In Club Dread, the once-promising comedy troupe Broken Lizard’s follow-up to the stoner-beloved Super Troopers, an island paradise turns into a blood-soaked nightmare when a machete-wielding killer interrupts a vacation of sun, sex and suds.
A game Bill Paxton stars as Coconut Pete, a drug-addled Jimmy Buffet-like singer who runs the getaway spot, with the unmemorable members of Broken Lizard serving as his staff, including a tennis pro, a DJ, the “fun police” and a fat masseuse who can give women orgasms just by touching a certain spot above their upper lip. One by one, members of the staff meet gruesome deaths at the hands (which hold a very sharp blade) of the unknown murderer.
It’s a spoof of splatter films, but by the second act, it threatens to become the very thing it parodies. By the third, it does. As with the overrated Super Troopers, it’s on-and-off fun, but highly flawed. A couple of the jokes are brilliant, while many more are absolutely infantile. There’s the same problem with flow and tone, but here, at least they try to make up for it by throwing in the bare breasts of Cabin Fever babe Jordan Ladd. There’s also a monkey. —Rod Lott