Director/Screenplay – S.P. Somtow, Producer – Lex Nakashima, Photography – D.R. Boyd, Music – Somtow Sucharitkul, Creature Effects & Transformations – Magical Media Industries., (Designer – John Buechler), Makeup Effects – Rik Carter, Jake Johnson, Dave Stinnett & Jane Whitehead, Production Design – Diane Hughes & Phillip Vasels. Production Company – Archaeoptryx.
Cast
Tim Sullivan (Father Ezekiel O’Sullivan), Wendy Webb (Tessie Smith), Premika Eaton (Laurie Shiganka), Patrick Roskowick (Ivan Smith), Krista Keim (Clarisse Lemming), Larry Kagen (Wilbur Lemming), S.P. Somtow (Dr Um-tzec), Ryan Effner (Cal Hefner), Raymond Ridenour (Dozois), Gregory Frost (Frost), Edward Bryant (Bus Driver), Erica Frank (Counter Girl)
Plot
The Catholic priest Father Ezekiel O’Sullivan leads a group of oddballs on a bus trip across the border into Mexico to join an archaeological dig. The group includes a New Age couple; Laurie Shiganka who has stowed away after fleeing from a troubled home life; and Tessie Smith, a former nun that for whom Father O’Sullivan had feelings. Tessie brings with her son Ivan, who is unaware that Ezekiel is his father. As the group arrive at the hotel near the dig, they meet Dr Um-tzec, who takes the name of Um-tzec, the Aztec god of death. The doctor intends to kill them all as sacrifices to bring about the incarnation of the god Um-tzec. This requires fulfilling a prophecy where Father O’Sullivan must sacrifice his own son.
Somtow Sucharitkul is a Thai-born composer and writer who lives in the US. Sucharitkul, who also goes by S.P. Somtow, began publishing with Starship and Haiku (1981) and has written various works in the SF, fantasy and horror genres, most famously with the horror novel Vampire Junction (1984). Somtow also has a considerable body of work as a composer. Besides directing and writing The Laughing Dead Sucharitkul appears in the film, billed as S.P. Somtow, playing the role of the high priest Dr Um-tzec.
On film, Somtow has written several episodes of animated tv series such as Dinosaucers (1987), before making his directorial debut with The Laughing Dead. He did subsequently direct Ill Met By Moonlight (1994), an adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c1595-5). He has also written scripts for Burial of the Rats (1995), Brian Yuzna’s Amphibious 3D (2010) and The Maestro (2021).
I had read about The Laughing Dead in various horror magazines back the 1980s but it was never released in my parts of the world on VHS or any equivalent. It wasn’t until the 2020s when the film finally made an appearance on dvd that I was able to catch up with it. As with many other works that have long wait times before you ever get around to seeing them, there is a certain level of disappointment, but The Laughing Dead is still a fascinating example of 1980s horror.
The high priest Dr Um-tzec (the flm’s director and writer S.P. Somtow) (c) prepares to conduct a ritual Aztec sacrifice
The Laughing Dead catches you with a certain bizarreness factor. In a move that a filmmaker would never be able to get away with today, there are no actual Mexicans in the cast until you get to the minor supporting roles some way down the cast list, while the production goes no further than Arizona to shoot. Another oddity is that despite the title and mention of such at the beginning, there are no appearances of any ‘laughing dead’ – we do get some regular zombies in the background but nothing about them that is any different to standard. Somtow seems to also willingly mash-up and blend the mythologies of the Aztecs (Quetzalcoatl, human sacrifice) and Mayans (Kukulkan), along with the purely invented – the Mayans had no deity called Um-tzec, their god of death (and earthquakes) was Cixin or Xibalba.
Somtow loves outrageously ridiculous splatter effects. These come in a not dissimilar vein than they do in Sam Raimi films of the era like The Evil Dead (1981) and The Evil Dead II (1987) – the sight of Raymond Ridenour’s head being severed and flying through the air to land in a basketball hoop; the bus being psychically put into gear and then made to back up and squish the driver (Edward Bryant)’s head; Gregory Frost’s arm being ripped off and then shoved down his throat where you can see the fingers wriggling from inside his neck. This becomes particularly entertaining at the climax where Somtow’s high priest and Tim Sullivan’s Catholic priest undergo cheap air bladder transformations into manifestations of Kukulkan and Quetzalcoatl for a showdown.
Somtow appears to have made The Laughing Dead entirely by self-financing, which may well explain why it never received the wider release than it did. The film suffers from many of the pitfalls of such productions with its often amateurish acting – the broad performances from Krista Keim and Larry Kagen as a New Age couple, Premike Eaton (Somtow’s sister) as the teenage runaway, and Gregory Frost and Raymond Ridenour, who would have been mandatorily made into a gay couple in the 2020s. Certainly, as the film goes on and the horror element kicks in, this proves less of a problem than it does at the start. Somtow’s appearance in the role of the high priest is one where the seriousness of the part is undercut by him making comic asides about the missing children appearing on milk cartons and being able to retire as an investment broker.
