Dead and Breakfast Cool Ladies

Due to a lot of real life and work related issues, I haven't read many comics lately, so, my blog posts can't be about comics unless someone really want to know my opinion on Elf Quest, ten years later. And I write way too much about manga in my job to come home and write a bit more about manga, right now.

Anyway, on to what made me start writing today.

Confession time: I love B-movies. It's my guilty pleasure, and the goriest, the better. If there's a chainsaw in there, I'm in heaven. I like good horror movies, Shaun of the Dead is my current favorite, but B-movies have a special something that makes them very special. And yes, that love makes that sometimes, renting a movie is quite dangerous, since we can end with something very, very bad. Near unwatchable.

So, Dead and Breakfast was a surprise. We (my friend Sam and I) saw the trailer when we rented Apocalypse Alien. Word of warning though, don't rent Apocalypse Alien. Not even a hard core fan of Bruce Cambpell could find something watchable there. But the Dead and Breakfast trailer looked fun, had zombies line dancing, and well... As my friend Au says, Pigeons learn faster than us.

It started bad, and cheezy, and so cliché filled that I felt like I was playing my Horror Movie bingo card. You had the group of young adults who may take drugs in a small van getting lost and going to a small little creepy town, you had your small creepy house, manned by your tall and creepy old asian guy (Played by none other than David Carradine, no less) and before you got any real feeling for any of the characters, people start getting wacked with axes.

(I just have to say, though, that the songs are hilarious)

Anyway, in the group there are three women. I had labeled them as 'the annoying one', 'the blonde one' and 'the one who won't keep screaming and I hope she dies before the first half an hour is gone'.

And while 'the annoying one', played by Bianca Lawson (Kendra from Buffy) didn't made me change my mind (Seriously, who starts discussing with her boyfriend about their relationship during a zombie outbreak?), the other two? Blew my mind.

'The blonde one', Sara, played by Ever Carradine, somehow passed from being 'the friend we brought along becuase... we needed a third' to 'the girl who actually went around the house looking for something to defend ourselves with' to, in a moment that totally strains the disbelief, but somehow manages to work, being the one who makes a shotgun out of household items. She also is the one who figures things out, and the one who gets the coolest fight scene in the movie when presented with the typical 'evil bad guy is coming to get you' moment. She's just that cool.

And the other one? Sure, she starts screaming. And she only starts doing something after she gets paired up with the cute guy. But she reacts in a way that's pretty natural for someone who is suddenly trying to survive getting killed by their best friends, then has to watch as someone opens a dead body, removes their bones, and cleans them to make stakes. All in all, the fact that she didn't faint, makes her a cool lady in my book.

Also, there's something quite odd with the male characters, and it's the fact that we never get a male hero in this movie. Or, rather, the role of the male hero keeps changing, as the guys drop faster than flies. The 'good guy' who prays over accidental roadkill is the first one to get zombified and thus becomes the evil guy quite early in the film, the 'rebel without a cause' starts quite well as the leader, trying to find his missing friends, until he gets beheaded just as the first big fight erupts, then the 'idiotic boyfriend' steps up as the main character, keeping the girls safe and in general acting like our stereotypical hero of a horror movie, Ash-school, until he too gets zombified way, way early in the second fight. Then the male lead becomes the sheriff of the town (Played by Papa Winchester, I wish I could remember his name), which is all good until he too gets killed less than half an hour after he became the one to listen to. Finally, we get the mystic drifter, the one who knows what the hell is going on about, who, although he survives, gets knocked out of the fight right before he can stop the zombies.

Who stops the zombies, do you ask? Well, the girl who kept screaming that they were all going to die.

And while I would've loved it if clumsy boyfriend survived (He had a nice death, btw, getting himself chopped with a chainsaw), it's an interesting take on why girls tend to survive horror films. It's not just because they run. It's also because they know when to run, and when to take a stand. (Or at least, my favorite horror movie lead ladies know when to do that)