Club Dread

Fans of Broken Lizard's previous release, Super Troopers, might come out of Club Dread feeling a little confused and maybe cheated. It seems that the comedy troop has sacrificed a bit of their oddball writing in favour of creating a murder/mystery plot, which actually works quite well in building suspense. Still, if you're looking for syrup chugging or magic mushroom overdoses, you've come to the wrong place, at least for this round from the talented five-man cast. It's not that Club Dread isn't funny, because it is. Their style of humour has just become subtler for the most part, and more effort had to be put into a suspenseful plot, leaving less room for the bizarre segments that Super Troopers seemed to cram into every minute. The plot: a flock of swinging college kids arrive at an island paradise where the drinks are plentiful and the women are often topless. The owner of the tropical vacation spot is Coconut Pete (Bill Paxton), whose staff is quickly being murdered one-by-one by a deranged machete-wielding madman living in the jungle — possibly with a severed penis. As the cast is individually picked off suspicion grows among friends and soon anyone is a possible suspect. Could it be Juan the Speedo-sporting Latin lover? The slightly psychotic repressed gymnast Penelope? Or maybe it's Coconut Pete? You'll actually find yourself piecing together the clues in your head, making Club Dread a more intelligent thriller than the majority of Hollywood's recent attempts. Comparisons to the Monty Python troupe are already being bandied about, but such a statement might be a little immature for a developing comedy team. Though like Monty Python, the Broken Lizard crew have done an excellent job of playing entirely new characters, such as Kevin Heffernan transforming from supreme asshole Farva in Super Troopers to a sweet and sensitive masseuse who can make you have multiple orgasms by placing one finger on your lip. Club Dread might be thin on huge laughs, but coming at us with a rather intelligent script (for screwball comedy standards anyway) is a far more promising indication that Broken Lizard may be on to something big. (Fox)