12 Horror Movies That Deserved Sequels

While Peter Jackson had already made a bit of a name for himself with his DIY gross-out debut Bad Taste and similarly repulsive puppet movie Meet the Feebles, it was this 1992 zombie spectacular (known as Dead Alive in the US) that really cemented him as a horror master.

Made for $3 million, it was reportedly the most expensive New Zealand production ever at the time, and - more notably - it was widely hailed on release to be the single goriest movie of all time.

It starts out fairly innocuous, centred mainly on the struggles of young hero Lionel to negotiate his love life and his domineering mother; but as the story progresses, so too does the zombie action get all more ridiculous, leading to a hilariously gloopy and excessive final act.

At the time, no one could have suspected that Jackson would go on to monumental mainstream success and a whole bunch of Oscars with The Lord of the Rings trilogy. But looking back at Braindead now, we might be forgiven for wishing Jackson would try his hand at a comparatively small scale, tongue-in-cheek horror movie again, given how increasingly bloated his blockbusters have become.

Still, while Jackson has not revisited Braindead to date, he did sneak a few nods to it in several of his biggest films: look out for mentions of the Sumatran Rat Monkey, the source of the zombie virus, in King Kong and The Adventures of Tintin.