Club Dread
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| Broken Lizard's Club Dread | |
|---|---|
 DVD cover for Club Dread |
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| Directed by | Jay Chandrasekhar |
| Produced by | Richard Perello |
| Written by | Broken Lizard |
| Starring | Bill Paxton Kevin Heffernan Brittany Daniel Steve Lemme Jordan Ladd Jay Chandrasekhar Paul Soter Erik Stolhanske Greg Cipes M.C. Gainey |
| Music by | Nathan Barr |
| Cinematography | Lawrence Sher |
| Editing by | Ryan Folsey |
| Distributed by | Fox Searchlight |
| Release date(s) | February 27 2004 |
| Running time | 103 min. 118 min. (unrated version) |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Club Dread, (also known as Broken Lizard's Club Dread), is a 2004 comedy / horror film, written by the comedy group Broken Lizard, who also created Super Troopers. It is directed by Jay Chandrasekhar, one of the group members.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
(Note that this synopsis is based on the extended cut released to DVD)
The film begins on Coconut Pete's Pleasure Island, a vacation resort off the coast of Costa Rica. Stacy (Elena Lyons), Rolo (Dan Montgomery, Jr.), and Kellie (Tanja Reichert) are members of the staff who head off into the island's jungle for a quick sexual encounter. They choose an old mausoleum as the site for their tryst, but they encounter a machete-wielding killer. Kellie and Stacy watch as Rolo is slashed to death, and flee into the jungle with the killer in hot pursuit. They accidentally get separated, with Kellie becoming trapped at the edge of a cliff, and the killer promptly pushes her over the edge. Stacy almost makes it back to the resort, but the murderer creeps up behind her and she is decapitated.
The film then cuts to an hour earlier, as the newest batch of guests arrive for a week in the sun. Among them is Lars (Heffernan), a last-minute replacement for the resort's previous masseuse who had to leave suddenly. As Lars arrives at the dock we are introduced to the primary staff: Jenny (Daniel), the aerobics instructor; Putman (Chandrasekhar), a tennis pro; Juan (Lemme), the swimming coach; Sam (Stolhanske), the "fun police", really a manager; and Dave (Soter), the DJ and Coconut Pete's nephew. After the guests arrive on the beach Coconut Pete (Paxton) welcomes them to the club. Pete is a former rock-'n-roll star from the 70's with a huge fan base, but whose career was eclipsed by Jimmy Buffett. We are also introduced to a pretty young woman named Penelope (Ladd), who gets very anxious whenever anyone asks anything personal about her. Lars and Jenny seem to be mutually attracted to each other, and it is established that Putman is not very popular with his co-workers.
Later that night a party is thrown in the resort's clubhouse to get everyone introduced to each other. Lars gets to meet Pete, and we learn that Putman is very attracted to Jenny, who is nice to him but doesn't return his affections. Penelope dances with Juan, and seems to respond very well to him. While everyone is dancing inside, a kitchen worker named Carlos goes outside for a cigarette and is stabbed to death by the killer.
Down at the beach Pete and Lars are singing a duet of one of Pete's old songs. Pete gets very pissed off when a drunk young woman asks him to sing Margaritaville, mistaking Pete for Buffett. An angry, ranting Pete is led away for a drink by his devoted bodyguard, Hank (Gainey). To calm everyone down, Dave tells the assembled group the story about Machete Phil. According to the tale, Machete Phil was a young man who worked at the resort about ten years ago. One night his co-workers decided to play a terrible prank on him. One of the women led him off into the jungle for sex. It was dark when they arrived in the jungle, and after they were finished the other employees jumped out of the forest and Phil saw that he had been having sex with a corpse. He calmly went back to the resort, got a machete, and killed the employees who had been involved. Following that, he castrated himself and then disappeared into the jungle. At that moment, Putman suddenly jumps up with his pants around his knees, hiding his penis between his legs. The party-goers realize that the story was just a prank and they all laugh.
The next day things start off normally. Lars gives massages, Jenny leads her aerobics class, and Putman gives tennis lessons. Sam and Dave preside over a game of lifesize Pacman, in which people run through a hedge maze like the classic video game. Juan is supposed to show up as one of the pieces of fruit, but Dave finds him having sex with a guest, so an employee named Cliff (Richard Perello, the film's producer) is made to take Juan's place. While Cliff strolls through the maze he encounters the killer, who dispatches him by slashing through his stomach.
Jenny is taking a break when she finds Lars practicing his sword fighting. They talk, and Lars displays his knowledge of pressure points. While they are flirting a hang glider smashes into the side of a wood shack. They go to help him, only to find Carlos' lifeless corpse, with the message "Naughty Carlos" carved into his chest. At the same time Dave and Juan are cleaning up the Pacman maze when Putman comes bursting out of the shrubs. They follow him and discover a horrified Sam kneeling over Cliff's body.
The staff members all go to Pete and tell him whay they have found, and it is decided to send someone to the mainland for help. But the killer already anticipated this. The boats have been cut loose, the phone has been ripped out, and the radio has been smashed. Realizing that they are trapped until the next boat arrives to take the guests back, Pete and Hank decide that the best course of action is to find the killer themselves. As it turns out, Hank used to be a member of a federal task force, and despite the past decade of heavy drinking he is confident in his ability to apprehend the murderer. That night the staff throws a party on the beach, which gives Lars and Jenny time to search the guests' rooms, but they don't find anything suspicious. The resort's head chef, Yu (Lindsay Price), decides that she is going to tell the guests the truth, even though the rest of the staff doesn't want to because they are afraid it would cause a panic. While walking by herself Yu encounters the killer, who gives chase. Hank comes to her aid, but he is very quickly killed when the murderer slashes his throat. Yu attempts to escape in a golf cart, but the killer catches up with her and she is murdered offscreen.
The next day everyone is up for the morning's activities when Lars reveals that he knows where the killer is drawing inspiration from: one of Pete's old songs. They also find Hank's body, as well as Yu's severed arms. Just then two cops from the mainland arrive (Kellie's body washed up on a beach). The staff tells them what they know, and the officers theorize that the killer is probably one of the staff members. The police go back to their boat with plans to bring reinforcements to investigate the case more thoroughly, but they die when the killer shoots flaming arrows at their boat, which has a gas leak.
The next day Lars and Putman volunteer to circle the island in an attempt to find the missing boats, even though they are distrustful of each other. They make camp that night, closely watching each other. During the night Putman has a nightmare, and when Lars attempts to wake him up to calm him down he runs into the jungle. Also during the night Juan goes to Penelope's room to see if he can find out any information from her, as both he and Jen think that she acts very strangely. Jen, Sam, and Dave hide in the closet in case he needs help, but it turns out that Penelope is an Olympic athlete who ran away from her overbearing coach. Juan is so relieved that he and Penelope have sex.
The next morning Lars manages to find one of the boats, but its propeller has been ripped off and it is useless. When he shows back up at the resort some of the staff, particularly Sam, are very wary of him since Putman did not show back up with him and is still missing. In addition, Sam and Dave snuck into Lars' room the previous night and discovered that Lars is fanatical about Pete. Most of the staff decide to lock Lars up in the drunk tank, with only Jenny arguing against it. That night Jenny goes to the swimming pool, where an obnoxious 19-year-old named Dirk (Samm Levine) hits on her. But the murderer shows up at the poolside and throws a TV into the water. Jenny manages to get out in time, but Dirk is electrocuted. As Jenny hurries away she runs into Putman, who says that he spent the entire day running around the jungle, trying to find his way back to the resort. Jenny realizes that Lars could not be the killer since he was locked up, and they go to let him out. But when they open the drunk tank they find him gone...with the tank's tiny little window open. It would seem impossible that Lars could have escaped this way, since his girth is far too large.
Jen, Sam, and Putman go to round up the others in the staff's quarters. They find Juan and Dave and go to Pete's room. Sam still thinks that it's Lars, but Juan, who has grown tired of Sam accusing everyone, blows up at him. Sam then asks Juan about a letter he found, stating that Juan had once been in a prison. After the others pressure him, Juan finally confesses that when he was younger he had sex with a goat. At that moment Pete's body crashes through the window, hanging by a noose around his neck. Putman suspects that it might be Dave, because Dave's parents were killed at one of Pete's concerts. However, since this was not a big secret and since Pete had signed over the island to Dave, it seems that there is no real motive for him to start killing people. At that moment Lars shows up and breaks into tears when he sees Pete's body. Jen says that the best course of action would be for everyone to stick together through the night and wait for the boat in the morning. But both Dave and Putman feel that they will be safer on their own, Juan goes to find Penelope, and Sam doesn't want to go anywhere with Lars. That leaves just Lars and Jen by themselves. The lights went out in the resort earlier in the evening, but they see light and hear music coming from Dave's room. They investigate and find his head on a turn table. They run back to Jen's room and hide under the bed (using his mastery of Tai Chi Lars is able to "shrink" his size, which is how he escaped from the drunk tank), seeing a pair of feet enter her room. Jen handcuffs one of the feet to a bedpost, and she and Lars crawl out to find it is Putman. At first thinking that Putman had come to kill her, she quickly realizes that he came to steal a pair of her panties. But then the real killer shows up and Jen cannot find the keys to the cuffs. She and Lars are forced to hide, and Putman is killed.
Lars and Jen run to the clubhouse and find Juan and Penelope, and they see Sam screaming in terror in the mud bath windows. They run to the baths and see nothing but Sam's body. While they are distracted, Sam suddenly jumps up and holds a machete to Lars' throat. Sam is the killer, driven insane by the fact that Pete signed over the island to Dave, whom he viewed as an undeserving drug addict. Lars manages to distract Sam and the others flee back to the clubhouse. Penelope is accidentally separated from Juan and Jen and they lock themselves in the club. But they see Sam drowning Penelope in the jacuzzi windows. Juan uses an ax to break the windows and Sam and Penelope come pouring into the room. Sam is about to kill Juan when suddenly he gasps in pain and looks down to see a machete driven through his stomach. He falls to the ground, revealing Lars behind him. They all go outside, only to have Sam get up and chase them again. They flee into a jungle, and jump off a cliff to escape. Lars notices that one of the island's boats is at the bottom of the ocean floor. Juan swims down to get its propeller while Lars, Jen, and Penelope swim to the boat that Lars brought back the day before. Juan gives them the propeller, but when he attempts to get out of the water we see a terrible slash across his abdomen. He sinks into the water and dies. Sam jumps up from the ocean and attacks them, but they manage to overpower him and throw him out of the boat. With the propeller attached, Lars guns the throttle. A rope that was attached to a wooden platform float is also attached to the boat, and Lars encircles Sam with the rope, crushing him against the platform. Eventually the rope cuts through him, and his body, halved in two, sinks into the water. Lars and Jen kiss, and Penelope drives the boat away from the island.
[edit] Selected cast
- Brittany Daniel - Jenny
- Jay Chandrasekhar - Putman
- Kevin Heffernan - Lars
- Steve Lemme - Juan
- Paul Soter - Dave
- Erik Stolhanske - Sam
- Jordan Ladd - Penelope
- Bill Paxton - Coconut Pete
- Greg Cipes - Trevor
- M.C. Gainey - Hank
[edit] Alternate Version
- In 2005 an unrated edition was released to DVD. This version of the film contains an additional 15 minutes of footage for a 118-minute running time. It features several extended scenes, and also restores a subplot involving two cops (played by Paco Mauri and Tony Amendola) that was absent in the theatrical edition. Director Jay Chandrasekhar states in one of the disc's commentary tracks that the original R-rated version is still the director's cut.
[edit] Trivia
- The story is set on an island in Costa Rica, but filming took place in Mexico.
- A deleted sequence shows Pete, Dave and Juan going into the jungle to bury some of the dead bodies. Though this plot element was not integrated into either version of the film, outtakes of it were used in the gag reel over the closing credits. It is also available for viewing in the deleted scenes section on the unrated DVD.
- Broken Lizard screened the film for Jimmy Buffett, who was so amused that he requested permission to sing some of the film's original songs on one of his live tours.
- Steve Lemme's character Juan pronounces Penelope's name as Peen-Na-Lope because of an experience of Jay Chandrasekhar and Kevin Heffernan had during a screening of Carlito's Way. Apparently during the screening, a man sitting behind the duo said "Peen-Na-Lope? What kind of a name is Peen-Na-Lope?" after actress Penelope Ann Miller's name came up during the credits. [1]
- Coconut Pete's personal philosophy "Have a good time all the time, always eat the worm." is most likely a reference to the character Viv Savage in the film "This is Spinal Tap". When Viv Savage, played by David Kaff, is asked by Marty if he has a creed he lives by, Viv responds "Have... a good time... all the time."
[edit] External links
| Broken Lizard |
| Films |
|---|
| Puddle Cruiser | Super Troopers | Club Dread | Beerfest |
| Members |
| Jay Chandrasekhar | Kevin Heffernan | Steve Lemme | Paul Soter | Erik Stolhanske |
