Digging through Prime for new, fun horror to watch with the hubba hubba, I stumbled upon the supernatural buddy comedy Dead from New Zealand, so I checked out the trailer. It looked fairly generic and vaguely humorous, but I figured, you never know (as I do with most movies), so I tossed it into my watchlist. Then comes a rainy Sunday afternoon with nothing to watch, so we give it a chance.
Dead proved to be a totally charming ghost comedy that is going directly on to the homo horror movie page despite there being no mention of a gay plot line in the film’s description or the trailer.
Turns out the gay plot is the glue that holds the film together, so much so that it might be a little too much for a mainstream horror audience (which would explain it being buried for the promotion).
A pot-smoking loser still living with his mom can see and speak to ghosts with the help of a special drug he concocts. He is visited by an adorable dead cop in his underwear who lost his pants while pursuing a masked serial killer.
The cop can’t remember much else and has no idea how he died. But he’s still determined to catch the killer and asks the stoner to contact his sister. She was helping him on the case, so he wants the stoner to team up with her and find the killer.
It seems all the victims were attractive gay men, which opens the ghost/guy duo up for plenty of homoerotic humor as they work together to hunt down the killer, visiting gay bars and dabbling in male prostitution.
Meanwhile, the pair is being haunted by other dead ghouls in various states of decomposition.
The actors are charismatic, the characters are lovable, the sister could be Tiffany Shepis’s real life sister, the humor is playful with just enough camp to satisfy the gay crowd, there are plenty of ghost corpses creeping around, and the mystery twists keep the film moving at a fast pace. And most importantly, there’s some man booty and a sexy gay kiss—just make sure to stick around for the end credits. Now if only this one would be released on DVD or Blu so I can add it to my gay horror collection. If you watch it on Prime and you enjoy it, give gay horror some love and leave a positive review.
