Crew
Director/Screenplay – Matthew Leutwyler, Story – Billy Burke & Jun Tan, Producers – Ed Heiser & Jun Tan, Photography – David Scardina, Music – Brian Vander Ark, Songs – Zach Selwyn, Makeup Effects – Michael Mosher, Production Design – Don Day. Production Company – Ambush Entertainment/Goal Line Productions.
Cast
Oz Perkins (Johnny), Erik Palladino (David), Ever Carradine (Sara), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Sheriff), Bianca Lawson (Kate), Gina Philips (Melody), Jeremy Sisto (Christian), Zach Selwyn (Randall Keith Randall), Brent David Fraser (The Drifter), Mark Kelly (Enus), Diedrich Bader (Chef Henri), David Carradine (Robert Wise), Ric Barbera (The Preacher), Portia de Rossi (Kelly the Bride)
Plot
A group of friends are travelling in an RV to a wedding in Galveston. They stop off in the small town of Lovelock and sign into the Lavanna Bed and Breakfast run by Robert Wise. They wake up in the morning to find Robert and the chef Henri murdered. Despite their protestations that they have to get to the wedding, the sheriff confiscates the keys to their RV. The nerdy Johnny then finds a box, which causes him to become zombified. When he places any samples of hair, skin or blood inside the box that person becomes a zombie. The rest of the group take siege inside the B&B as the zombies surround it.
Dead & Breakfast was the third film for director Matthew Leutwyler. Leutwyler began directing with the non-genre Road Kill (1999) and in between various other works has made genre items such as Unearthed (2007), Uncanny/Android (2015) and Swipe (2016). Leutwyler has also acted as a producer on other films with James Gunn’s Super (2010) and Hellbenders (2012), among others.
Dead & Breakfast comes with an odd tone. It is a Zombie Film but the zombies are not standard – they are individuals who are taken over and converted after some of their hair or blood is placed into a Tibetan box that Oz Perkins wields. These are vocal zombies – indeed, the zombified Oz Perkins is in command of his faculties to the extent he is cracking deadpan one-liners. It only becomes apparent some way in that the film is being played as a Horror Comedy. This includes a country-and-western band that pop up at regular intervals to punctuate the drama with songs (and are converted into zombies during the siege).
The film feels as though it was roughly made and slipshod in many areas. Some characters like Jeremy Sisto abruptly drop out of the show, while it feels as though they could only afford David Carradine and Diedrich Bader for a day’s shooting apiece. I would happily have been dismissive of Dead & Breakfast except that it picks up in the third act where it does a low-scale Night of the Living Dead (1968)-type siege as the zombies surround the bed and breakfast.
During these scenes, the film becomes very enthusiastic with the Splatter and Gore. (So much so that it ended up being cut in several territories). This includes scenes firing against the zombies with improvised pipe shotguns and blowing chunks out of head and stomachs, claw hammers in the head, cooking fat thrown in the face, and Erik Palladino staggering around with a chainsaw buried in his neck.
One of the most striking things about Dead & Breakfast is its cast line-up of former stars, relatives and before-they-were-known faces. There’s the legendary David Carradine playing the owner of the B&B, while his niece Ever Carradine is one of the heroines. There’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan, several years before tv’s The Walking Dead (2010-22) playing the town sheriff; Jeremy Sisto, an actor who should have gone on to become a bigger name; Gina Philips, known for Jeepers Creepers (2001), who should also have gone on to become a better known name; Portia de Rossi, around the time she became involved with Ellen DeGeneres, in a single scene appearance as the bride at the wedding they are going to; Diedrich Bader with outrageous French accent as the chef; and Oz/Osgood Perkins, then best known as the son of Anthony Perkins and several years before becoming a regular genre director with the likes of The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015), I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016), Gretel & Hansel (2020), Longlegs (2024) and The Monkey (2025), who is the leader of the zombies.
Trailer here