10 Most Gruesome Zombie Movie Deaths

Before Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson was the guy behind Meet the Feebles, Bad Taste and Braindead - AKA Dead Alive. His 1992 comedy horror film is a balls to the wall zombie infestation action feature, and widely hailed as one of the goriest horror films of all time.

One of the film's gnarliest moments comes early into the story. Infected by a hybrid rat-monkey bite, domineering Mum Vera (Elizabeth Moody) is Patient Zero in New Zealand's zombie outbreak, kicking off a desperate fight for survival for hero Lionel and sweetheart Paquita. But not before decomposing all over the dinner table (lumps of rotting flesh dropping off into the custard, in the film's most repulsive sequence) and killing her poor nurse.

And it's Nurse McTavish who gets the film's most impressive gore sequence - as Vera digs her gnarly fingers deep into her cheeks, working her mouth and jaw from under the skin. The violence would get far more ostentatious before the end, but this underrated gag is one of Braindead's best, and undeniably its most disturbing.