It was Peter Jackson who described his film as a “splatstick comedy”. This is not the earliest or even the best example of this type of film. Already, I’ve posted about Re-Animator (#26) and Evil Dead II (#21), but Jackson and his team really took the combo of gore and physical comedy as far as it could go. There are even different versions of this movie. So, once you’ve seen what they get away with in the 85-minute cut, you can be shocked fresh by the gory gags at 104-minutes. It’s the reason for watching the film. Jackson assembles a team of inventive makeup and effects artists and they come up with dozens of ways for a zombie body to take damage and keep on moving. The lengthy climax is an endless parade of physical humor with only a break for our lead to enter wielding a lawnmower. Easily one of the bloodiest films ever made, and all done with a gleeful laugh. Jackson himself makes a cameo as an undertaker’s assistant who deals with a body over-pumped with embalming fluid.
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