The Dead Hate the Living!
Year: 1999
Director: Dave Parker
Written by: Dave Parker
Threat: Undead
Weapon of Choice: Hands
Based upon: Original
IMDb page: 
The Dead Hate the Living!Year: 1999 Director: Dave Parker Written by: Dave Parker Threat: Undead Weapon of Choice: Hands Based upon: Original IMDb page: |
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Rish Outfield's reviews
A word of warning. This review has been long shelved (over a year, kids), because it got so out of
control. It easily passed by my Blair Witch
review as the longest ever. You know, I'm gonna take an unpopular stand here. I found this to be a
stupid movie. I have a friend who hates Pulp Fiction, even though it rocks, but he is so set in
his dislike for that flick, that you have to respect him for it. I hope I can be seen the same way here.
The story of The Dead Hate the Living! (gotta include that punctuation mark) is: A group of
hip-and-clever young filmmakers are making a zombie movie in an abandoned medical facility when
they stumble upon a dead body and a mysterious coffin-like apparatus. Screwing around with it, they
unwittingly open a portal to another dimension and are besieged by zombies.
This film produced the most notes of any in the history of the HFC. The first half of my notes have
nice things to say, such as "Student film-ic...but neat" and "Not at all scary, but fun so far." The second
half of my notes were a scrawl of profanity and disbelief.
First, the Good: Having made my share of student films (well, maybe one shy of my share), I tried
to go easy on this movie. The filmmaking dialogue was pretty realistic, neat sets were used, the gothic
score was very nice. The best thing about the first half (and this can be both a compliment and a
criticism) was that it made me excited about filmmaking. I said to myself, "If they could do this . . .
what could we do?" The special effects ranged from semi-great to Third Grade class play-style, with,
for some reason, the ‘movie' makeup effects more believable than the ‘real' zombie ones. It was a
stupid idea, but I didn't much care, as it was pretty light and fun (there was the POV of a corpse,
for example), and quotable dialogue like "You are truly a sick bastard!"
But then came the Bad: I don't think anyone has ever lost me so hard on a movie as this one did.
The first half was a blast and the second half had me rolling my eyes so much I got dizzy. I wrote
the word "Sick" on my notes a half-dozen times. A lot of it was just gay, folks. In fact, the only word
I have written more times in my notes than "gay" and "sick" is "stupid," and that's worse. Other excerpts
of my notes include "Oh, come on," "Bullcrap," "Silly stuff," and "Boy, this sucks." The CGI flames
were extraordinarily bad, but hey, let that be a lesson to you. Really pathetic CGI effects prove once
again that traditional effects are the way to go unless it's a space movie. Dead bodies stink, by the
way (horror movies have taught me that). Last note excerpt: "Nauseatingly bad dialogue plus
eye-rollingly bad melodrama equals stupid stupid stupid."
There were, along with references to The Beyond, Scream
2, Ed Wood, Make Them Die Slowly,
Halloween, a reference to the effects house KNB, a reference to splatter magazine
Fangoria, there were multiple references to horror filmmakers as well (Lucio Fulci, Dick
Miller, George Romero, Tom Savini, John Carpenter, Bruce Campbell, and Sam Raimi). But folks,
these references got old really quick, and started to suck after about three and by ten . . . I even
had "neat horror film references" written in my notes, before they hit me over the head with it so
much I nearly lost consciousness. There were more I probably missed (calling humanity's fate
"glorious megadeth" had to be a reference to something), but I spotted the Stab poster torn in half,
and I knew what it meant. I won't print my thoughts about that, because they're just too obscene.
The cast was all young and good-looking, and the performances weren't awful. It features a couple
of real cute young actresses, but the script has a hard time making us like anyone, especially not the
hero. The girl I liked the most was killed too soon. The director character was super-driven and
unrealistically insensitive--and yet, he's our hero. The token black guy wasn't even black! The main
villain, a Rob Zombie-replicant was simply absurd, dressed in black leather and dancing around like
he's in a music video when he wasn't biting whole chunks of the scenery. I also loved it how the
characters would stand around and wait for the zombies to get out of their graves, or kill one of their
buddies. "We gotta get out of here!" "But let's wait until Marcus is dead first." "Yeah, okay." It
included an unbelievable setup, but even less believable reactions to that setup. The characters were
pretty nonchalant about what was happening around them, which was more and more irritating as it
progressed. You see, a movie has to be serious to some extent to be scary. At least the characters
have to take their surroundings seriously, even if the audience isn't supposed to. If you want to go
for laughs, you can have them wisecrack about the situation (like in Ghostbusters), but you can't
have it both ways.
As worthless a film as it was, it was shot in only ten days, which again, should make me go easier
on it. I'm sure it was fun to make, but there was so much of the "nudge-nudge, aren't we clever"ness
going on that I grew tired of it early on. First-time director David Parker shows no restraint or
subtlety. Some of the film was harmless, but some of it felt pretty insulting. The DVD release included
a hilarious making of featurette, entertaining in its asinine self-congratulation. Also included is a
truly godless music video (shite on a rusted tin sheet, really), proving that there are worse things out
there than The Dead Hate The Living. It was brave of Charlie Band to give these guys
any money at all, and I'm sure they've made it all back and are at work on the sequel, but come on,
Charlie, let's be a little more discerning next time, even if your company DID make
The Killer Eye.
Total Skulls: 16
| Sequel | ||
| Sequel setup |  |
|
| Rips off earlier film | ||
| Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie | ||
| Future celebrity appears | ||
| Former celebrity appears | ||
| Bad title | ||
| Bad premise | |
|
| Bad acting | ||
| Bad dialogue | |
|
| Bad execution | ||
| MTV Editing | ||
| OTS | ||
| Girl unnecessarily gets naked | ||
| Wanton sex | ||
| Death associated with sex | ||
| Unfulfilled promise of nudity | ||
| Characters forget about threat | ||
| Secluded location | |
|
| Power is cut | |
|
| Phone lines are cut | ||
| Someone investigates a strange noise | ||
| Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door | ||
| Camera is the killer | ||
| Victims cower in front of a window/door | |
|
| Victim locks self in with killer | ||
| Victim running from killer inexplicably falls | ||
| Toilet stall scene | ||
| Shower/bath scene | ||
| Car stalls or won't start | ||
| Cat jumps out | ||
| Fake scare | ||
| Laughable scare | |
|
| Stupid discovery of corpse | ||
| Dream sequence | ||
| Hallucination/Vision | ||
| No one believes only witness | ||
| Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth | ||
| Warning goes unheeded | ||
| Music detracts from scene | |
|
| Death in first five minutes | |
|
| x years before/later | ||
| Flashback sequence | ||
| Dark and stormy night | ||
| Killer doesn't stay dead | ||
| Killer wears a mask | ||
| Killer is in closet | ||
| Killer is in car with victim | ||
| Villain is more sympathetic than heroes | ||
| Unscary villain/monster | ||
| Beheading | |
|
| Blood fountain | |
|
| Blood hits camera | ||
| Poor death effect | |
|
| Excessive gore | |
|
| No one dies at all | ||
| Virgin survives | ||
| Geek/Nerd survives | ||
| Little kid lamely survives | ||
| Dog/Pet miraculously survives | ||
| Unresolved subplots | |
|
| "It was all a dream" ending | ||
| Unbelievably happy ending | ||
| Unbelievably crappy ending | ||
| What the hell? | |