Before graduating to the giant special-effects playground called the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, director Peter Jackson honed his skills on a series of homemade splatter films, culminating in 1992’s hilarious slapstick gorefest Dead Alive. The film’s mayhem starts with the transfer of a poisonous “rat monkey” from a deserted island to a New Zealand zoo, where an afternoon excursion goes horribly awry. After a monkey bite turns Timothy Balme’s awful mother (Elizabeth Moody) into a savage zombie, he and his girlfriend must fight armies of the undead during a party at his home.