Video Scripts: Longlegs, The Mummy (2017), Dead-Alive

Cody shares a few more JoBlo videos he wrote.

I have been writing news articles and film reviews for ArrowintheHead.com for several years, and for the last few years I have also been writing scripts for videos that are released through the site's YouTube channel JoBlo Horror Originals. Recently I started writing video scripts for the JoBlo Originals YouTube channel as well. I have previously shared the videos I wrote that covered 

- Frailty, Dead Calm, and Shocker 

- 100 Feet, Freddy vs. Jason, and Pin 

- Night Fare, Poltergeist III, and Hardware 

- A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, and It's Alive

- Dark City, Mute Witness, and The Wraith

- Army of Darkness, Cannibal Holocaust, and Basket Case 

- Halloween timeline, The Pit, and Body Parts

- Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, and The Thing (2011)

- The Monster Squad, Trick or Treat, and Maximum Overdrive

- A Fish Called Wanda, Night of the Creeps, and Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI

- Race with the Devil, Speed, and Romancing the Stone

- Maniac Cop 3, WarGames, and Night of the Living Dead (1990)

- The Rock, Witchboard, and Friday the 13th Part 2

- Intruder, Saving Private Ryan, and Big Trouble in Little China

- The First Power, Psycho (1960), and Hot Fuzz

- Cat People (1982), Bride of Re-Animator, and Con Air

- Moulin Rouge (2001), The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 (1985), and The Stuff

- Children of the Corn (1984), Bone Tomahawk, and Fight Club

- The Departed, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, and Ginger Snaps

- Silver Bullet, Last Action Hero, and Children of Men

- FleshEater, Christmas Vacation, and Lethal Weapon

- The Thing (1982), Monkey Shines, and Friday the 13th (1980)

- P2, Lethal Weapon 2, and Frozen (2010)

- Lethal Weapon 3, The Blob (1988), and Lethal Weapon 4

- The Fast and the Furious, Dance of the Dead, and The Rage: Carrie 2

- Puppet Master, 2 Fast 2 Furious, and Castle Freak (1995)

- The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Fast & Furious, and Halloween III: Season of the Witch

- Fast Five, Dog Soldiers, and Tremors 3: Back to Perfection

- Drag Me to Hell, 3D '80s Horror, and unmade Mission: Impossible sequels

- Sleepaway Camp, Tremors 4: The Legend Begins, and 2001 Maniacs

- Gremlins, Furious 6, and Lone Wolf McQuade

- The Last Showing, Grindhouse, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

- Christmas Horror, Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys, and Furious 7

- Drive (2011), 1986 horror comedies, and the upcoming Alien movie

- Murder Party, the upcoming film Twisters, and Hellraiser

- Black Phone 2, Super 8, Red State

Three more videos that I have written the scripts for can be seen below, one for the JoBlo Upcoming Movies channel and two for the JoBlo Horror Originals channel.

Neon will be releasing a horror film called Longlegs, directed by Osgood Perkins and starring Nicolas Cage, in July. I put together an article on everything we know about the movie so far, and that got turned into this video:

For the WTF Happened to This Horror Movie series, I wrote about the poorly received 2017 version of The Mummy, which was directed by Alex Kurtzman and stars Tom Cruise: 

The Mummy 2017 script: 

Universal Studios intended to build a cinematic universe with reboots of their classic Monster properties. The Dark Universe. A series of connected creature features, starting with a new version of The Mummy. A big budget adventure film led by Tom Cruise. It sounds like a success story in the making. But something went wrong on the way to the screen. The Mummy was a financial failure, poorly received by critics and movie-goers alike. The Dark Universe was dead on arrival. So let’s look back at this bungled attempt at creating a cinematic universe and find out What the F*ck Happened to The Mummy.

The Mummy franchise started in 1932 with a film that starred the legendary Boris Karloff. He played Imhotep, an Ancient Egyptian high priest who was buried alive for attempting to resurrect the love of his life. Returned to life thousands of years later, Imhotep comes to believe a modern woman may be the reincarnation of his lost love. Universal made five more Mummy movies over the next couple decades... and while Imhotep ditched his bandages early on, the other mummies remained shambling, bandage-wrapped creatures throughout. Jump ahead to 1999. Universal revived the Mummy franchise with a blockbuster hit that starred Brendan Fraser as adventurer Rick O'Connell and Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep. Rick fought Imhotep again in 2001’s The Mummy Returns – a film that also spawned the spin-off franchise The Scorpion King. And in 2008, Rick battled another mummy, this one played by Jet Li, in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Although Dragon Emperor wasn’t as popular as its predecessors, Universal was initially planning to make another sequel. Having battled Egyptian and Chinese mummies, Rick would next take on a South American mummy in a film titled Rise of the Aztecs. There was even talk of Antonio Banderas playing the villain this time around.

But the same year Dragon Emperor was released, there was a shift in the blockbuster landscape. 2008 was when the Marvel Cinematic Universe got started with Iron Man. As Marvel built this series of connected superhero movies, assembling the Avengers, other studios started looking for ways to build their own cinematic universes. And that’s when Universal realized they could reboot their old Monster movies with films that would be connected to each other. And full of crossovers. After all, that’s how the studio had made them the first time around. Standalone films like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man led to crossover movies where the monsters shared the screen. Then they were all introduced to the Abbott and Costello comedy duo as well.

This new endeavor would be called the Dark Universe. But how would they get it started? Would they build upon the success of the Brendan Fraser Mummy movies? Nope. Rise of the Aztecs was scrapped. Universal hired Jon Spaihts, who worked on the Alien prequel Prometheus, and The Hunger Games screenwriter Billy Ray to write competing drafts of a Mummy reboot. Maybe one script would be more worthy of going into production than the other. Or maybe they’d just blend the finished scripts together into one. Star Trek reboot writer Alex Kurtzman was hired to produce The Mummy and develop a reimagining of Van Helsing. Underworld director Len Wiseman was attached to direct The Mummy at one point. When he stepped away, the job went to Mama director Andy Muschietti. The idea was that this Mummy would be darker in tone than the Fraser films, but still aimed at viewers of all ages. As development went on, it became clear that this would be more of an adventure movie than a horror movie. So Muschietti bailed. That’s when Kurtzman stepped up to direct the film as his second feature, following the drama People Like Us. Around that time, Universal also brought their Fast and Furious franchise writer Chris Morgan into the Dark Universe. Kurtzman and Morgan were to mastermind the entire series. Universal was going all-in on this. There would be reboots of Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Creature from the Black Lagoon. All of the classics were coming back.

They weren’t quite sure if their 2014 release Dracula Untold should be part of the Dark Universe, though. Reshoots were done to open the door to this possibility. Just in case. But once Dracula Untold was released, they decided, no, it wasn’t a Dark Universe movie. The Mummy would get this party started.

The Dark Universe would run on star power. This became evident when Tom Cruise, who had worked with Kurtzman on Mission: Impossible 3, signed on to star in The Mummy. And you don’t cast Cruise in your potential blockbuster to read the lines from an existing script. He’s going to bring some big ideas to the table. And he’s going to get some degree of creative control. Since Kurtzman had little directing experience, it’s been no surprise to hear that he struggled with the scope of the film during production. So Cruise took on nearly complete creative oversight. Sources told Variety, “it felt more like Cruise was the real director, often dictating the major action sequences and micro-managing the production”. And his control carried on into post-production, when he brought in his own editor.

Although Jon Spaihts retains a story credit on the finished film, Kurtzman also worked on the script. So did Rachel Getting Married writer Jenny Lumet. And Jurassic Park writer David Koepp. And Cruise’s frequent collaborator Christopher McQuarrie. And McQuarrie’s pal Dylan Kussman, who is best known as an actor. There were probably some uncredited script doctors in the mix as well. Here’s where problems begin to emerge. Not only was Universal rushing into the idea of a shared universe, but there were also too many cooks in the Mummy kitchen.

One draft of the script was said to involve a Navy SEAL named Tyler Colt. Who battles mummies led by Ashurbanipal – a real historical figure – during a mission in Iraq. It was during the Lumet rewrite that the villainous mummy became a female character to be played by Sofia Boutella. She is Ahmanet, an Egyptian princess who was erased from the history books. The daughter of a Pharaoh, she craved the power of being Pharaoh herself. She wanted to be worshipped as a living god. But then her father had a son who became heir to the throne. So Ahmanet called upon Set, the god of death, who turned her into a monster. She murdered her family and planned to bring Set into the world through the body of a mortal man. That plan was thwarted when she was captured and mummified alive for her evil deeds. Her body was taken to a tomb in Mesopotamia, an area we now know as Iraq. Her sarcophagus was suspended by chains in a pool of mercury, a substance the Egyptians believed weakened evil. Unfortunately, Ahmanet’s evil is unleashed when the tomb is discovered in modern day. But it’s not discovered by anyone named Tyler Colt. Instead, it’s located by treasure-hunting American soldier Nick Morton, played by Cruise, and archaeologist Jenny Halsey, played by genre regular Annabelle Wallis.

Nick isn't like the heroes Cruise often plays. He’s not highly capable or skilled and he's not a badass. He's a flawed person, a bit of a creep who’s only out for himself. He uses people around him to get closer to his goals. If someone is slower than him in a scary situation, he's even fine with leaving them behind. The idea was that he’s an immoral guy who has to find his soul and humanity while battling this supernatural evil. He can be a fun character to watch, as long as you’re not looking for any trace of Ethan Hunt, Jack Reacher, or Maverick.

Ahmanet’s sarcophagus is loaded into a military cargo plane for a flight to London. Destined for the headquarters of an organization called Prodigium. Like S.H.I.E.L.D. in the MCU and Monarch in the Godzilla and Kong Monsterverse, Prodigium was meant to tie together the movies in the Dark Universe. The scientists and soldiers of Prodigium are monster hunters; the organization exists to recognize, contain, examine, and destroy evil. That’s why there are nods to vampires, the Gill Man, and even The Mummy ‘99 in their base. Their leader Doctor Jekyll is a troubled man who has to regularly inject himself with a serum. This keeps him from being overwhelmed by an alternate personality; Mister Hyde, who thrives on chaos and suffering. The role of Jekyll and Hyde was offered to Tom Hardy, but a deal couldn’t be made. The next choice was Javier Bardem – who opted to play Frankenstein’s Monster in a future Dark Universe movie instead. So the filmmakers turned to Russell Crowe. Cruise and Crowe are friends and had been wanting to work with each other for a long time. They finally got their chance here, and it seems like Crowe had a blast working on the movie. Drawing inspiration for his Jekyll and Hyde performance from Stephen Fry and Ray Winstone.

Things go very wrong during the flight to London. The plane crashes, and this was the big stunt Cruise suggested for the film. He wanted the crash sequence to be shot in a zero gravity situation. Filming took place on a real plane achieving zero-g twenty-five thousand feet in the air. The cast and crew went into zero-g sixty-four times, and each time would have about thirty seconds to film Cruise and Wallis floating around in the plane. It's impressive if you hear about it... but if you watch the movie without knowing how it was done, it’s no more impressive than if the actors were swinging on wires on a stage.

Nick dies in the plane crash. But he doesn't. He awakens in the morgue, with visions telling him Ahmanet has chosen him to be the body of the demon Set. The mummy rises from the plane wreckage to seek him out, killing anyone who gets in her way, absorbing their life force to regenerate herself. To bring Set’s essence into Nick, Ahmanet will have to perform a ritual involving a ceremonial knife with a jewel in the hilt. She needs the dagger and the separated jewel, so Nick and Jenny go scrambling to find the pieces before the mummy does. And they don’t only have to deal with Ahmanet. She can raise the dead to serve as her zombie slaves, which provides some cool moments. Including one where zombies swim after our hero in a flooded tomb.

Unfortunately, at one point the action is disrupted by a clunky twenty minute stop-over in Prodigium headquarters. The movie actually takes a break to do Dark Universe world-building. Which ends up giving it a disjointed, assembly line feeling.

The action resumes with Ahmanet revealing that she, like Imhotep in the ‘99 version of The Mummy, can call upon sandstorms. She sends one blasting through the streets of London... But she doesn't accomplish anything by using this power, so it feels like it was just added in as an expensive nod to the earlier Mummy. It’s out of place and inconsequential. Oddly, Kurtzman has said this was the first idea he had for the film, as it represents "a monster coming to our world in a real way". So it's interesting that it’s so awkward. Maybe because it was something they were determined to include whether it fit in or not.

Kurtzman has also said he wanted the film to be a collision between horror and comedy. Along the lines of An American Werewolf in London and the Evil Dead franchise. While more serious than the Brendan Fraser films, this Mummy is more intentionally comedic and funnier than it has gotten credit for being. Although many viewers have noticed the influence of American Werewolf in certain scenes where Nick is visited by his dead comedic relief sidekick Vail, played by Jake Johnson. Scenes that come off as being unnecessary.

The Mummy has a terrible reputation. And, like Nick Morton, it has plenty of flaws that can be picked apart. But it’s not as bad as its reputation indicates. It’s an okay movie, with ups and downs, some laughs, and entertaining stretches. And under different circumstances, it would have been considered a box office success. It made over four hundred million, in the same range as all three Brendan Fraser movies, not adjusting their numbers for inflation. The problem was the amount of money Universal put into the budget: nearly two hundred million by some counts. And then a hundred million more for the marketing. When you make a Mummy movie that can’t be considered a success after earning four hundred and ten million dollars, you’ve made some poor accounting decisions.

The next Dark Universe movie was supposed to be a remake of Bride of Frankenstein. With Angelina Jolie and Gal Gadot in the running to play the Bride. There was a script by David Koepp and the perfect director at the helm: Bill Condon, who made Gods and Monsters, a fictional story of the last days of original Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein director James Whale. Gods and Monsters even featured scenes of Whale on the set of the original Bride of Frankenstein, so it was fitting that Condon was going to make his own version of that film. But, disappointed with The Mummy’s box office, Universal cancelled Bride of Frankenstein soon before production was supposed to begin. And they scrapped the Dark Universe completely. So we didn’t get to see Javier Bardem as Frankenstein’s Monster. Or the Invisible Man movie that would have starred Johnny Depp. The studio decided to focus on filmmaker-driven, standalone reboots of their Monster properties. Leading to projects like the Depp-less The Invisible Man and the Nicolas Cage Dracula comedy Renfield. In some cases, it’s probably for the best that they didn’t carry on with the Dark Universe. There was a Creature from the Black Lagoon script that had a rocket launcher battle. And an ending where the Gill Man is recruited into Prodigium, taking a helicopter ride with Doctor Jekyll. We didn’t need to see that. 

Looking back on The Mummy years later, Kurtzman - who has gone on to work on many more projects - told The Playlist, “You learn nothing from your successes and you learn everything from your failures. That was probably the biggest failure of my life, both personally and professionally. There’s about a million things I regret about it, but it also gave me so many gifts. I didn’t become a director until I made that movie, and it wasn’t because it was well directed. It was because it wasn’t. And I would not have understood many of the things that I now understand about what it means to be a director had I not gone through that experience. As brutal as it was in many ways, and as many cooks in the kitchen as there were, I am very grateful for the opportunity to make those mistakes. It rebuilt me into a tougher person, and it also rebuilt me into a clearer filmmaker.”

So while The Mummy didn’t turn out like anyone hoped, it all worked out in the end. But it’s still a shame Bill Condon didn’t get to make his Bride of Frankenstein. 

And for the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw series, I wrote about Peter Jackson's 1992 horror comedy classic Dead-Alive:

Dead-Alive script:

INTRO: These days, Peter Jackson is best known for directing big budget spectacles. He took the Hobbits to Mordor. He cast Benedict Cumberbatch as a dragon. He brought us the sight of a motion-capture King Kong smacking around a bunch of dinosaurs. But when he was just getting his career started, he was making very different kinds of movies. Horror comedies that were drenched in blood. And pretty much every other bodily fluid you can think of. In 1992, he brought the world what may be the bloodiest film ever made. A zombie comedy he would call Braindead, but many fans know it as Dead Alive. And if you haven’t seen this one yet, it’s the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw.

CREATORS / CAST: Peter Jackson never had any formal film school training. And not just because they didn’t have such courses in his home country of New Zealand. Even if they had been available, he wouldn’t have enrolled. He didn’t want to be told or shown how to make movies. He wanted to learn by doing it himself. His interest in movies started with a desire to be a special effects artist. Since he was making his own effects at home, he needed to film them. That led him into making shorts. Then he dedicated four years worth of weekends into making his feature debut. The alien invasion gross-out Bad Taste. Which he considers to be his own version of going through film school. While he was working on that project, he met fellow New Zealand based writers Stephen Sinclair and Fran Walsh. With the latter soon becoming his wife and starting a family with him. Sinclair had an idea for a zombie movie. Together, the trio fleshed that idea out into a screenplay. Drawing inspiration from George A. Romero’s Dead trilogy, Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films, and Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator. While also mixing in a gleefully maniacal sense of humor that would make the guys in Monty Python’s Flying Circus proud. Jackson decided to make his subversive splatter puppet movie Meet the Feebles before getting the zombie movie into production. But once he was done working with drug-addled, homicidal, sodomy-loving puppets, he circled back to the living dead.

The title on the script was Braindead. That’s what Jackson always intended for the film to be called. It was released as Braindead in some territories. But in other territories, it was released as Dead Alive. Since that’s the title that seems to be used most often when the film is referenced, that’s what we’ll call it in this video.

The story is set in 1957. Because Jackson figured viewers would be able to buy into the insanity of the events more if it were a period piece. It begins on Skull Island – the setting of King Kong and a place the director would revisit a decade later. A New Zealand zoo official has come to obtain a creature that can only be found on the island, a vicious little beast called a rat monkey. Something that is said to be the product of rats breeding with unwilling tree monkeys. The natives, who use the rat monkey in black magic rituals, aren’t happy about this intrusion. But it’s the zoo official’s associates that hack him to pieces when they realize he has been scratched by the rat monkey. The nasty critter is taken to the Wellington Zoo, where it happens to scratch one of the guests. Vera Cosgrove, the overbearing mother of the meek Lionel. Lionel takes his mum home and tries to take care of her. But the scratch of the rat monkey soon has her falling to pieces. Turning into a monstrous zombie... and patient zero in a zombie outbreak that Lionel at first tries to contain. Then, it becomes obvious that he’s going to have to destroy these undead creatures. And with the assistance of his love interest Paquita and his sleazy Uncle Les, he sets out to end the zombie threat. Leading to a glorious final sequence that’s an extended bloodbath.

Relative newcomer Timothy Balme was cast as Lionel. Ian Watkin, who already had two decades of credits at that point, plays his hilariously unpleasant Uncle Les. Elizabeth Moody, who also had several credits, is Lionel’s mum Vera. Apparently Jackson drew from his own life when coming up with the idea of Lionel and Vera’s living situation. Since he lived with his own mom until he was twenty-seven, around the time he married Fran Walsh. Thankfully, he has assured that his relationship with his mother was much healthier than Lionel and Vera’s. Mrs. Jackson wasn’t a shrew with a homicidal past. 

At one point, there was a possibility that Dead Alive might be a New Zealand and Spain co-production. So Jackson decided to cast a Spanish actress as store cashier Paquita. Whose Tarot card-reading grandmother says she’s destined to be romantically entangled with Lionel. The role went to telenovela star Diana Peñalver. Who had never seen a horror movie before, as she wanted to avoid having nightmares about them. But while the potential Spanish investors ended up backing out, Peñalver stayed with the production. She gave a charming performance, and even delivers one of the film’s most memorable lines: “Your mother ate my dog!”

BACKGROUND: Jackson was able to secure the three million dollar budget through the New Zealand Film Commission. Which had also funded Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles. Then filming began, with an eleven week shooting schedule. Most of which the cast had to endure while coated with gore. That was provided by Richard Taylor and his special effects team, soon to be known as Weta Workshop. The actors were uncomfortable and irritated. The gore was sticky. The main set started to smell so bad that it would make people queasy. The syrup in the fake blood fermented under the lights. Yet everyone carried on without complaining.

Making a film with so many special effects would have been a challenge for a lot of filmmakers. But Jackson has said that he actually found the production to be an easy experience. He loved being surrounded by effects, having an excuse to blow things up and make monsters. And he definitely got to do that on this movie. His approach to Dead Alive was to push the splatter beyond the saturation point. To make it so ridiculous, there would be no way viewers could be shocked or offended by it. They would just have to laugh at it with the filmmaker. Jackson didn’t have any interest in making serious, hardcore horror films. As he told Film Threat, “I like comedy too much. I could never make a film that took itself too seriously. Fundamentally, I just want to entertain people, so I usually trade in cheap laughs for true horror. The more over-the-top a gag is, the funnier it will be. I don’t see a problem with that so long as it’s properly executed.”

Rather than the effects, the challenge for him on this one was working with the cast. As he said, Dead Alive was his first opportunity to work with real actors. And working with them made him more interested in the dramatic scenes than he had been previously. Opening a new door for him as he moved forward in his career. He wouldn’t be sticking to only making over-the-top horror comedies from this point on.

As Dead Alive started to make its way out into the world in 1992, Jackson learned that not everyone found it palatable. Some did still manage to get shocked and offended by the bloodshed. Some countries were just fine with it. New Zealand and Australia had no problem putting it in their theatres under the title Braindead. The British Board of Film Classification was won over by its light-hearted, comical nature. They considered giving the film a 15 certificate, allowing younger movie-goers to check it out. But in the end figured it had to have an 18 certificate simply due to the amount of gore. Meanwhile, the movie was outright banned in South Korea, Singapore, and Finland. Although Finland later reversed the ban. There are versions available in Germany where much of the gore and violence has been removed. The uncut version is banned there, and it’s illegal to show it. 

American distributor Trimark is the one that changed the title. Since there had just been another horror movie called Brain Dead. Starring Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton, and released in 1990. Jackson wasn’t enthusiastic that they decided to call it Dead Alive. But he has let it be known that the 97 minute version released in the U.S. is his preferred cut of the film. That’s seven minutes shorter than the unrated Braindead available in other countries. But those lost minutes aren’t the result of censorship. Jackson made the cuts himself and feels the film plays better without those minutes. There is an R-rated cut available in the U.S. that is only 85 minutes long. The minutes in that one were lost due to the censors, and it’s not recommended that you seek it out. If you watch Dead Alive, you have to see the unrated gore.

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: The film is a fun, quirky comedy even between the gross-out moments. But you need the experience of seeing the blood and pus spew across the screen. That’s all part of its charm.

The actors give great comedic performances. Balme’s Lionel bumbling through the zombie situation. Moody’s Vera trying to impress visitors even while her face is falling off.  Peñalver’s Paquita pursuing a romance with Lionel despite all the weirdness around him. Watkin’s Uncle Les being inappropriate and repugnant. Or even, in a smaller role, Stuart Devenie as the martial arts skilled Father McGruder. Who sets out to remove some zombie hoodlums from the cemetery while declaring, “I kick ass for the Lord!”

Jackson was right, his movie is so silly that you can’t take any of it seriously. No matter what happens on the screen. From mutilation to dog eating. It’s all a joke. And it’s a great, hilarious joke. While paying tribute to the likes of Romero, Raimi, and Gordon, Jackson made something worthy of being ranked alongside the films made by those legends. He and his co-writers set out to show viewers zombie gags they had never seen before. And somehow they were able to do that. The zombie encounters in this movie are packed with cool, clever moments. A zombie with a light bulb in its head. One that has a garden gnome in place of its head. Uncle Les pulling out zombie teeth with pliers so they can’t bite. Zombies that are hopped up on animal stimulant. Zombies having sex. A zombie baby!  We had seen a zombie getting taken out with a lawnmower in Night of the Creeps. But Jackson takes it much further. 

BEST SCENE(S): It’s impossible to talk about Dead Alive without mentioning the lawnmower scene. It definitely makes an impression. Online trivia claims that three hundred liters, or seventy-nine gallons, of fake blood were used in the filming of this scene... Although an interview with Jackson in Fangoria magazine indicates it was a whole lot more than that. Jackson said the lawnmower was rigged to shoot out three hundred liters of blood per minute. So you can see why this would be the favorite scene of a lot of viewers.

But there are so many great moments in Dead Alive, it can be difficult to choose a favorite. The martial arts fight in the cemetery is definitely a contender. And Jackson has his own pick... a scene that doesn’t have any gore in it at all. It’s a scene that easily could have been removed without having any impact on the film. For a while, it looked like there might not be enough time or money to film it at all. But Jackson managed to fit it in at the very end of the shoot. It’s the scene where Lionel takes the zombie baby Selwyn out for a day in the park.

Jackson told Fangoria, “It’s a very Buster Keaton, slapstick kind of sequence. It wasn’t necessary to the plot or anything, but I knew it’d be a real fun scene. We went to the park to shoot it on a day which happened to be beautiful and sunny. After a month spent on the gore-drenched house set, where everyone had just about started to go crazy, it was great. It’s also become my favorite scene to watch.”

This scene is great to watch with an audience during theatrical screenings. When a drunk in the park cheers at the sight of Lionel punching the zombie baby. And beating it against the side of the swingset. It might get the biggest laugh of anything in the movie. 

PARTING SHOT: Dead Alive was a financial failure in the United States. It couldn’t even reach two hundred and fifty thousand dollars during its theatrical release. But it quickly gained a cult following. With horror magazines like Fangoria letting their readers know that Dead Alive was something they needed to see. And Peter Jackson was a filmmaker to keep an eye on. As we all know, he did just fine without Dead Alive setting the box office on fire. His next film was the psychological drama Heavenly Creatures. Which earned him and Fran Walsh their first Best Screenplay Oscar nomination. He made one more horror comedy, The Frighteners. Then he was off to the worlds of Hobbits and Kong. With more Oscar nominations and some wins along the way. Including Best Picture, Best Screenplay, and Best Director.

A while back, Jackson said he was going to restore Dead Alive and possibly Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles for 4K releases. Fans are anxiously waiting to see those... And we’re also desperately clinging on to the hope that someday he’ll return to horror comedy. It’s been more than thirty years since he made a splatter movie. And that’s way too long. It’s time for him to go back to his roots. Set the prestige and big budgets aside. And give us something that’s down and dirty and coated with gore.

While we wait and hope for that to happen, Dead Alive is still just as fun to watch now as it was when it first came out. So if you haven’t seen it yet, seek out the unrated cut. Whether it’s the 104 minute Braindead version or 97 minutes of Dead Alive, you’re bound to have fun. Put it on and take a trip to Wellington, New Zealand. Visit with Lionel Cosgrove and his friends and family. And bask in the joy of watching them get splattered with blood and guts. As one of the taglines says, “You’ll laugh yourself sick!”

More video scripts have been written, so another batch of videos will be shared here on Life Between Frames eventually. In the meantime, keep an eye on JoBlo Horror Originals and JoBlo Originals!