Alive or Dead (2008) User Reviews

a bit entertaining, but mostly forgettable

[movieman_kev · 4/10 · 17 June 2008]

Maria (the particularly lovely Ann Henson decked out in very flattering tight fitting clothes) is trying to have some fun on the phone while driving down a dark road when she sees a seemingly abandoned bus on the side of the road with 'help me' written on it. She decides to investigate and soon finds a chained up and hooded girl begging for her life. The abductor comes back, so Maria quickly hides. Soon the girl duo find themselves at a secluded castle trying to figure out what's happening while being chased by a deranged hillbilly (and others but I won't give away the, admittedly silly, 'twist').

The movie is entertaining enough if you're an indiscriminate fan of slasher films, but not really all that horrifying in the least and only gets really picks up steam in the last half hour or so. The movie is also extremely generic and this plot has been seen a million times over (and mostly better) All in all a silly forgettable little horror flick worthy of a rental if you have nothing better to do.

My Grade: C-

If you like B movies....this is still not worth watching.

[nadulike24 · 2/10 · 15 June 2008]

To set the scene, its a Sunday night Im Feeling a little hungover and there's nothing on TV so I decided to watch this movie. On reflection I feel my time may have been better spent naming each hair on my chest or perhaps attempting to carve a miniature Statue of liberty from a grain of rice.

Its starts good enough for a B movie, the acting a little pants but thats OK,the setting seems the same as 10 other movies you have seen that week but thats OK too.. I mean as long as there's some sort of story to it how bad can it be? Very Bad!!! Thats how bad! After 60 mins of boredom you are rewarded with nothing more than the dumbest "twists" ever and plot holes so big you begin to wonder what the plot was in the first place. Save yourself and hour and a half, let the girlfriend win and pick the movie this time, earn some brownie points...your missing nothing here.

What the Hell is That!

[sol1218 · 4/10 · 4 August 2008]

(Some Spoilers) What seems at first like a "The Hills have Eyes" rip-off "Alive or Dead" is in fact in a class of its own. The film "Alive or Dead" starts off with busty and talkative Maria having a hot session of phone sex with her hot and horny, off camera, boyfriend Terry.

With the battery of her cellphone losing juice Maria also finds herself stuck in the middle of the desert with two, not one, flat tires. It's then that the action starts with Maria instead of staying in the safety of her locked SUV wanders out in the night to check out an abandoned school-bus with the words, in blood, "help me" written of the side-window.

The film then take you into a minefield of ridiculous situations involving Maria and her now friend, who was found tied up and hooded inside the school bus, and ally Sarah. All this leaves you more confused by the time the movie is over then you were before it even started!

The film has more then its share of nuts and they seem to pop up every few minutes just to both introduce themselves to the audience and then get killed off. There's first the unstable and creepy bus driver who we later find out is a happily married family man with a pregnant wife, Gretchen, back home. What he and Gretchen have to do with the other,if not the major, nut-case in the film Frank is very vague and left up in the air and to the confused viewers imagination by the films writers and director.

Frank whom you at first thought was a real cool and straight up guy and in fact the hero of the movie later turned out to be a cannibalistic murderer who ate among others, one of the other nut cases to pop up unexpectedly in the film, the mad monk-like Howard's young daughter back in 1982!

There's also the cute and cuddly but very undernourished boy cannibal Bubbles who's face looks like a pizza pie, with extra extra cheese, that was left in the oven long after it was already done. Bubbles is always seen munching on the-by then-dead bus driver's hand and pointing at his wedding ring which he offers to the amazed and terrified two girls Maria & Sarah as some kind of present. It wasn't until almost at the end of the movie that you realized that, with her wearing the identical wedding ring, the bus driver and Gretchen were in fact married!

***MAJOR SPOILERS*** Of all the confusion in the movie the connection between Frank Gretchen and the bus driver is the most confusing of all. Were then given to understand that it was non other then Sarah's recently deceased father Dr. Benson who delivered Farnk some 40 years ago and that's the reason that the bus driver had it in for Sarah in, this is just my take in this crazy mixed up mess of a movie, Frank not the bus driver being the one whom impregnated his wife Gretchen!

This suspicion seemed to be confirmed by Gretchen herself when after being rescued by Sarah begged her to kill her before it was to late! The too late was in her giving birth to the deranged cannibalistic and murderous Frank's offspring!

The single worst feature-film I've ever been subjected to.

[john-gehringer · 1/10 · 27 June 2008]

I've seen a lot of bad flicks in my time. Glen or Glenda, Date Movie, everything Uwe Boll's done, but this one takes the cake. Terrible acting, virtually non-existent plot and the cheesiest special effects I've laid eyes on make this a title that no one should view. Ever.

Cannibals? Flesh-eating little boys? A character strangely reminiscent of Lord Voldemort?

This film is absolutely terrible, one for the garbage bin and not the DVD player. I'd rather watch golf and eat paint chips.

For anyone considering viewing this tremendous crock of film feces, I'd suggest you instead pick up a few Richard Simmons tapes, collect the neighborhood fatties and sweat to the oldies. You'll thank yourself later.

My Review

[joemamaohio · 1/10 · 7 September 2008]

Maria (Ann Henson) is driving down a road when she comes across a bus with the words 'Help me' in blood on one of the windows. Inside she finds Sarah (Angelica May), a young woman who is bound to one of the seats. Before she could free her, they're transported to a castle, and when they think the danger is over, they soon discover that it's only begun.

Horrible. Simply, easily, horrible. The acting was incredibly lame, the storyline was...well..flawed to say the least, and very little about this film made any sense whatsoever. Yet another low-budget horror flick provided by Lionsgate (I wonder why they keep producing such crap).

OK Slasher Flick

[bivmanfor20 · 4/10 · 20 June 2008]

The story we have all seen a million times before if your into horror movies anyway. Girl gets stuck on a lonely road at night and runs into a creepy dude and captured hooded woman. The woman tried to help said captured woman and winds up at some one story castle in the middle of the desert.

I have to say that I really didn't understand what was going on. There is a huge, crazy, infantile-like man who kills people and there is a lizard looking boy who is a cannibal. Than there is a doctor. I don't know what the lizard is boy is doing there. But regardless of the major plot-holes I did enjoy the movie somewhat. Ill have to watch it again. Maybe I'll understand it a little better. Overall, the gore was OK and the production was good. The story, however, needed a little work.

Forget It

[justinfay · 2/10 · 17 June 2008]

It's rare these days I don't come and check IMDb before I go ahead and watch a film, unfortunately there wasn't a review of any description here. I figure that for two reasons, either no one has seen it yet, or those who have couldn't be bothered wasting the time to write one to tell everyone how bad this film is.

These modern day slasher films are in abundance at the moment and seemingly each one worse than the last. This one was particularly bad. There was no story line, I was waiting until the 59th min mark before I began writing this and it still hadn;t made any sense. At that point I realised I wasn't going to get that 59 minutes of my life back so why waste more.

The acting is bad, the plot is bad or non existent, hardly any gore until the end and the continuity was appalling (follow the tyre flat/not flat sequences and you'll see what I mean) This is painful to watch, I recommend renting or streaming something like An American werewolf in London which I watch the other night for the first time in about 10 years, that is still a fantastic film, this belongs in the garbage can with Oscar the grouch.

Do You Know Where We're Going??? 'To Hell.'

[wandernn1-81-683274 · 2/10 · 20 June 2020]

Weird start to this movie , phone sex while in a moving car. Our star I guess finds a bus stalled out on the side of the road.......

Then she mysteriously pops 2 tires!!! How odd!!!!!!

Guess it's time to explore that bus!!!!

Okay apparently the bus is being driven by some serial killer who just drives off in the bus with the star and a captive still in the bus.

The star's car sitting there with 2 popped tires didn't really cause him much alarm or cause to care. Well that's stupid ain't it???!!!

-1 Star for the not caring 'killer' when something is obviously 'amiss'......

-1 Star for the prolonged musical bus ride to the 'fort' or whatever the destination is...

+1 star because the star can actually run... the star has good runner's form and doesn't run like someone who has never run in their life.....that's almost original!!!

Okay then the movie really bogs down into some hillbillies and hawties thing......

Filmed in some old California fort... I don't recognize the exact locale....

lol wow...-1 star for the slammed door chopping off hillbilly finger....what the hell? how stupid!!!!

what the heck...near the end the 2nd female is driving and the tires on the truck are obviously not flat.....that were flat just a few seconds before

-1 Star for non flat tires!!!!

Wow I was about to shut it off right as it was ending for the sheer stupidity.... Very close to being one of the worst movies ever that I've actually made it to the end.

2/10

worth the pennies

[trevorsbargainbasement · 12 July 2010]

alive or dead, horror/thriller: OK this is a B, it was always going to be a B but some B's are better than other B's, i think that's agreed. this was on the better side of the B's but unlike most of the rubbish B's i couldn't find a you tube trailer for it anywhere. i doubt very much you will find this in your video rental shop and if they give this space then they either have a warehouse tucked away in a time/space thing there or need to find a new buyer, fast; but lets not take anything away from the film itself. i borrowed it from a friend and, sure there were i's that weren't dotted and a lot of the t's went without crosses but what the hell do you expect for something you can't even find a trailer for?? the acting was OK in my opinion and everybody did the best with what they had so fair play to the independent film maker, coz he rules. if you see it in your local $ store or £ shop, buy it, it won't be the worst £/$ you've ever spent.

I saw some thing better then this, when i threw up in the toilet.

[fire-58 · 1/10 · 3 February 2012]

Congrats alive or dead, you are tied for the worst movie i have ever seen, and you are tied with "i know who killed me" with lindsay lohan. I don't even know where to begin, i am so so confused with this movie i have never watched a movie that made me feel this way so many things don't add up, i have seen better acting in a 2nd grade play The start sucked and middle and end was worse, there were so many different story lines going on in this movie its like they took 3 really bad movies and made a super mega meca bad movie i know you don't know who i am but please do me a favor and don't ever ever watch this movie don't let your kids watch it either because it will make them stupid and you don't want that.

Scared the crap out of me

[seriouslaughter · 8/10 · 26 June 2008]

Maybe I'm just a big chicken, but this film was TOTALLY INTENSE. My boyfriend has marks on his arm from where I grabbed him.

Don't rent this if you get scared easy. My boyfriend didn't think it was that scary, but it totally freaked me out.

Don't stop in the woods when you see a broken down bus. Ever. I'm glad I live in the city. Is everyone out in the country an inbred killer?

I didn't really get the monk guy. What was he supposed to be? Hated the part about the girl getting eaten. gross. the guy in the back of the bus eating the hand made me almost throw up.

I think I'm gonna avoid horror movies for awhile.

OK movie with a nice cast, that held together an otherwise bad script.

[jimwestby · 6/10 · 17 June 2008]

I found this horror flick to be relatively entertaining. The script is pretty straight forward, and not exactly complicated, but the cast brings it up a little bit.

Everyone does their role pretty well, despite of the bad script, and relatively shabby special effects. Not to mention they are all good looking. Yes, even Frank his "friends"! I had quite a few laughs while watching it, and I think we might see more of these actors in the future.

It is in the same category as Wolf Creek and The hills have eyes, although it is a lot less serious, which is obvious even from the first opening scene.

They have tried to create a funny mix of homicidal hillbillies, cannibals and crazy monks, who are all hunting a pair of nice looking women. And I mean.. what more could you want?

What?? Horror flick??? Coulda fooled me.

[nwowolfpac14 · 1/10 · 23 November 2008]

Hmmmm OK lets start off with the GOOD of this movie....The female actresses...NOT their acting Ann Henson annoyed the hell out of me,but they were both very attractive and the phone sex scene was pretty steamy(guys you know what i mean). Now the BAD(Besides the whole movie).OK From beginning i didn't know what the hell was going on the movie was pretty easily identifiable when she of course broke down in the middle of nowhere at night. Blah blah blah ill get to the very descriptive part of this comment.Boring, no gore, didn't show any of the killings which were very very minimal, the story(if any)was very dull,the directors attempt to add a story and twists were very poorly attempted(that is of course if they were even noticeable),characters were just planted in the movie and somehow became part of the story(again if there was one) and then when the lead characters got away somehow this fat beaten and shot hillbilly cannibal gets to the destination at the end before they do in a vehicle. OH I'm not done you crazy little goats a cabin is discovered and a bunch of letters were signed to the crazy hillbilly guy which is where the TWIST "Wink wink" is planted ,then a very similar scenario is also discovered a bit later(there's a pregnant hag tied up to a bed signifying that the crazy cannibal uses her to breed sound familiar????) All in all i think i would have rather of masturbated to fat women porn then watch this.

Horrible Movie! (Spoilers)

[submissively · 1/10 · 14 July 2008]

I honestly didn't even want to give this movie a single star. It has no real plot, except for two stupid girls who are being chased by a gorilla man and his, from what I can tell, cannibal boiled son.

The blood and gore was alright, though in my opinion, that's not what makes a horror movie. What's makes one is a good plot and good acting, which were not in anyway shown in this movie.

Lets start from the beginning; the girl is having phone sex with her boyfriend (yay for the nerdy porn guys who get off at this), and for some reason she is driving on a dark deserted DIRT road in the middle of nowhere late at night. She finds an abandoned bus (scary), and her stupid self gets out and checks the inside. I'm just going to skip ahead a bit, don't worry readers, you won't miss anything, because for 30 minutes after they get on the bus, nothing happens. So skipping ahead, out of nowhere, a hooded man comes out and says that the gorilla man ate his daughter, so naturally, he had to seek his revenge (not scared yet). Then at the end of the movie, Maria's cell phone, which was dead after she pleasured herself, became magically fully charged. How you ask, I still don't know.

All in all, this movie was one of the worst flicks I've seen in YEARS. Only watch it if you are on the verge of killing yourself. See it at your own risk.

A Movie Made By The Mentally Ill

[Bill357 · 5/10 · 30 April 2009]

I'm completely flabbergasted. I don't know what to say about this movie other than it's utterly insane! I guess as far as current video movies go it's not too bad. It's certainly very lively trash.

The box art and the beginning gave me the mistaken belief that this was a rip-off of High Tension.

It starts with a girl having phone sex and using her cell phone charger as a sex toy, breaking it in the process and rendering her with no way to call for help! I think the only reason for having this happen was to get the words "sexual content" on the DVD box.

She has a flat tire and is soon hiding on the back of a bus with other captives, on the way to some weird castle in the middle of the desert. You read that right, a castle in the desert.

After killing their abductor they have two choices, get back on the bus and run like hell or explore the damn castle. Guess which one these rocket scientists pick! The guy took them there for a reason and instead of leaving they want to go in and see if Phil Specter's home!

Go watch the rest for yourself!

Horrible Movie!!

[SmartCritic · 1/10 · 30 June 2008]

This movie may be the most awful scary/horror film I can recall seeing. It's so bad it's forced me to write my first movie review. lol. Save your money!!

I'm guessing their budget was around $100.00 to make the film. When I find movies like this that I've never seen, I go into the film with relatively low expectations. (Now if the film title were Hostel 2 or Saw 2, I'd go into the movie with some higher expectations naturally.)

The first 15 minutes of the movie (leading up to the bus scene) I initially thought the movie might be half decent. Wrong. The killer makeup/costume were lame. Acting was atrocious. Most of all the writing was terrible. Avoid this movie, or recommend to someone you wish to tease.

don't bother your self to watch this cheap production

[talalxfiles-1 · 1/10 · 18 February 2009]

don't waste your time to watch this cheap production cause it's too bad in performance ,acting and directing .

i don't know why

they spend money to produce movie like this . i don't have time to narrative story because ex comment already did but what i said event if you don't have any thing to watch this movie is sort of wasting time , this is my opinion but if you have saw this

movie and you have your point please jot it here.

oh ,my god what is this rules of 10 lines also fixing the wards , i lost 10 minut of my time for that

Awful

[Shizuka2008 · 1/10 · 28 July 2008]

Directing, Cinematography (if you can call it that way) and Acting are just plain awful.

And the story: non-existent and with so many plot-holes it makes even the mutterings of a one-year-old seem like a Shakespeare play compared to this utter crap!

I hope all the persons who are responsible for this waste of my time will never work in the industry ever again!

I don't know who gives people like that money to shoot such "movies".

Even for a die hard horror fan this crap is not watchable at all!

On the other hand I guess nobody is watching these movies either.

One girl is kidnapped and another girl saves her so they must escape...

[sprtone101-1 · 1/10 · 26 September 2008]

This has had to be the worst movie I have ever laid eyes on. I mean at the end where the fat guy kills the main character after them driving like 50 miles I wonder how the hell he caught up to them. So many plot holes it's not even funny. I would like to find who wrote this and slap them across their face. They should never be allowed to write movies again. The title is what drew me into renting it out of the red box. And trust me I ain't ever getting that dollar back. Coulda went to the dollar store and bought something way more useful. One hour into this I did not even know what was going on. I mean I heard of dumb girls in a horror flick, but who the hell goes into a "dead" killers house when they have a perfectly running car. I mean you don't explore a murderers house when his car is running perfectly. In conclusion, Please do not support this movie DO NOT RENT IT!!!

greatness, slight sarcasm

[mcosu25 · 10/10 · 22 March 2011]

This movie is great in the beginning the whole phone scene was hot. SPOILER when she used that phone charger as a dildo was weird but hot. Okay if you didn't think that Frank is the man you should not be able to review anything. Frank takes stuff likes its nothing, he practically is the man. SPOILER Frank f***in takes bullets like a champ and he takes that injection likes is nothing, then he f***in comes back to life after getting hit in the eye and oh it is a funny but great movie. Summary FRANK IS THE SH*T! Besides Frank the girl is hot in the beginning but the other one is ah alright. The thing is you never really understand what the hell is the point of the movie. Still Frank is unbelievable!

A decent horror flick

[indiefilmland · 7/10 · 24 June 2008]

I don’t know what these people are thinking. It may not be the greatest horror flick ever made, but come on, it really ain’t that bad! Not nearly as bad as tons of BAD horror flicks I’ve seen. I could name a half-dozen in the next 30 seconds that I’ve had to fast forward through, and this is NOT one of them. This one actually has a story, it’s got some laughs, it’s got hot chicks, it’s got some scares and a ‘creature’ or two. The performances are good and believable, the look of the film is good. It's not the most complicated plot line ever told on film, but it certainly kept my attention and interest. Definitely worth venturing a look IMHO.

Waste Of Time

[geminate7 · 1/10 · 17 June 2008]

Two of the dumbest girl characters on Earth. They both deserved to die a thousand times over.

Alive or Dead is riddled with awkward pauses, moronic choices and a ridiculous cannibalistic family. There is no way people this stupid could get away with eating perhaps hundreds of people without getting caught.

Nothing works out, everything goes bad for these girls and they deserve everything that they endure.

Everyone dies except one of the imbecilic girls.

This movie is such crap that it will make you frustrated watching it and leave you frustrated as it finally ends.

Best ending would be to burn this film and pretend it never happened.

No redeeming qualities whatsoever

[gtc83 · 2/10 · 14 March 2009]

Two girls get kidnapped and taken to a large house out in the desert. There's also a fat retarded guy wandering around the place. The girls explore the house. Atmosphere? This movie has all the scary atmosphere of an open house showing on a sunny day in a nice neighborhood. Character development? None whatsoever. By the end of the movie you won't know these two girls any better than you did the first moment you laid eyes on them.

Eventually the retarded guy realizes that he's supposed to kill the girls, so he chases them around a bit. Is he scary? No, he's got a couple of warts and a bit of a lump on his forehead. He's more pathetic than frightening. Any normal person could kill this guy, or at least get away from him, with little problem at all. He's retarded. Unfortunately, so are the girls, which is the only reason this whole stalk sequence lasts longer than a couple of minutes.

So this eventually winds down to its inevitable Hills Have Eyes ripoff climax, followed by one of the most ridiculous twist endings I've ever seen. I sat there thinking "Surely they don't think their audience is stupid enough to buy this?".

Anything good about this movie? Well, one of the girls is wearing a tight tank top, unfortunately the thing might as well have been made out of Kevlar. I think the jackets worn by firefighters might be made out of thicker, heavier material than this tank top, but I wouldn't bet any money on it. No character development, no story, no atmosphere, boring, stupid; That about covers it.

horrible

[twiztidjuggalo_1872003 · 1/10 · 23 November 2008]

First off to the person under the name "serious laughter" your a complete moron girl or not I have met girls who love gore and guts and all that lovely stuff this movie was not scary it made no sense at all!! There was no real plot NOTHING was explained at all you have a fun tard for hillbilly who looks like something that escaped from the retard house and has either some serious anger issues and messed up on cocaine he is fatter than peter griffin at a cake factory but yet with 3 bullets in him something the doctor in the robe shot him up with,beat up he can run faster than a school bus!! How in the hell did that dude manage to get over to the original location of where that bus was found at the same time the girls did maybe 3 seconds after!!And the director is so poor at his job he stole a couple ideas from the hills have eyes flick!! WHAT!! No real plot and like maybe some others said if there was a twist there was a very poor attempt at it!! The girls can't act if their life depended on it corny jokes did not help them much either what kind of "slasher" film was this very minimal blood!!Just to finish this fast it is a worthless piece of trash and needs to be pulled