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Plot:
Welcome to Coconut Pete’s Pleasure Island, a vacation resort filled with horny youngsters. It seems someone is playing a deadly game with the staff, someone is killing them off one by one and forcing the others to do their jobs, if they don’t, or try to tell anyone, they die. With no way off the island, the staff need to figure out the clues and figure out who the killer before they wind up on his hit list.

Club Dread is both a slasher movie and a comedy, it’s one of the better comedy/horror movies out there and it’s a big shame the movie bombed big time in the cinema. The movie has the feel of and 80s slasher movie, it’s filled with tits and blood.

As a slasher movie it works quite well, while it’s never scary (I think the comedy element killed all chance of that early on) but it manages to be quite suspenseful at times and the murders are pretty good. The who done it plot keeps you guessing and everyone is a convincing red herring. There are plenty of characters to kill off so the body count is quite high. Once the killer is unmasked his motives do make sense. I loved the throwback to the old campfire tales as there is a campfire scene here with a funny background tale. The killer looked pretty cool stalking around with the machete slicing people up Voorhees style!

As a comedy the movie is very funny, Club Dread manages to mix laughs with the horror very well. It’s like a straight faced parody like Scream was. If your big into slasher movies I’d say you’ll get a bigger kick out of the jokes. I loved the chase scene involving a golf cart and the Pac Man maze scene is a riot. The characters are all great and they all have something about them that makes them so funny. My favourite is probably Putman, the tennis instructor who takes everything to seriously and has a big crush on the female lead, Jenny. I also loved Juan, the dive instructor who is unsure whether the girl he likes is the killer and blows off her offers to walk down the dark deserted beaches. There is a hilarious scene where they decide to stick together, the outcome is quite funny. The final scene where the killer is revealed is absolutely hilarious and makes fun of over the top killer monologs and indestructible killers.

The acting is very good, Brittany Daniel (Jenny) does a great job of holding the movie together and she’s quite sexy to boot. Bill Paxton is great as always as Coconut Pete, the resort owner. The direction is very good, the chase scenes are filmed very well and the site gags are great. Gore wise we get quite a bit. A body split in half, a slashed throat, lots of stabbing, decapitations, messages engraved on people, blood is shed.

Also on the reverse side a few of the jokes missed and the movie dragged at parts. Also quite a few of the deaths where off screen and more implied rather then shown which was really annoying.

But overall most of the jokes worked and they kept coming at us, the movie has quite a fast pace. I highly recommend Club Dread and hope it manages to find an audience as it’s really funny and also quite bloody fun. It works great as a comedy and a slasher movie. If you’re a hard core slasher fan you’ll really dig this movie, if you’re not you’ll probably still have a good time with it.




Cover Review



This cover art is alot better then the cinema poster. It captures the fun of the movie, maybe the movie would of made more money if this had been the poster. My main problem with it is it rips off April Fools Day's cover art. The fact that it's a cast cover doesn't bother me this time but where are the female leads?