The exuberant horror of Baby Selwyn from ‘Braindead’
More often than not, the greatest zombie movies of all time are recognised as such, thanks to the survivors of the story, like Jim of 28 Days Later or Soo-An from Train to Busan, the lucky few who manage to escape the onslaught of mindless flesh-eating drones. Yet, for a subgenre of horror that thrives in its sheer dedication to cinematic playfulness, surely it’s the zombies themselves that should be celebrated?
Few zombie movies fully dedicate themselves to this self-made DIY aesthetic than Braindead, Peter Jackson’s acclaimed comedy-horror flick he put together nine years before he would step foot in Middle Earth. A surreal piece of filmmaking that adds a sprinkling of Tolkienesque fantasy to the fundamentals of the zombie sub-genre, taking more inspiration from Lucio Fulci than George Romero, Jackson’s film is a splatter flick that replaces true horror for slapstick entertainment.
Lionel is the bumbling, reluctant protagonist of events, a man who is under the thumb of his domineering mother, Vera, who demands he looks after her, especially following her attack by the gnashers of the ‘Sumatran Rat Monkey’ at the local zoo. However, when her condition gets increasingly worse, with puss, blood and goo escaping from her every orifice, it’s only a matter of time before her curious infection spreads.
Spread it indeed does, with Vera’s nurse being one of her first victims, along with the local priest. In a bizarre attempt to suppress news of the viral outbreak, Lionel chooses to lock each of these peeling creatures to the depths of the basement while he thinks of a better plan, yet this only leads nature to take its course, with the undead priest breaking his oath of chastity in order to procreate some demon spawn.
Whether the resulting Baby Selwyn can be considered demon spawn at all is up to interpretation; for followers of God’s good word, he is probably considered to be a satanic wretch, but for others, he’s simply the most delightfully mischievous zombie ever put to cinema.
In a film that uses homemade rubber props and thick, exaggerated blood to joyously parade in the carnivalesque glory of cinematic bad taste, Baby Selwyn is the master of ceremonies, pulling the strings of the onslaught while snatching most of the biggest punchlines. With a tiny tuft of ginger hair, a white and red striped jumpsuit and the kind of face even a mother would struggle to complement, Selwyn is Dennis the Menace in the making, the court jester of Jackson’s magisterial ode to chaos.
Experimenting with the true freedom of horror filmmaking, Jackson subverts the threat of zombies, transforming them into playdough playthings capable of being squished, popped, and squashed, all in the name of comedy. Many of the most creative moments are given to the undead infant, too, breaking out of people’s faces and firing vomit like a shotgun, with Jackson clearly seeing the character as a prop to enact his strangest cinematic desires.
Much like Jackson’s bizarre movie creation, Baby Selwyn is as hideous as it is strangely endearing, perfectly embodying the lovingly homemade identity that sits at the very heart of Braindead and the zombie subgenre in general. As the figurehead of one of horror cinema’s greatest bloodbaths, Selwyn is an audacious, nauseating and iconic ambassador.
