Club Dread (2004)

Although set on a fictional island paradise, CLUB DREAD was actually shot in the jungles of Mexico north of Manzanilla, where the filmmakers recreated Coconut Pete’s Pleasure Island at the luxurious Tamarindo Resort. Here among the luxury bungalows, the filmmakers heightened both a sense of hedonism and suspense with a funky, half-primitive, half-techno design, replete with mysterious statues, creepy cemeteries and a lavish bar and disco.

When Broken Lizard came to Tamarindo on a location scout, the place seemed almost too good to be true. “We kept saying, ‘this place is too beautiful, no one will ever let us make a movie here,’” recalls Kevin Heffernan. “Who would have guessed that a few months later we’d be living and shooting in paradise?”

Beautiful as it was, the location came complete with its own set of terrors, including the strange and oversized local population of insects and animals. “We were dodging bats, raccoons, snakes, scorpions, tarantulas,” recalls Erik Stolhanske. “As much fun as we were having, we were never able to forget that we were in the jungle with anti-venom at the ready.” Threats loomed as Jay Chandrasekhar found himself directing a scene next to a highly poisonous spider and producer Richard Perello found a flying lemur in his refrigerator eating his candy bars. There was even a bonafide snake-in-the-Jacuzzi incident.

Broken Lizard only added to the natural terrors by pulling no punches when it came to horror-movie gore, regularly splattering the set with buckets of movie blood. “It was pretty gnarly,” says Jordan Ladd, “but of course the insanely graphic gore is all part of the humor, so we took it in stride.”

Another challenge was the weather, including electrical storms that knocked over several palm trees on the set, and even destroyed Brittany Daniel’s bungalow, which was fortunately not occupied at the time.

But overall the atmosphere on the set was . . . comic paradise. Says Richard Perello: “This was a truly unique situation, because here we were shooting a film about this incredible island resort but we were also living in the same kind of paradise with extremely fun people and beautiful women in a truly spectacular place. It was as if the spirit of the production just carried over into the film. These guys in Broken Lizard know how to make everything they do into a good time for all.”

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