'Dead is Dead (1992) - Mike Stanley.

After an unusually prolonged period of procrastination, I finally watched Mike Stanley’s no-Fi, almost sci-Fi ‘Dead is Dead’ which is stridently regarded in some murkier quarters of filmdom with quite some infamy, and merely ten minutes into ‘Dead is Dead’, I sincerely felt as though the film actively had it in for me! Having been written, produced, directed by and 'starring' Mike Stanley would suggest that this multi-tasking fellow would have a degree of competency in at least one of these disparate art forms, but the overly pedantic, monotonously delivered exposition to some unseen priest strongly belied any possibility of this being the work of some hitherto underappreciated filmmaking polymath! And I sincerely wished I could blithely appreciate Stanley’s audaciously bizarre story as much as I unambiguously dug his audaciously bizarre, pseudo-Johnny Ramone bowl cut! Right on! 

Eric (Mike Stanley) had lost his asylum-residing brother (perhaps the true author of the film!) in a terrible conflagration that Eric later unearths was cynically orchestrated by the grisly-looking geek-of-the-week Shylock/dope-dealer/nerdquake Tony (Rob Binge) who Eric still owed hella scratch to. So far, so so-so, as the exponential ‘weirdness’ of Stanley’s singularly opaque oeuvre begins after the poor lad awakens groggily in the wood being kindly tended to by petite blonde lovely Laura (Connie Cocquyt); since it is precisely at this very juncture when I should have ingested the potent psychedelics that may have eased the existential malaise shared by the increasingly addled Eric, as Laura Blithely expounds in the film’s unerring monotone that his arm bloodily wrenched off the night before in a Dr. Who-style tussle with some twitchy, jam-slathered appendage has been completely re-grown!!!!???

‘The medicine I gave you grew your arm back!!!’ she blandly explains to a rightfully incredulous Eric. ‘I take it every day like a vitamin; it can even bring back the dead!!!’ Like, wow, I’m trapped on Mulholland Drive, dude!!??? This unusually aggressive, jam-slathered appendage belonged to one of gnarly (unseen) mutants that have erroneously ingested the ‘Green Doxital’ which is bad m’kay, while the ‘Blue Doxitol’ rapidly rejuvenates living tissue and has dead re-animating properties that are good, m’kay? 

There is one especially scintillating dramatic sequence wherein a plainly reflective Eric, slumped wearily on the kitchen floor, leisurely consumes a pickle and considers his next move in this incidentally surrealistic, diabolically Doxitol-addled, corpse-reanimating celluloid conundrum which palpably whetted my appetite for my own delicious snack of fermented legumes but, sadly, did little more to endear me to this frequently odoriferous melodrama. 

There is perhaps some mischievous alchemy at play here, since this 72 minute ‘feature’ felt like a long wintry weekend in wet underpants, now with all that having being said, I’ll always have a genuine admiration for any mercurially minded gent who playfully mixes his metaphors in such a cavalier fashion as the estimable Mr. Stanley! The only special effects on display in ‘Dead is Dead’ are the monochromatic, torpor-inducing performances, all ceaselessly reciting the moribund text in a nightmarishly tepid drone which I paradoxically found to be both excruciating and soothingly mesmeric at the same time???!!! WTF!!!!?????

I shall end my pseudo-review with some final S.O.V controversy by boldly stating I genuinely adored Rob Binge’s frequently shrill, occasionally doomy synth score. So there!  But, on reflection, I would much rather watch another altogether noble failure like 'Dead is Dead' than suffer through yet another tawdry, witless, quick buck slasher, and, besides, the very fact that some of us are still talking about Mike Stanley's magnificently muddled mess of a horror movie all these years later, is, perhaps, something even he could not have legitimately expected! Kudos!!!

‘Hey!!!! Lay off the Doxital’ kids, otherwise you too might end up manifesting a lifeless DTV dud like ‘Dead is Dead! Only kidding, sexy S.O.V fans!!! take as much of it as you like...and bring on the sequel!!!!! Yay!!!!!!  - Goosey Lucy@Buxom Bloodfiends.

'...Mike Stanley's 72 minute S.O.V ‘feature’ felt like a long wintry weekend in grammie's wet underpants! and, yet, weirdly, I kinda' dug it more than I would admit in polite company!' - Tor Bronson @ 'The Heroic Blood Shed' 

'...I sincerely wished I could blithely appreciate Mike Stanley’s audaciously bizarre story as much as I unambiguously dug his no less audaciously bizarre, pseudo-Johnny Ramone bowl cut! Right on!!! - Weirdlingwolf @ Dirty Kunst Video. 

'...‘The medicine I gave you grew your arm back!!!’ The dope dialogue in 'Dead is Dead' rocks hard, dude!!!' - TerrorTampon @ SalonTitty.

 

 

 

 

                            'Stayin Alive!'

'High on Life, dude!'

                                                    

 

'Doxital is one helluva drug!'

     

              'Two in the rear for Ghost Slut, my good man!'

 

                          'The reviews are in!'

 

                                                      'Ketchup is one helluva drug!'

 'Maid Marion me to wellness, Blonde, forest-dwelling goddess!'