Best movie of this year hands down!

Powerful

Absolutely brilliant

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

A band of would be filmmakers go to an abandoned hospital, and find a real dead body-which they use for the movie. It ends up opening a portal to hell-and unleashing some zombies.I make no apologies whatsoever when I say that I like the movie "Scream." Sure, I may lose cred to some horror nerds, but I answer only to myself, thank you. I don't like though, what came after "Scream": A series of annoying, self aware horror movies that thought they were clever, but weren't. Case in point: "The Dead Hate The Living", released by the once interesting Full Moon Studios, is proof that a love for zombie movies does not make a good zombie movie.The movie is full of references to other, better horror movies: "Return of the Living Dead", "The Beyond", and "Cannibal Ferox" to name a few-and while it's heart seems to be in the right place, it all comes off as fanboyish nonsense, which is essentially what it is. Not only that, it's bad fanboyish nonsense. The acting is non-existence, the references to Bruce Campbell and Fangoria are annoying, the soundtrack-filled with bad horror punk, psychobilly, and horrorcore rap-is grating, and the mugging for the camera hurts as well. To be fair, the zombie and gore FX are decent, but they aren't enough to save this dreck from being any good.Writer/Director David Parker would go on to write the notoriously bad House of the Dead (no, he's not happy with the way it turned out-can't say I blame him), and was originally attached to direct a Michael vs. Pinhead movie, though that movie never came to pass thank God. He also acted in the movie Free Enterprise, which is actually a pretty damn good comedy. Amazingly, when "Dead Hate The Living!" came out, some were praising Parker as one of horror's next big things, which shows how bad the shape of the genre was in at the time. After HOTD, his career never took off or fully recovered.

The Dead Hate the Living! is set in an abandoned hospital where several enterprising young filmmakers have broken into illegally to shot a low budget zombie horror flick (art imitating life maybe?). The director Dave (Eric Clawson) has his two sisters Shelly (Wendy Speake) & Nina (Kimberly Pullis) in the leading roles, his mate Paul (Brett Beardslee) is doing the make-up effects & he has got the hot Topaz (Jamie Donahue) to be a production assistant. While exploring the hospital the crew come across a strange looking coffin like object in a downstairs laboratory, they open it up & the dead body of Dr. Eibon (Matt Stephens) falls out, sensing a bit of an opportunity Dave decides to put the body in his film but after accidentally bring it back to life using the strange coffin thing the crew have to fight for their lives as zombies start to appear everywhere as it quickly becomes clear that the dead hate the living...Written & directed by Dave Parker this cheap as chips zombie flick isn't as bad as it could have been & isn't as bad as a lot of low budget crappy horror flicks I've endured recently but it's still not very good. Low budget horror film maker, Full Moon Pictures president & killer puppet lover Charles Band was the executive producer although even he couldn't bring himself to release The Dead Hate the Living! through his Full Moon Pictures company, hey he might not have particularly high standards but at least he does have standards. Anyway, here the script takes ages to go anywhere, apart from a brief pre-credit sequence it's well over 50 minutes before any zombies show up to terrorise the cast & that ladies & gentlemen is just too long. The whole first 50 minutes establishes that a film crew are making a horror film in hospital illegally & basically that's it, until the first zombie show's up this film is firmly entrenched in snoozesville. Then there are lots of questions over the plot, if the guy killed himself during the pre-credits sequence how did he end up in the coffin thing? Where did the zombie that was seen during the pre-credit sequence go? Why didn't that zombie follow Dave & Topaz into the air vent? Why did Dave emerge the other side in front of Topaz when Topaz climbed into the vent before Dave to begin with? Why are some of the zombies easy to kill while other's aren't? Why do some talk while other's don't? Why can some sense when someone is alive & other's can't? What was that coffin thing? Where did it come from? Who made it? What was it's function? Why is The Dead Hate the Living! such a poorly constructed film where things just happen for the hell of it with little regard if anything makes any reasonable sense? Don't ask me, ask the people who made it. There are also some glaring references to other horror films, actor's & director's from John Carpenter, Sam Raimi, George Romero, Lucio Fulci to Bruce Campbell, Dick Miller & the obscure Italian special make-up effects man Gino De Rossi who besides doing the gory effects for such Italian splatter fare as Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979), City of the Living Dead (1980), Pirahna Part 2: The Spawning (1981), Cannibal Ferox (1981) & The House by the Cemetery (1981) also worked on the latest Bond film Casino Royal (2007)!Director Parker does OK on what was admittedly a low budget, at least there's some cheap gore effects here. There's a decapitation or two, some rotten zombies one of whom has their face literally punched in, there's some bubbling skin effects, someones guts are pulled out & there's some blood splatter. As in a lot of low budget horror flicks these days there are some truly awful CGI computer effects, when you have literally millions to spend on computer effects like Spider-Man (2002) they can look absolutely spectacular but when your working on the sort of budget the makers of The Dead Hate the Living! have it's impossible to create realistic computer effects. Here they use CGI to make three zombies appear as if they are on fire, they probably couldn't afford to achieve the effect on set & it looks terrible, I've seen PS3 computer games with better fire effects. It's not scary, there's very little atmosphere or tension & the story is far too loose to be gripping. Amusingly I watched this on cable TV last night (yep, at least I didn't spend any money on it) & during the continuity announcement just before it started the woman called it 'The Living Hate the Dead' rather than The Dead Hate the Living!, I'm not being funny but you would have though a TV station would at least know the correct name of the film they are about to show or is that asking for too much?With a supposed budget of about $150,000 this was definitely a low budget flick, unfortunately that doesn't automatically mean we should ignore all it's faults because at the end of the day it will cost as much to rent or buy this as a big Hollywood blockbuster like Transformers (2007) & to be brutally honest I know which I'd rather watch & to give you a clue it's not The Daed Hate the Living!. The acting could have been worse & Jamie Donahue who played Tpoaz is hot & helps make this a bit more watchable.The Dead Hate the Living! isn't that good, it's not as bad as some low budget efforts out there but that doesn't amount to much in itself. If your a real low budget horror film junkie than this may pass 90 odd minutes harmlessly enough but I'd struggle to personally recommend it to anyone.

Maybe it's because I've seen too many overrated and disappointing wannabe-artistic horror titles lately, but I hugely enjoyed this low-budgeted zombie-splatter flick. "The Dead hate the Living" is unpretentious and enthusiast horror entertainment; obviously scripted and directed by a guy who's obsessed with gory genre classics from the past. By no means this will ever be regarded as a masterpiece but the makers probably couldn't care less about that! They all really wanted to make a movie that brings homage to their childhood favorites and you should try to look at it like this as well. The story handles about a clique of young horror rookies that break into an abandoned hospital to shoot their own independent movie. Naturally this ominous location hides a couple of dark secrets and, through a portal in the catacombs, zombies start to showing up. These living dead are led by a deranged doctor (looking an awful lot like Rob Zombie) who wishes to exterminate all forms of life ever since his beloved wife died of cancer. As you can tell, the plot is all but original and features every possible cliché this genre can suffer from. But if you're not being too skeptical, there's not a dull moment throughout the entire movie. The gore and splatter only kicks in 45 minutes into the movie, but even before this, the story is pure fun with an incredible amount of inside jokes and references towards the oeuvres of Fulci, Romero, Savini, Carpenter, Raimi and others. The digital effects are lousy, but the good old-fashioned gory make-up effects make up for them. We have torn off heads, severed limbs and ripped out intestines. Enjoy!

no way this film is terrible! it is absolutely one of my favorites. true, it may not be a blockbuster or have good special affects nor good acting and true the script may be terribly trite and lacking in "quality". but there is no denying that this film is super enjoyable from every aspect. you'll laugh, you'll cry you might even get a little scared (?). this is for sure one of those late night terror classics, don't take it seriously, this isn't Shawshank Redemption, its just a good time, so grab the girlfriend and a 6 pack and get ready to watch just an awesome example of C quality horror entertainment, just like when you were young. Dead hate the living is for sure a thing of beauty.