Living Death (2006)

Director: Erin Berry (Trinity Dogs, Time Bomb)
Writers: Erin Berry (Time Bomb, Silent But Deadly), Leo Scherman (lots of T.V.)

Starring: Kristy Swanson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Chase, Big Daddy), Greg Bryk (The Incredible Hulk, Saw V), Joshua Peace (The Brady Bunch in the White House, The Sentinel)

IMDB user rating: 4.1 out of 10 stars.

"Stretch me...but be gentle."

As bad as this movie is, it could've been so much better. The concept is actually not half bad: Rich asshole inherits daddy's money, his abused wife and his lawyer conspire to kill him but mess it up, he comes back seemingly from the dead to exact revenge. Sounds solid, right? Wrong! Bad direction and even worse acting stands in the way once again to ruin what could have been a pretty decent movie.

The opening scene is ridiculous: Victor (the rich asshole played by Greg Bryk) is trying to impress some buxom chick (Kelsey Matheson--Dracula 2000) with his collection of torture devices he keeps in his attic; he has a 17th century rack that she leans over & says (are you ready?) "Nice rack". Somehow he talks her into getting on the damned thing, straps her in, and starts to stretch her. Just as it's starting to really hurt, his wife Elizabeth (Kristy Swanson) comes in & startles him, causing him to lean on the rack's lever, which stretches the girl so much, her tibia rips right through her damn skin! GROSS! But I'm hooked at this point.

Conveniently, Victor has his lawyer Roman (Joshua Peace) re-draft his will to allow him to go out the way he came in...no embalming, no make up, "Just put me in my best Italian suit and throw me in the ground". Fair enough...not unheard of at all...but convenient given the plot.

Roman decides the best way to take Victor out is with a drug, especially since the will disallows an autopsy. The scene at his drug dealer's place is out of this world; Roman asks his dealer (Rajiv Narang) for a "totally new high", stating he's tired of the coke, the meth & the crack. Dealer (that's how he's credited) tells him about this "extremely rare" neurotoxin that comes from blow fish called tetrodotoxin (TTX). He gives the back story about how if it's not prepared right, the sushi that comes from this fish can kill you; in fact, one blow fish contains enough TTX to kill 30 people. I checked this out, and it's true. Here's where the science fiction comes in: Dealer tells Roman that TTX can make a person appear dead..."Like a zombie?" Roman asks. "No, not like a zombie! Zombie's are dead, asshole". I love it when people talk about zombies like they're real. But again, TTX is extremely rare and almost impossible to get a hold of...which he basically tells Roman as he's reaching into his refrigerator to grab a vial of the stuff. I also love the fact that some skanky drug dealer in the valley can get his hands on TTX. Roman takes the drug, Dealer warns him one more time about the side effects, no money is exchanged (?), and Roman is on his way.

Well, Roman & Elizabeth put this shit in Victor's Pad Thai, he keels over & they think he's a goner...but we get to see the movie from his point of view here and there until he wakes up...very reminiscent of Serpent and the Rainbow. The medical examiner is there soon & wants to "do a full autopsy, of course". Roman puts the kibosh on that one, telling the M.E. about Victor's will, even going so far as to put an injunction on the autopsy. Pretty iron clad, one would think. But at the funeral home, (the buxom blonde with the broken leg shows up & spits on Victor in his coffin) here comes the M.E. with a court order that supercedes Roman's injunction, and he and his assistants proceed to close the casket and take it to the morgue! It's the movie's most priceless moment.

Back at the morgue, Victor's toe tag gets switched with a dead homeless guy so the M.E.'s assistant & his medical school classmates can practice surgery on a "pristine" corpse. But remember, Victor's still alive, so after they slice open his abdomen, evicerate him and are about to crack open his chest, he wakes up, gets three fingers sawed off & completely freaks out the students. They quickly give him a shot of thorazine or something to knock him out, shove his guts back inside his body, and decide the better decision is to bag him and bury him alive. As they're throwing him in the grave, he cuts his way out of the body bag, kills all three of them, cauterizes his fingers with a car cigarette lighter (after lighting up a smoke, of course), and sets out to seek his revenge...and gets it.

Highlights: there's a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor that makes the film somewhat worth watching; some pretty decent gore; the drug dealer is actually a pretty good actor...he plays the part well; and Greg Bryk plays a great asshole...he makes you hate him about ten minutes into the movie...that takes skill.

Lowlights: what the hell happened to Kristy Swanson? She looks like shit in this movie, and it's her worst acting since Buffy. I'm a little perplexed at the torture devices...can you really have a working rack in your home? The acting never really gells, almost like instead of working toward a common goal, everybody's trying to win the Oscar single-handedly...very sloppy.

The ending is predictable...but not. Victor kills the buxom blonde, calls his house from her apartment and discovers that Roman & Elizabeth are making grass sandwiches behind his back. He makes it back to his house, ties Elizabeth up, and when Roman comes to her aid, Roman ends up on the rack himself. Victor obviously has nothing to lose at this point, he's supposed to be dead, remember, so he rips Roman's arm off with the rack, and is about to turn his attention on Elizabeth when she elbows him in the gut, therefore splitting his wound open and spilling his intestines all down his front. She grabs a HUGE battleaxe from the wall & splits Victor's wig with it.

You think it's over, but the last scene is Elizabeth getting out of her car--pregnant--with a bunch of shopping bags and going into her (um...Victor's) house. End credits.

Here's my problem with this movie: After Victor changes his will and ends up dead(ish) like--the next day, and his attorney and his widow shack up together...how come nobody's investigating them? In the real world, the feds would be all over these two morons, especially since they're so damn sloppy about the whole thing.

Regardless of that, my advice is to go ahead and see this one. The subliminal humor & the plot actually make for a semi-entertaining film. No nudity, but enough gore to make up for it.

Enjoy & thanks for reading.

Check out the trailer: Living Death