I’m all for freedom of expression and creators’ rights and whatnot.  I don’t believe anyone with a hankering for making something out of nothing should be restricted or, worse, stopped from fulfilling their creative desires.  I do, however, think people should be schooled in the proper way to go about doing whatever it is they’re trying to do.  I’m not saying they have to then follow those specific guidelines, but you have to know the rules before you can break them.

Case in point: in 1992 Mike Stanley wanted to write, direct, and star in a horror movie called DEAD IS DEAD.  And he did.  Good for you, Mike Stanley.  But somewhere along the way, Mike Stanley forgot one of the most important aspects of making a movie.  You have to have a story.  And not just ANY story, your story should make sense.  And through the process of editing and such, the creator should do whatever is necessary in order to make sure that story makes sense, even if it’s told in an unconventional way.  As erratic as NATURAL BORN KILLERS seemed, the story was solid.  Not so much with DEAD IS DEAD.

Stanley plays Eric, a bowl-cut goon who has returned to town after a year away.  Before he hit the road, Eric borrowed some money from what I guess is the Michigan equivalent of a loan shark in order to “help out his brother” who was in a mental institution.  Instead, Eric spent the money on blow and the loan shark, Tony, burned down the hospital where Eric’s brother was staying.  Eric vamoosed, but now he’s back to make amends.  He does this by going into the woods where he’s stashed a bag of money in a big hollow mound of mud.  When he reaches inside to retrieve his cash, something inside attacks him and rips his arm off.  Eric falls back, dies, and I felt a little bit happy, because at first I didn’t want to accept that THIS was the star of the movie.

No such luck.  Eric is found by Laura who just happens to have found a stash of medicine in the old hospital, an experimental drug that has the power to regrow limbs and, if taken soon enough, bring the newly dead back to life.  She’s been taking this drug daily for a while and doesn’t seem any worse off for it.  And it gave Eric his arm back and saved his life, so it’s gotta be good, right?

Eric gets a case of the drug and gives it to the loan shark Tony in order to pay off his debt and call it even, only Tony decides to send his goon Doug after Eric.  Doug runs down our Dorothy Hammill-looking hero, but Eric happens to have a little bottle of wonderdrug in his pocket and he’s safe.  He goes to Tony's house and guns him down, but Tony’s taken the drug, too and when Eric finds out half the stash he gave the thug is spoiled (the blue drug saves lives, but once it spoils and turns green, it turns anyone who takes it into a zombie!!!) all hell breaks loose.

This hell comes in the form of a bunch of nonsense scenes in which nothing much happens and, since everyone seems to have taken their daily dose, no one really gets hurt.  That’s too bad.

DEAD IS DEAD is a shambling mess of a movie from the very first scene.  The plot is not only all over the place, but sets up a number of possibilities and then never follows up on any of them.  We’re told by Laura what happens to someone who takes the green drug, but other than a very brief and shaky shot when Eric’s arm is being ripped off, we don’t actually SEE any zombies in this movie.  The relationship between Eric and Laura blooms about 5 seconds after they meet in the woods--I’m not even joking, they’re kissing before the scene is over--but when Eric’s plane goes down (he walks away from the crash; he took his blue drug that day), Laura gives an anguished cry, and then she’s written out of the story until she sees Eric a few days later waiting at a bus stop.  Did they reunite?  Who knows?  Because we cut to the next scene which may or may not take place days or even weeks later.

And intercut at different points throughout the movie are random shots of Eric in an unknown location, some room somewhere, shooting up while what may or may not be a whole zombie or merely parts of a dismembered zombie sit just to the side of him.  I was expecting these scenes to come into play at some point, but in the end they seem to have been added just because . . . well, I’m still not sure why they were added.  They contributed nothing to the plot.

As if the random story wasn’t enough, the quality of this movie is just as bad.  Remember, it was 1992.  Stanley didn’t even have the luxury of a digital camera, he was shooting this thing on video, and it shows.  The picture is grainy, and the mic was picking up lots of wind (looks like it was shot either at the beginning or the very end of winter in Michigan, with a few shots in NYC).  The story takes place over a span of days, it’s never specified how many, but Eric’s wardrobe never changes.  White shirt, dark blue sweat pants, and a long black coat.

DEAD IS DEAD has all the marks of a movie made by a couple of friends, right down to the actors having no other credits before of after, aside from Stanley, who has edited a few things since.  But something about DEAD IS DEAD just doesn't strike me as a full friends production.  There are actual locations, use of news footage that doesn't look staged by silly actors in front of a dropcloth, and the way Stanley composes his shots doesn't say to me that this was a whim.  He's got a decent enough eye with the camera, he just has no idea how to put all those separate scenes and shots together to make a coherent whole.  It looks like Stanley was trying to make a movie that looked big without actually spending any money.  And I mean NO money.

The rest of the actors were only such in that they appeared on screen, pretended to be someone else, and said a few lines.  There was no emotional depth to any performance, even from Stanley, who did his best to look tortured, but who's every expression screamed "ACTING!" like John Lithgow on SNL.  Cindy Cocquyt was barely adequate as Laura, while Rob Binge's Tony the thug and Dave Hildwein's Doug the enforcer would have been more believable if they'd been playing "Guy Who Works Temp Jobs and Still Lives at Home" and "Guy Who Hangs Around the Dump and Shoots Rats For Fun".  There's a lot to be said for casting in these movies, and there wasn't one part in this one I bought.

What this movie seemed like was a guy who really wanted to make a movie, someone who'd been dreaming about it for a long time, and finally decided now was the time.  So he put together his script, but didn't bother to get any feedback on his story to make sure it was all there and made sense, and instead just went right into making it, casting the parts, scouting locations and and doing everything a director is supposed to do when they're the boss.  And if the story had been more coherent, this could have been not too bad a movie.  But loose threads and lack of explanations keep this one bogged down in amateur-land and totally ruin what could have been a decent movie experience.


other Decrepit Crypts of Nightmares
A Candle in the Dark
Demon Slaughter
Nightmare Asylum
The River: The Legend of La Llorona
Serial Killer
The Crawlspace
Catholic Ghoulgirls
The Bewitching
High Desert
Hell‘s Highway
Hellbound: Book of the Dead
I Dream of Dracula
The Veil
When Heaven Comes Down
The Dead Live
Hip Hop Locos
Invitation
Las Vegas Blood Bath
Before I Die
Terror Toons
Toe Tags
This Darkness
Burning Dead
Dead 7

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older