Dead & Breakfast (September 4/05)

Though the film does improve slightly as it progresses, Dead & Breakfast is yet another lame horror/comedy that's entirely ineffectual on both levels (ie the film is neither scary nor funny). Like other films from this unfortunate horror subgenre, Dead & Breakfast boasts an over-the-top, painfully broad sense of humor that - admittedly - might appeal to certain viewers. But for those who don't find this sort of thing terribly humorous, there's not a whole lot here worth recommending.

Featuring a surprisingly adept cast that includes Jeremy Sisto, Erik Palladino, and Gina Philips, Dead & Breakfast follows a group of friends that find themselves under attack by zombie-like creatures while en route to a wedding. The whole thing kicks off with the suspicious deaths of their bed and breakfast's owner (played by David Carradine) and head chef (Diedrich Bader), and only gets worse as it becomes clear that an evil force has somehow been unleashed.

Writer/director Matthew Leutwyler has clearly been influenced by films like Evil Dead and Dead Alive, and although the movie does feature a few impressive instances of gore (something that's particularly true of a brutal chainsaw sequence), the vibe of silliness quickly becomes more of an annoyance than anything else. The movie is packed with over-the-top comedic set-pieces, broad performances, and even a series of musical numbers, and as a result, Dead & Breakfast is surely one of those love-it-or-hate-it sort of experiences (as evidenced by the film's impressive fan following).

But the bottom line is that the flick just isn't that entertaining; as one of the characters says midway through, "this is like a bad horror movie."