Club Dread Movie Review:


Retired rock star Coconut Pete (Paxton) now owns and runs Pleasure Island, the wildest resort in the Caribbean. As the new holidaymakers arrive on the island, some of the staff starts to go missing and their bodies start showing up all over the resort. The remaining staff realise they are been stalked by a serial killer and it is up to them to find out who is doing it with alarming the guests. The only problem is that they all suspect each other and are scared to death.

Cult comedy troop Broken Lizard takes a swipe at the slasher flick, mixing in their own unique sense of humour.

Taking best and worst from the 70s and 80s teen horror movies, the team has put together a parody of the genre, which is both funny and frightening at the same time. There are some genuine jumpy moments scattered throughout the film but each of these is followed by a funny line or joke to relieve the tension. This creates a strange hybrid of a movie that you don’t know whether to be scared of or laughing at.

All of the Broken Lizard team return after their first big screen outing in Super Troopers. Each of them is a gifted comedian in their own right and together they make an amusing ensemble. Steve Lemme is excellent as resort Romeo Juan, the man who is a hit with all the girls but hides a terrible secret. Kevin Heffernan is Lars, the man with the magic fingers but he is the new guy on the island and instantly the prime suspect. Paul Soter is stoner DJ Dave, Coconut’s Pete’s nephew and the one with the motive, as he is set to inherit the island. Director Jay Chandrasekhar is British tennis coach (A joke in itself) Putman, who is the butt of everyone’s jokes and could so easily crack at any moment. Eric Stolhanske is Sam, the fun police officer who insists that everyone has fun and can’t stand it when someone isn’t.

Supporting the Lizards on their tropical island of carnage are the beautiful Brittany Daniel and Jordan Ladd. Daniel plays the resort exercise instructor Jenny, the object of all the male attention on the island but she has just got her own aerobics TV shows after the original presenter mysteriously died. Ladd is the gorgeous but strange Penelope, a girl who is obsessed with Juan to the point that it is starting to creep everyone out.

The man supposedly in charge of resort is stoned out rocker Coconut Pete, played by a scene-stealing Bill Paxton. You can easily forget that the man has a gift for comedy as he plays the 70s musician, who loves himself and his drugs more than anything else, with great gusto.

Club Dread’s problems come when it is trying to decide exactly what it wants to be. On one hand it is a complete parody of a genre that is so easy to laugh at but then they mix in scares that some modern horror films would die to have. On minute you are laughing and the next you are jumping out of your skin. This isn’t really a bad thing but it does make the movie hard to categorise.

The Broken Lizard team have produced another entertaining film that takes the best and worst out of a genre and then plays them up to the camera. Club Dread is a fine example of this that will have you laughing and frightened at the same time. With an hysterically drawn out final confrontation with the killer and some genuinely funny performances from the team and the rest of the cast, this is an entertaining Mickey take out of a genre that is ripe for it.

Star Rating = * * *

Jamie Kelwick

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The timing for comedy team Broken Lizard’s new movie, “Club Dread,” couldn't be more perfect. Opening the same week as Mel Gibson's “The Passion of the Christ,” the guys behind cult classic Super Troopers offer up a film that's the very antithesis of Gibson's somber, graphic masterpiece. It’s a raucous semi-spoof that, pardon the pun, takes its own stab at doing a riff on the '80s summer camp slashers.

But, alas, while Broken Lizard members Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stolhanske are a talented bunch who will go places in the world of comedy, “Club Dread” ends up making me wonder why they didn't sneak into a sold-out “Passion” screening instead. “Super Troopers” was a good-hearted, amusing comedy – even though it had too many dry spots between the big laughs. “Club Dread” follows suit, only those dry stretches are longer, and it includes fewer really funny parts. That's why I recommend this flick for fast-forward viewing on video rather than for watching at the multiplex.

”Club Dread” takes place on Pleasure Island, a resort owned by laid-back and washed-up songster Coconut Pete (Bill Paxton). The drinks never stop flowing, and life is one huge party here. Among the staff are tennis pro Putman (Chandrasekhar), fun policeman Sam (Stolhanske), dive master Juan (Lemme), DJ Dave (Soter), new masseur Lars (Heffernan), and aerobics instructor Jenny (Brittany Daniel), all charged with keeping the guests in a constant drunken haze. But after the latest crop of partygoers arrives on Pleasure Island, a masked killer starts on a bloody rampage, slashing away select staff members one by one. As the Jason Voorhees wannabe starts offing victim after victim, surviving staff members attempt to use one of Coconut Pete's old songs to pin down who else might be targeted and uncover the killer's identity, all the while trying not to let word of the slasher get out and cause panic amongst the boozed-up vacationers.

Although “Club Dread” adopts a mellow, easygoing sense of humor, it’s perhaps a little too laid-back. Still, for the most part, the movie is a healthy blending of horror and comedy – a spoof of the slasher genre that puts aside a little time to take itself seriously. Broken Lizard has a great time devising spontaneous bursts of originality, (loved the live Pac-Man game, with scantily-clad women taking the place of the ghosts), some nice parodies of slasher flicks (such as when the killer calmly catches up to a victim trying to escape on a golf cart), and a general camaraderie among the cast members. “Club Dread” must have been great fun to make, but the film itself is something of a disappointment. I did, however, enjoy a few of the running gags, including how Jenny's slept with everyone on the island except Putman and how every character is given some sort of weird motive for being the slasher.

The Broken Lizard guys mostly play the opposites of their characters from “Super Troopers.” Most notable are Chandrasekhar (also Club Dread's director), who goes from a cop with an elusive ethnicity to a dry and snooty tennis pro, and Heffernan, transforming from loudmouthed officer Farva to sensitive, new-age masseur Lars, but all of the guys (not to mention the addition of the lovely Brittany Daniel) take turns enjoying their own chunks of this two-hour party. And just as Brian Cox was brought along for the ride in “Super Troopers,” another established actor, Bill Paxton, joins in the Broken Lizard fun. Paxton crafts a memorable comedic performance in the role of Coconut Pete, a beach bum who's still ticked at the success of Jimmy Buffet's "Margaritaville" over his own song, "Pina Coladaburg."

In certain segments, “Club Dread” is one of the year's funniest comedies; as a whole, it’s a bit dull, longwinded, and occasionally pointless.

MY RATING: ** (out of ****)

Adam Hakari

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