31 Nights of Halloween Horror - Night 11 - Dead & Breakfast



Dead & Breakfast
89 mins.
Dir. Matthew Leutwyler
2004/USA

The ole horror comedy.  Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn’t.  In Dead & Breakfast it falls somewhere in the middle.  As a horror film it fails and just uses loads of gore for what it lacks in actual horror.  As a comedy, it is never laugh out loud funny, but at times is slightly amusing.

There is not much of a story to get into, group of victims is heading to a wedding in Texas, they get lost and stop at a bed and breakfast for the night.  Not sure why they would need to stop anywhere, since they are already in a Winnebago, but I guess otherwise we would have no movie.  They stop at a bed and breakfast which  is run by Diedrich Henri (Oswald from Drew Carey Show fame, as well as numerous other things) and David Carradine (who I guess is still playing Cain in Kung Fu).  Carradine is protecting some kind of box that holds an evil spirit or some shit.  To make no story short, said box gets opened, evil gets out and kills everyone in town turning them into not zombies, as well as our group of victims.
What I found most interesting about the film, was the amount of talent in this film and yet still it was kind of nothing special.  Other then Henri and Carradine, the group of victims is comprised of Jeremy Sisto, who we will recognize from May and Wrong Turn, Erik Palladino who you may recognize from a shitload of TV shows, Bianca Lawson who was Kendra on the Buffy TV show, Ever Carradine who is the daughter of Robert Carradine, granddaughter of John Carradine and niece of David Carradine who is in this movie, Gina Phillips who was in Jeepers Creepers 1 & 3, and Oz Perkins, son of Anthony Perkins and also the director of The Blackcoat’s Daughter and I am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House.  And if that wasn’t enough, the sheriff of this small town is Jeffrey Dean Morgan aka Negan on The Walking Dead.  With a cast like that where did this movie go wrong.

While there are some clever elements happening here.  Most notably illustrated segways and a singing narrator, the jokes are in a very slap stick sort of way, with a tribute being paid to Evil Dead itself in the movie.  The gore is over the top as it needs to be in a ridiculous film such as this.  But when it comes to story or plot, it seems hap hazardly thrown together just to be silly and outrageous with some scenes completely unnecessary.  Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland this is not.
Its not a total fail though, it is some-what light-hearted and amusing.  Maybe for a younger crowd it would be laugh out loud, but to us season horror aficionados it is not enough of either genre it is trying to please.  Comedy is just as a difficult genre as horror to be effective in.  If you plan on mixing the two, it is even more of a challenge.  With Dead & Breakfast you may be better off staying at the Holiday Inn. 


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