Club Dread is unashamedly bad, but it never pretends to be otherwise

Broken Lizard's Club Dread--a teen slasher set on an island resort--promises to be yet another horror/gross-out comedy with tons of T & A, and it sure delivers. The film opens with a few staff members gearing up for a threesome, exchanging lines like "Hey Stacy, while I torch this baby how 'bout you lick my chest?" and "Oh, come on Kelly, it's not like I'm asking you to eat my crack!" Four naked boobs right off the bat help the audience see exactly what they're in for.

Club Dread premiered the Friday before Oscar weekend, and it would've been kind of cool if they could have slipped it in on time. No such luck. But just because it wasn't lauded by the Academy a year ahead of schedule doesn't mean it was the work of amateurs: Au contraire, Club Dread is directed by Jay Chandrasekhar of Super Troopers fame. But where Super Troopers was stupid comedy done extraordinarily well, Club Dread is merely pretty funny. Not laugh-out-loud funny a lot of the time, but, well, you know.

Chandrasekhar manages to pull off the directing/starring double-whammy yet again, portraying Putnam, a saucy Brit with long dark dreads. Bill Paxton plays a stoner/former folk star of the Jimmy Buffett variety, a comparison he apparently resents: "I came out with 'Pinacoladaburg' seven-and-a-half years before "Margaritaville" was even on the map!" Dread also stars Brittany Daniel of "Sweet Valley High" TV fame as Jenny, the new aerobics instructor at Coconut Pete's (Bill Paxton's) resort. (The previous aerobics instructor died of rat poisoning.)

Club Dread isn't as endearing as other teen flicks, because the characters are one-dimensional: hot kids who like to party, without that Jason Biggs-style vulnerability. It's all the fun, without the commitment. (But the film does have some amusingly gross sex scenes in its own right: One staff member, we're told, went to prison in Costa Rica for having sex with a goat.)