the audience applauded

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

best movie i've ever seen.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

While heading to Galveston, Texas to attend a wedding, a group of 3 men and 3 women decide to stop at a small Bed & Breakfast to spend the night. What they don't know is that the owner of the Bed & Breakfast, who goes by the name of "Mr. Wise" (David Carradine), is involved in a form of witchcraft and has in his possession a magical box which grants him good fortune. Unfortunately, it has a dual nature and can release an evil spirit if the box is ever opened by anyone. Naturally, as one might expect, the box is indeed opened and the spirit immediately possesses one of the wedding guests named "Johnny" (Osgood Perkins) who subsequently goes about the task of transforming people in the small town into zombie-like creatures intent on killing everybody they see. Now rather than reveal any more of this film I will just say that, while I don't particular like most "zom-coms" (Zombie-Comedies), this particular movie wasn't too bad as it managed to mix some decent comedy with some adequate special effects. In short, while this movie certainly wasn't great by any means it was still somewhat entertaining and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Average.

"Dead & Breakfast" succeeds in being a horror comedy that is neither scary nor funny. The pacing of the film is terrible, the plot is confusing, the acting is third-rate, and every element of the movie feels like a retread that wants to pass itself off as original. In fact, the movie's tag line "It's Like A Bad Horror Movie . . . Only Worse" could not be truer.The premise of the film is so unoriginal, that you can tell it was mercilessly ripped from other movies ranging from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974) to "Murder By Death" (1977). These six young adults, three guys and three gorgeous women, are traveling in an RV to a friend's wedding. They get lost in a small town along the way, and decide to stay the night in a local run-down bed & breakfast. The B&B is run by a strange Buddhist named Mr. Wise (David Carradine, whose niece, Ever Carradine, is actually one of the three travelers). There is also an abrasive chef with a bad French accent (Diedrich Bader, "The Drew Carey Show").On their very first night, they find both B&B inhabitants dead. Mr. Wise is dead of an apparent heart attack, and the French chef is found brutally murdered in the kitchen. There is a scene that is played out too long when one of the guys, in the kitchen for a midnight snack, encounters the dead chef, and keeps slipping on his blood on the floor. It's a scene that tries too hard for laughs when you're really not sure if you're supposed to laugh.What follows is a very confusing and contrived story about how a small box, sealed only with a strip of paper, turns whomever opens it into some kind of zombie-like creature. Confused? Imagine how you would feel if you were watching it.The exposition that is supposed to clear up confusion about the story either is so poorly set up that it leaves you bored, or feels ripped off from other movies. There's also a country singer, Randall Keith Randall (Zach Selwyn), who pops up and sings dumb songs about what the audience has already seen. This character is reminiscent of Nat "King" Cole and Stubby Kaye in "Cat Ballou" (1965), except his presence in the film feels forced. Plus, if he sang a coherent song about the back story behind the box that turned people into zombie-like creatures, his character would serve a useful purpose. Instead, his lyrics are not funny, and state the obvious by using lines like "now there's all this crazy sh*t that's going down here" (an actual line, by the way)."Dead & Breakfast" lacks so much originality that it's almost like a parody of a movie that parodies horror movies. The horror elements, which should be the film's saving grace, are not scary at all. Plus, you actually have to care about the characters in some way to fear for their safety. Instead, the main six characters are all jerks, and you don't care about their fate.The film's title is supposed to be a clever riff on the term bed & breakfast. Instead, the first word describes the film's pacing, and the last word describes what you want to throw at the screen an hour into watching it.

Dead and Breakfast doesn't pretend to be anything else than what it is, but it's good at what it does. There have been other horror comedies, to be sure, and some others that include songs and (yes) dances. This might not attract the cult crowds of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but it's not really asking too. Then again as a straight-to-DVD effort (it also played festivals as well in 2004) it has to do what it can. But on such a low budget (under a million) it really accomplishes a lot. Chiefly this comes from the script, which is wise in the ways of being silly horror fun, with lots of blood (gallons and gallons) and severed limbs (lots of those too), and from the actors who all are having lots of fun but are not at all bad actors really. To be sure, some may just be going in for the (limited) paycheck, but considering the budget it had to be love for the project. It's culty goodness, if not greatness.The plot concerns a group of young 20-somethings on their way to a friend's wedding (a very obnoxious friend, pay it no mind since she's only in one scene), and they stop off at a bed and breakfast when it's decided that a real bed is needed instead of the usual RV bed (didn't these guys learn from From Dusk Till Dawn?) They stop off and that night two disturbing things happen: a guy who is staying/works at the hotel drops dead from a heart attack (David Carradine) and someone is found brutally slashed and gutted in the kitchen - the reveal of which is a classic comic moment of surprise. The comes to investigate, and thinks he has a suspect with the Sheriff (Jeffrey Dean Morgan in a fun early role), and locked in custody. As luck wouldn't have it it turns out there is an un-dead curse of some sort that has people coming back to life and killing the living and they can be killed only by a bullet to the brain or beheading.Typical zombies? Not quite really, not when their souls are still sort of kicking around, and they can also talk and dance and sing and things (there's even a scene that cheerfully rips off Thriller, or just country line-dancing, as the deadies are outside of the main dead/breakfast house and do it like it's 1983). Another twist in the film is that there is a kind of singing cowboy narrator who chimes in from time to time to explain things, whether they necessarily need explaining or not, and every song at least inspires a chuckle if not outright laughter. And while not every kill is super sophisticated - you can clearly see where the blood is shooting out from the hose in a guy's split-open head in one scene - it has that same delightful bloodlust, where action and suspense mixes with humor in the vein (pun intended) as Dead-Alive.Featuring some solid performances from Jeremy Sisto (mostly with him as a severed head), Ever Carradine (David's daughter), and Brent David Fraser as the "Drifter" with all of the answers, this is a little movie worth checking out.

This isn't the American version of Shaun of the Dead. It really started out slow and wasn't going anywhere until one of the group started dancing around in a pool of blood on the floor.Every once in a while the action is interrupted by some twanger who is trying to reveal what is happening through song.Once the box is opened, the zombies are unleashed and then things do get interesting with a slew of killings that involve blood, cymbals, blood, garden clippers, blood, claw hammers, blood, decapitations, etc. Lots of spewing and dying.Director Matthew Leutwyler must be doing something right as he is supposedly directing a remake of Creepshow.