How the film "Living Dead" was filmed: footage from the filming and 11 interesting facts about the film (11 photos)

"Living Dead" is a crazy cocktail of classic horror, black comedy, thriller and science fiction. The creators also added a little trash and frenzy.





1. Today Peter Jackson is a famous director, behind whom are such cult films as “The Lord of the Rings”, “The Scarecrows”, “King Kong”, “The Lovely Bones”, “District 9”, etc., but once he was an unknown director who shot mostly unknown low-budget films and short films.



And in fact, it was the film “Living Dead” that became the starting point and the first big-budget full-length film in the director’s career. In fact, he had long been hatching a plan to create a film about zombies, but he did not have enough money for this.

2. For the filming of this film, Peter Jackson and producer Jim Booth mostly involved their friends and relatives. Peter Jackson's mother even appeared in one scene at the zoo. It is she who plays the woman who contorts her face when Vera crushes the rat-monkey after being bitten.



Peter Jackson's mom

3. It is clear that the rat-monkey is not some kind of animatronic, but a very ordinary doll, the movements of which were reproduced using frame-by-frame animation. But the most interesting thing is that this very frame-by-frame animation was done by Peter Jackson himself.



4. The scene with the massacre in the house using a lawn mower was recognized as one of the bloodiest in the history of cinema. About 400 liters of artificial blood were spent on this scene alone.



The lawnmower scene in the movie Dead Living Dead

5. Some of the actors from the film "Living Dead" can later be seen in another film by Peter Jackson, namely "The Lord of the Rings". For example, actress Elizabeth Moody, who played Granny Vera (the main role), will appear in The Lord of the Rings as a female hobbit at Bilbo Baggins' birthday party. And actor Jed Brophy, who played the punk, will play an orc warg rider in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.



6. Also, in his film "King Kong" Peter Jackson did not forget to add a reference to the film "Living Dead". On board the ship on which the main characters go to Skull Island, you can see a cage with a sign that says “Rat-Monkey from Sumatra Island.”



The process of creating a zombie baby doll

7. The city plans with trams at the very beginning of the film are fake. In fact, before us is just a miniature town created by decorators. And if you look closely, you will notice that the trams, judging by the way they sway, are too light. But at first viewing this is not visible. Great job.



Miniature city model for filming city plans

8. With a budget of $3 million, the film "Living Dead" grossed only $242,000, which can be considered a box office failure. Nevertheless, the film received many awards at various festivals, and sales of video media were not canceled in the 90s.



9. We know a film called "Living Dead", which adds some fear already in the title itself. In the original (New Zealand version) the film is called "Braindead", which can literally be translated as "Brain Dead" or something like that. But this is only if the two words were written separately. In fact, the word "Braindead" has its own meaning and translation, namely "Brainless".



However, in North America the film was released under the title "Dead Alive", which in principle translates as "Living Dead". This was done due to the fact that a film called "Brain Dead" had already been released in the United States.

10. Peter Jackson intended this film to be like Night of the Living Dead and other zombie horror films, but in reverse. That is, if in classic zombie films inThe survivors tried not to let the dead into the house, but the main character of the film "Living Dead", on the contrary, tried not to let the dead out of the house.

11. Several scenes were cut from the American version of the film, so instead of 104 minutes, viewers were able to see only 97 minutes of the film.