If horror comedy is your thing, with more laughs than horror, you may enjoy Club Dread, directed and co-written by Jay Chandrasekhar (who also stars in the movie). Actually, scrap that. If you like watching girls in bikini’s run around screaming, this is the film for you.
Club Dread is almost a spoof of horror movies, while at the same time trying very hard to be a horror movie. The film opens like an early 80’s-style slasher, with a masked maniac chasing bloodied young women through a forest as they mercilessly scream for their lives.
Bill Paxton (Aliens, Twister, Titanic) plays Coconut Pete, a washed-up rock star who opens an island for horny college students in need of some drunken fun. His guests depart the boat that got them there for a week of sex, drinking and whatever else they like. Unfortunately the party soon crashes when a couple of the employees turn up brutally murdered. The rest of the crew are told they have to keep doing their jobs or they will all die. As they try to carry on the fun for the sake of the guests, it seems only the clues to a bad Coconut Pete song can reveal any clues as to who the killer is. Everyone begins to look suspicious as more dead bodies turn up and Pleasure Island becomes anything but. As in a game of “Clue,” everyone is suspect.
Club Dread is campy, dumb, full of sexual innuendo and drunk partiers, we’re talking about “Broken Lizard” here so I wasn’t surprised, but to be fair the movies saving grace are the array of beautiful women it features. Club Dread is catered to an audience of anarchist teens, but while it did attempt to go mainstream and please the masses, being a spoof of sorts, its efforts were still a hit-and-miss affair.
I’ve seen better, but I’ve seen much worse too. If you want a total mental escape then Club Dread might be the movie you are looking for. If you’re looking for something to get your teeth into, then keep looking.
WICKED RATING: 5/10
Title: Club Dread
Director(s): Jay Chandrasekhar
Writer(s): Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Erik Stolhanske
Stars: Jay Chandrasekhar, Bill Paxton, Kevin Heffernan
Year: 2004
Studio/ Production Co: Broken Lizard Industries, Cataland Films, Coconut Pete Productions
Budget: $8,550,000 (estimated)
Language: English
Length: 104mins
Sub-Genre: Mystery, Thriller
