Dead Alive is Basically a Rom Com

Today, I’d like to talk about this little movie from New Zealand called Dead Alive (at least that’s what it’s called in this part of the world, it’s known in New Zealand and the rest of the world as Braindead.) and how it’s basically a romantic comedy.

Now, I should state upfront that I really like romantic comedies, if they are done well.  I should also note that people of my persuasion (which is to say, male movie nerds) tend to shit on romantic comedy as a genre, which I think points to deeper issues about these individual’s frustrations which women as a whole, as these people tend to treat romantic dramas and other “women’s pictures” with the same amount of derision.  One of my favorite movies, Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, is a romantic comedy.  Come to think of it, it’s probably my favorite comedic film ever, unless you think that Crank 2: High Voltage is a comedy.

A romantic subplot is a great thing to put into a movie to spice up the proceedings, especially if the script lacks emotional content.  However, in Dead Alive, the romantic plot becomes the main plot by default, as the rest of the proceedings of the movie is mostly a mess.  The film is structured like a romantic comedy.  To demonstrate this, I’ll break down the major events of a generic romantic comedy, which I will call…say…My Lucky Day.

1. Mousy waitress at coffee shop reads that she will be lucky in love in a horoscope.
2. She drops a book (because she reads a lot of books) and Ryan Gosling picks it up.
3. They make a date and it goes right even though a couple misadventures happen.
4. They grow to love each other.  They have adorable adventures.
5. She discovers that he’s actually doing research for an article.
6. She gets angry and breaks up with him.
7. Redemption
8. Walking into the moonlight
9. Credits roll

And here’s the general plot of Dead Alive.

1. After a short prologue about the capture of the Sumatran Rat-Monkey,  Paquita (Diana Peñalver) receives a Tarot reading from her grandmother about the the love of her life, who turns out to be Lionel Cosgrove (Timothy Balme), a Norman Bates figure with a castrating mother.
2. By exaggerating her difficulty with the English language, Paquita tricks Lionel in to asking her out on a date to the Zoo, where the Sumatran Rat-Monkey bites Lionel’s mother, who followed them.
3. Paquita follows him home and they spend the night together while Mum turns into a zombie.
4. Lionel has to struggle to cover up the zombie behavior of his mother and the nurse that was sent to tend to her.
5. At his mother’s funeral, his attempts to cover up the behavior makes him seem like a madman.  After the funeral, his attempts to dig up the corpse and kill it once and for all is thwarted by some drunk punks who are attacked by mum and are turned into zombies as well. Also turned into a zombie is a kung fu vicar who “kicks ass for The Lord.”
6. Paquita thinks Lionel is going insane because of the death of his mother, and starts seeing someone else.
7. Lionel’s creepy uncle discovers the zombies and threatens Lionel with charges of murder if he doesn’t agree to give the house to him.  He throws a party at the house.
8. Paquita comes to the party, discovers the zombies, and helps Lionel try to dispose of them.
9. The famously gory finale in which Lionel and Paquita are the only people left unzombified and Lionel finally gets over his mother issues.
10. Lionel and Paquita kiss and walk off into the night.

They’re strikingly similar.  The only difference between the two is the existence of massive gore in Dead Alive. So given that, what can we learn about this?

Well it’s inherited wisdom that romance works as a good subplot, but not as a good main plot. However, what I take away from Dead Alive is that any story is basically a mixture of the various genres, with the one that produces it’s structure being the one which primarily identifies with.  Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows is a soapy melodrama with an underlying critique of American consumerism, and a small subplot which critiqued the way women were encouraged to dilute their intelligence to better appeal to men. Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s Singin’ in the Rain uses a romantic comedy to tell a greater story about the death of silent cinema and the birth of sound cinema and, in particular, musical cinema. Both of these movies use tried and true structures to tell greater stories about their times or the times in which they are set.  Peter Jackson wanted to make a movie with ridiculous gore as a joke.  Without the love story, Dead Alive would fall to the floor, limp and slimy, without life or emotion.  Sort of like all that viscera.