabbing a bag of tomatoes in the airing cupboard.)

5. After Lionel has bitten through the intestine and falls onto a zomies head, in Dead Alive we move onto Les killing zombie by "rolling" it to death in a clothes press. In Braindead Lionel is confronted by the vicar & nurse zombies who impail each other on a pitch fork and continue to have sex.

6. In Braindead there is approximately 16 seconds of extra gore in the lawnmower sequence where we see Lionel hack up numerous zombies, see the demise of the vicar and the nurse (whilst still in the middle of making love) and see Lional kicking body parts towards Paquita to be put into the food mixer.

7. Just before Lionel makes his entrance with the lawnmower, Paquita and friend (the one with glasses) are attacked by Voids legs (cut off in the bathroom scene) and a horde of zombies. Paquita and the girl grab a leg each and rip them apart. They then use these limbs to attack any zombie that comes near them.

8. At the mother's funeral, uncle Les is seen walking down the church isle and sits down behind Paquita. A conversation in which Les tries to hit on Paquita follows, which is unsuccessful. Paquita then stands up and sits away from Les.

9. When the zombie baby first apears it attacks Lionel but is unsuccesful as its umbilical cord gets caught up on a nail. This scene is not present in the unrated american version.

(Hong Kong Video Cover)