Death Warmed Up

I bought this on Amazon.Com, and watched it last night, not knowing at all what to expect. And I must say, I liked it.

Ten years ago, Michael was hypnotized by a very unstable doctor into killing his own parents. Then he is locked up in the mental institution for it. In the present (or the present time of the movie) Michael, his girlfriend Sandy, and their friends Lucas and Jeannie head to an island for a vacation, where the doctor has moved his work to, and has started a new experiment in reprogramming people's minds. And Michael wants revenge for what was done to him, planning to kill the doctor. But they still plan to have a fun vacation, too. (I told you the movie was strange.) Anyway, when they get there, they see how the doctor has taken over the island, and then get themselves involved in some risky business to find the doctor, which leads to chases, attacks, and some all-around good scares.

I wasn't sure I liked this movie, but now I think I did. Some of it was weird, and I didn't understand every aspect, but it was still exciting. The chase scene in the tunnels was great, as was the attack on the pub. The characters were all likable, and the acting was surprisingly good. Of course, there's no denying that this is a B-movie, but it's well done. Towards the end, it gets sort of weird, and actually sort of tense, because you don't know if Michael is crazy or what, because he is pushed to the edge in this movie. But luckily, he isn't the only one in the spotlight. Everyone seems to be a star. Sandy, his girlfriend, is a great character, even though she manages to really set in with the waterworks towards the end of the movie. I think she cries for five minutes straight.

The actual ending is odd, but really good. I didn't understand what the deal was with Michael at that point, but it was still pretty cool, and the slow-motion of Sandy running seemed to have a weird effect. Overally, a pretty good movie. I'd recommend it, but don't try to understand it all.

Director David Blyth channels his inner Lucio Fulci as he creates what is described as "the ugliest, most repulsive film ever made in New Zealand." Ultimately though, it's an exploitation horror flick with copious amounts of blood and guts and an average storyline. I wanted to like it more but ultimately I could only manage to give it a 4 out of 10.

Seven years after gunning down his parents, Michael Tucker (Michael Hurst) is released from his padded cell and goes looking for revenge on the man responsible for turning him into a killer: deranged scientist Dr. Archer Howell (Gary Day), who now runs an island-bound institution where he operates on the inmates, turning them into crazed zombies.

I remember thinking that New Zealand horror Death Warmed Up was a pretty weird film way back when it was first released on VHS, with its all-over-the-place plot, oddball characters and gaudy, '80s 'plastic and neon' aesthetic; thirty years later, and the film's new-wave punk style and aimless story-line seem even more bizarre. There's a little fun to be had with the gore—an exploding head, some bloody squibs, random brain surgery, an impalement etc.—and we also get some gratuitous nudity and sex, but on the whole, this is way too shambolic to be considered anything but a failure.

Interestingly, Death Warmed Up was made three years before Peter Jackson's classic debut, splatter-fest Bad Taste, making me think that the Lord of the Rings director saw this back in the day and thought to himself, 'I can do better than that!'. And you know what? He could!

3.5/10, generously rounded up to 4 for Ranji Gandhi (Jonathan Hardy), the Indian character who looked and sounded like something out of '70s TV series Mind Your Language.

"Death Warmed Up" is one of those movies that could either be utterly inept garbage, or some kind of surrealist masterpiece. I mean, it's clearly the first one, but you can't help but appreciate in on that other level, the one undoubtedly unintended by the producers, who probably just wanted to draw an audience with some gore, and tacked the rest of the movie together on the run.

From what I could gather, the movie is about a kid who is brainwashed into killing his parents by an evil doctor and goes to an insane asylum. When he is released from the asylum, somehow he is able to instantly recruit a few friends and takes them to an island where he intends to kill the doctor, but the friends seem to think they're just going for a holiday.

The mad doctor has some henchmen, who are sort of like zombies, so I guess that's where the title came from. It also has some surprisingly violent scenes, which stick out because you can tell they were the most expensive scenes to film. Footage is replayed a few times of a disgusting brain surgery operation, where the exposed brain pulses like a heart, and in the climax of this sequence, fingers reach into the brain matter and pull out a round, grey thing.

I'm not that surprised it was banned here, as that sequence is like something out of a Fulci or Franco movie.

I enjoyed "Death Warmed Up" despite, or perhaps because of, its ineptitude of creation, the fact that it never finds a cohesive tone and is frequently confusing and not very well shot. It's still entertaining, all over the place like the character whose head explodes.

This one was made 3 years before Peter Jackson's Bad Taste and was the first horror coming out of kiwi-land New Zealand. So for the real collectors it's a must have and for somehow it wasn't that easy to find a copy of it. There are a lot of bad copies to find and even mine was a bad copy even as it was a DVD release. Is it worth searching, well, there's splatter in it but overall it bored me a lot and I had the skip button ready in my hand. If you see what Peter Jackson did 3 years later that is unforgettable but here the storyline is really stupid, it's all about the gore but again, made in 1984 it could have done much better. There's a bit of nudity in it but don't mentionable. If you are a hunter for splatters than you must have it in your collection or for being the first kiwi-horror. Don't expect some kind of eighties German splatter or Jackson splatter, just watch it and forget it.