Halloween Horror Marathon: The Dead Next Door

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Each week, Halloween Horror Marathon does some themed posts. We sleep in on Sundays, then watch a zombie flick. We call it Resurrection Sundays.

The Dead Next Door has always been one of those zombie movies which popped up on lists of lesser-known cult flicks, but never really ever came up as a best-ever. When I watched it the first time, it obviously didn’t make much of an impression, because I couldn’t remember much before this viewing other than “I know I’ve seen The Dead Next Door before.”

Within five minutes, it all came rushing back, and I remembered that this is what I want every zombie action movie to be! It’s late ’80s vintage, but this scrappy little Ohio movie readily predicted quite a bit of the modern zombie Rennaissance. There are elements of The Walking Dead (except it’s not boring), World War Z (book, not movie), and lifts from the finest pieces of Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead. I really hope the cult leader’s look is supposed to be a Deathdream homage, too.

The Dead Next Door is b-movie sci-fi horror all the way through. There’s a level of science that seeks to cure the zombies, or allow them to speak, but never actually goes so far as to actually explain any part of the contagion. In addition to being a delightfully weird zombie flick, it works as an action movie, too. Think 28 Days Later — but fun, instead of nihilistic killjoy boring. Once you learn that Sam Raimi worked as a secret producer, The Dead Next Door‘s tone makes a lot more sense.
dead next door screencap
The tone’s not quite splatstick, because rarely is there a wink or nod to the camera. It’s played fairly straight, but then again, every bit of dialogue being looped in post helps keep it from being something you’d take too terribly seriously.

Still: it’s got a sense of internal logic, there’s a definite scruffy style to the whole affair, and it’s not just a mish-mash amalgamation of disparate pieces. It’s a ridiculous movie, yes — much like Night of the Creeps, characters are named after famous horror directors — but it’s way more entertaining than most films at ten times the budget. It kind of peters out at the end, but I enjoyed the hell out of myself, and given the enthusiastic devotion to the bizarre plot, you’d think this would be way higher on the list of must-see zombie flicks.

It looks like Tempe Video will release a definitive Blu-ray / DVD combo later this month, which also includes the soundtrack on CD. They still have a few copies of the 2005 DVD release, as well.