Club Dread (2004)

This is a movie that I watch a lot and take a lot of grief for liking. It is a comedic take on the slasher movie from Broken Lizard. They are a comedy group that personally I think are very funny. They also made Super Troopers in addition to a few others. Just wanted to explain that so you aren’t confused when I keep referring to them in my review.

Coconut Pete is a Jimmy Buffet like character who sings one song after the other about kicking back and partying on a sandy beach somewhere in the sun. He has brought his music to life by running an island resort where the guests drink, hook up, smoke weed, and get into all other kinds of hijinks! This is all the sort of behavior that will get you in trouble if you are in a slasher movie… And now they are! There is a killer on the island that is targeting the staff and killing them off one at a time. Though they are warned if they say anything to the guests they will all die. Though eventually don’t you think the guests will notice the lack of staff?

There is a lot here to like. First if you are a fan of Broken Lizard you will get what you expect. The jokes are raunchy at times, but always funny. The guys get to play oddball characters with funny accents and yes there are sex jokes. Actually, quite a bit! While I expected the guys to be funny I had no idea how good Bill Paxton was going to be. He plays Coconut Pete and does a killer job! He practically steals every scene that he is in as he channels his inner hippie and laconically delivers his lines as if he is half stoned all the time. That is until he loses it when the bodies start to appear! Paxton was an awesome actor.

Another part of the fun is how the movie gently points out the silly things that always seem to happen in slasher flicks. We get a ton of suspects as the first ten minutes goes out of its way to give damn near everyone a motive to kill. The first kills are amusing and of course they die when they go into the woods for a three way, while smoking pot, and desecrating a graveyard… Someone else was renting those tapes in the ‘80s I see! Another victim has an entire monologue that other characters can hear. The whole, ‘You! I knew it was you!’ conversation that goes on and on without him revealing who he is talking too. That was funny. We also get a killer that is unstoppable. The killer gets stabbed, jumps off a cliff, gets cut in half and keeps on coming. If we are going to be honest that pretty much nails the genre right there.

Seriously I miss Bill Paxton. He was awesome!

The gore and kills are decent. Nothing too bloody or over the top. We do get to see several bodies strung up after they are dead. There is a throat cut and a head gets lopped off, but we see it as if we were the character. That was kind of neat, but also means we don’t see the kill. There is a gruesome looking chest wound that is immediately followed up by a killer joke! The best on screen bit is likely towards the end when the killer gets split in half.

I’m a fan of Broken Lizard and always enjoy their movies. Club Dread is their homage to the slasher genre that pokes fun at it, without making fun of it. That is a bid difference that way too many movies fail to realize. The movie is also pretty raunchy and manages to be a decent horror movie at the same time. More than a few movies have tried and failed to manage a decent horror comedy. So how did they succeed? I get the vibe that they (Broken Lizard) have a love for the genre they were poking fun at. They weren’t looking down on the slasher genre and that makes all the difference in the world. I recommend checking it out.

© Copyright 2018 John Shatzer