Dead & Breakfast

Dead & Breakfast

Dead & Breakfast, despite widespread acclaim, is really just another brick in the wall we at the Sewer call the current independent horror boom.

Ok, so we’re not all about coming up with catchy titles and whatnot, heck we aren’t even about being mentally engaged while writing. I guess this is where the rubber meets the road, and Video Sewer readers learn that this isn’t a movie review web site. Oh no, this is a lifestyle guide.

That said, we don’t have to slavishly laud every halfway decent indie horror film that shambles down the block for fear that a few negative words will shatter the current independent horror boom, which we now call CIHB. We’d love to go all french and call it the current horreur independent boom, because then it would be CHIB, which is something of a word in itself ... a cool word.

CHIB.

So Dead & Breakfast ain’t half bad, telling the tale of a group of city-slickers who so enrage the hick-town french chef that he turns all of his redneck enemies into zombies. Yes, I know that this isn’t really how the plot goes, but D&B suffers from CHIB no-no numero uno, a needlessly detailed and convoluted plot, and thus I don’t care to elaborate. Even if said plot convolutions are meant to be satirical, they are still aggravating.

D&B also cops CHIB trait Y, saddling a few ‘on-their-way-up-or-down’ stars (David Carradine, Portia de Rossi and Diedrich Bader) into small roles to grab some marquee value. In this case the Names either suck, (Bader) overpower, (de Rossi) or act as a signal to the ‘Weed Man’ that it’s time to deliver another brick (Carradine).

On the whole, D&B is affable, amiable, relatively funny and features a good performance by my wife’s coworker’s brother (Mark Kelly) as the de rigeur bumbling hick sheriff’s deputy. Word up Mark! And while it’s obviously not scary in the least, the gore is cheap, splattery, exuberant and plentiful.

Dead & Breakfast is no masterpiece, and it’s OK to say it. It is a fun rent, but the CHIB will survive if we forget D&B the moment it’s over.

DVD: Anchor Bay presents Dead & Breakfast in widescreen 1.85:1 ratio, enhanced for widescreen TVs. Dual Audio Commentaries by the writer/ director, SPFX supervisor and actors skip gaily along with Bloopers, Trailers, Deleted and Extended Scenes and Poster/ Stills Galleries. Yee haw!