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Lionel lives with his elderly mother Vera (Liz Moody) in virtual servitude, the focus of a heavy guilt complex and exploitation. Burdened by the belief that he caused his father's death many years earlier, Lionel will do anything to keep Vera happy. However, Paquita bounding into his life is like a breath of fresh air. She manages to convince him to take her to the zoo, a secret rendezvous where Lionel can be himself. Unfortunately, Vera has cottoned on to the visit and takes it upon herself to spy on the happy couple (in the belief that Paquita is a woman of loose morals). During her covert operation, Vera manages to trip and finds the rat monkey enthusiastically chewing upon her arm. She manages to throw it off and manipulate Lionel into taking her home, but the damage has already been done. Tomorrow Mr (Lewis Rowe) and Mrs Matheson (Glenis Levestam) are visiting and Vera certainly isn't feeling herself.
The dominant theme of Braindead is undoubtedly zombies. There are hordes of them and they're mostly terminated in a variety of inventive and bloody ways. What makes Jackson's creation stand out from the crowd is the sheer volume of imagination, humour and care that has been lavished on what could have been yet another reanimation film. Each of the primary zombies is an individual, related to whoever the person was when alive yet skewed to highlight the depraved aspects of their character. When lashings of bad-taste humour are applied, the result is a never-ending stream of hilarity -- Lionel does his best to cope with a house full of mischievous, dependent and homicidal zombies. He can't bring himself to kill any of them (since Vera is one of their number) yet the increasingly desperate lengths to which he has to go to keep them secret are incredible.
Surprisingly, the level of acting in Braindead is high. The straight characters, such as Lionel, Paquita and her family are played as fairly normal people forced to deal with a rather unusual situation. Their reactions (especially dead-pan Lionel) have the ring of authenticity which allows them to slither through pools of blood without looking silly. In opposition, an array of eccentric and weird roles provides sly humour and knowing contrast, all without going too over-the-top. Selecting individual performances of particular merit is difficult when the entire cast are convincing, though Balme, Peņalver and Ian Watkin (Uncle Les) are especially memorable. The former expresses his surprise and innocence (lined with common-sense) beautifully in the early scenes, moving onto close-shave heroics with ease. His love interest, Peņalver, is attractive in a natural way, emitting a wonderful radiance when she smiles at Lionel. Even better, she knows how to take care of herself when confronted with slimeballs like Les. He's as dominating, ruthless and deadly as his sister Vera yet he possesses a form of sexist, take-no-prisoners charm.
Unlike the steady stream of direct-to-video schlock splatter movies, Braindead has pretty high production values. The period is created attractively both through props and people's behaviour, showing the attention to detail that is a characteristic of the film. This approach covers a multitude of areas, from the clever weaving of "The Archers" into the narrative to dialogue littered with quotable one-liners. In addition, the excellent special effects are used in unusual ways as elements of the story, rather than as crowd-pleasers in their own right. Overall Braindead is a dynamite combination of outrageous humour and graphic violence (against zombies) which leaves the audience and cast knee-deep in blood and body parts. It's an energetic, deeply black comedy on the surface which also takes the time for some quieter moments. The combination won't appeal to everyone, but to aficionados Braindead is the ultimate comedy-horror flick.
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