Dead and Deader is a 2006 American Science Fiction Action Genre Horror Comedy Syfy Channel Original Movie starring Dean Cain.
Lieutenant Bobby Quinn is an American soldier in the Middle East, reported seemingly dead after being bitten by a mysterious scorpion. However, he wakes up in a body bag, with a mysterious craving for raw meat. He then discovers that the base is being plagued by his former colleagues, who have gone full zombie. As he battles the living dead, Bobby discovers that other parties are seeking the zombie virus for their own purposes...
The film was distributed by Starz in Australia.
This film contains examples of:
- Action Prologue: Quinn's unit's first encounter with the zombies, and their eventual slaughter.
- And the Adventure Continues: After Quinn blows up the base where the zombies are rampaging, he decides to use his newfound powers and legal nonexistence to start helping people.
- Arch-Enemy: Lieutenant Bobby Quinn has Dr. Scott, who sent his mercenary team on the mission that got them killed, and intends to harvest his blood to sell off the zombie plague as an immortality serum.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: Quinn's unit are first killed when an infected scientist drops a grenade so he doesn't turn. This releases the scorpions which proceed to infect them all.
- Big Bad: Dr. Scott, a scientist seeking to sell the zombie infection for his own profit.
- Clear My Name: Quinn and Judson are assumed to be a couple of spree killers due to the police always finding them just after they kill all the zombies, who as far as they know are innocent people.
- Dead to Begin With: Quinn is killed in the first scene, only to be brought back as a Zombie Infectee.
- Does Not Know His Own Strength: Quinn accidentally throws Dr. Flutie across the autopsy room due to not knowing he has Super-Strength.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: In order to escape before the zombie-filled base explodes, Quinn uses his own body as a jumper cable to recharge a Jeep's battery.
- Groin Attack: A zombie with dwarfism bites a redneck right in the genitals.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Dr. Scott claims that he's conquering death for everybody by turning them into zombies, but his initial motivation was to stop his "special" mind from dying of cancer, he intends to make a hefty profit from selling the serum, and he thinks keeping women attractive is just as valuable a good as preventing children from losing their parents. However, he still seems to genuinely believe that making everybody zombies would improve things, which indicates that he's completely nuts.
- Not What It Looks Like: Quinn says this verbatim when confronted by police surrounded by a bunch of zombie corpses.
- Our Zombies Are Different: These are transferred by a scorpion sting where the venom turns into a scorpion itself. It imbues the infected with Super-Strength and a Healing Factor while shutting down all vital functions. They retain some intelligence in this state, but crave raw meat and eventually turn into shambling creatures that can only be killed by decapitation. When they do die, the scorpion crawls out to sting somebody else. Also, their blood is green.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: When Quinn's raw meat craving takes hold, his eyes take on a red glow. It gets more pronounced when he is denied raw meat and becomes feral for it.
- Scary Scorpions: The zombies are made by a parasitic scorpion known as the jin du, which reproduces by infecting other beings with its venom, which makes them ravenous zombies as a side effect.
- Shout-Out:
- The title is a spoof on Dumb and Dumber.
- Quinn directly compares his Healing Factor to Wolverine.
- Two soldiers named Connery and Lazenby argue about who's the best James Bond star.
- Quinn and Judson take notes from Dawn of the Dead (2004) when it comes to taking out the zombies.
- Take That!: Quinn's story about the zombie attack is described as having "more holes than a Michael Bay movie."
- Token Heroic Orc: Quinn is the only sapient, let alone good, zombie, due to cutting the scorpion out of him before it could destroy his mind.
