Dean Cain Goes B-List

Netflix is good for wasting hours at a time. Most anyone can attest to that. But the online, streaming website also offers ridiculous movie suggestions to viewers. It was that feature that enabled me to watch Dead and Deader just the other day.

Of course, the title is a variation on the classic (?) Jim Carey movie Dumb and Dumber. The two movies have nothing to do with each other, so the name check is all the more bizarre. If Dead and Deader was to reference another film, it probably should have picked another zombie flick. That, at least, would have made sense. Instead, throughout the duration of the feature, a variety of historical film stuff is discussed. Referencing other horror films with visual imagery isn’t new and even Scream discussed genre tropes. Here in Dead and Deader, there’s just a sexy film student to help out the uninformed.

Before any of this stuff is mentioned, though, a barely recognizable Dean Cain, here playing army dude Bobby Quinn, is killed in an explosion somewhere in Cambodia. No, viewers don’t really ever find out what was going on in that part of the world that would have landed soldiers there, but that’s not even a glaring omission amidst the disaster that Dead and Deader represents.

After figuring out the former Superman star is over here slumming it with radio active scorpions, it was more entertaining to guess what year the film was released than following the actual plot. Certainly, since Cain is no longer the Man of Steele, he’s been looking for steady work. He’s not been starving, seeing as he’s been featured in at least one movie per year – and most years sport more than just a few titles. It all still begs the question, why a zombie movie.

My initial guess – before taking a look at his more recent credits – was that he was just looking to pay off his house note or whatever other debt he’d accrued over time. The film doesn’t look like it came towards the end of the ‘90s when Cain’s most well known role saw its termination. So, it seemed that Dead and Deader came a few years into the new millennium.

The feature still looks low rent enough, though, to have come from the early portion of the aughties. There was even a quick mention of eBay in the film’s dialogue that I thought placed it around 2003 or so. But even with that idea in mind, the film and its ‘special effects’ just looked newer than that. And they were. Cain’s Dead and Deader was actually released in 2006. It wasn’t a slim year for the actor as he counted about five features being released in just those twelve months. And while none of the other fare bearing Cain’s name should be considered anything noteworthy, it’s still a bit surprising that he took this role. Surely, he’s on screen a lot, but that doesn’t really make up for being a part of such a trite piece of garbage.