Title:
The Video Dead
What Year?:
1987
Classification:
Anachronistic Outlier
Rating:
It’s Okay! (3/4)
With this review, we’re getting toward the end of what I had planned at least for the first round of reviews. These are the ones that were absolutely going to be on this list all along, and it’s at this point that I have finally recognized a problem, particularly with the classifications imported from Space 1979. This far in, it goes without saying they’re going to be weird. Of course, they’re going to be unlike anything that would or could be made before, or since, or for that matter in their own time. To me, at least, this lends a certain feeling of the anticlimactic. After all that’s come so far, what remains may not feel any less weird, but it does get harder to really say what makes them stand out. With that, I introduce a case in point, The Video Dead.
Our story begins with the delivery of a TV set to a seemingly nondescript man, which we learn was intended for the Institute For Occult Studies (which sounds like it should be a subject of a much better movie). It turns out that this set can turn itself on and off, even when unplugged, and whatever’s onscreen can come to life. By the time the deliverymen realize their error, the guy is already dead, killed by zombies from a black-and-white movie that usually appears on the screen. However, the TV is left behind, to be discovered by the teen children of the new owners, Jeff and Zoe. Soon, the original owner Henry shows up, but by the time he gets the kids to listen, a number of the zombies are loose, led by a specimen in a bridal gown. They kill several of the neighbors, including the father of Jeff’s romantic interest April, before closing in on the house. Henry shares that they undead are nearly unkillable but can be repelled and possibly defeated. Their main weaknesses are that, as the dead, they cannot bear the sight of their reflection in the mirror, but because they believe they are living, they can be incapacitated by normally mortal wounds. If all this sounds shaky, it proves equally so when Henry and Jeff go on an expedition to rescue April. With the plan gone awry, Zoe is left to outwit the zombies as best she can.
The Video Dead was released direct to video in 1987. Like many such movies, it is subject to a measure of mystery. It was produced, written and directed by Robert Scott, who went on to a career mainly in television. It was distributed by Embassy Home Entertainment, a branch of a studio that also produced or distributed The Fog, Escape From New York and several Godzilla movies. A widescreen version of the film exists, suggesting that a theatrical release was planned. The highest-profile cast member was Michael St. Michaels, a character actor who had a late renaissance in films like The Greasy Strangler in 2016. The only other cast members were Victoria Bastel as April, who appeared in The Dead Pool the following year, and Jennifer Miro, cast as a vampire-like femme fatale, who performed in a number of low-budget exploitation films before and since. In 2013, Shout released it on Blu Ray, in a 2-pack with Terrorvision for no apparent reason.
Throughout my reviews, I’ve regularly commented on what makes a film not only weird but literally like being either stoned or in a hallucinatory state. Considered in those terms, this one is high (pun not intended) if not necessarily exceptional in every category. It’s easily in the top 3 to 5 strangest zombie movies I have ever viewed, with only Shanks and The Cemetery Man really rivalling it. It obviously has a bizarre concept and completely surreal visuals, but as I’ve argued, these aren’t the biggest prerequisites for the acid-trip category. What really puts it in overdrive is the completely loopy story, not quite as disjointed or incoherent as movies like The Day Time Ended and Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, but well past the threshold of ordinary incompetence. Then, almost as an afterthought, there are the zombies themselves, easily among the most vicious, cunning, durable and flat-out putrid on record, in these terms matched only by the kyoshi of The Boneyard or the resourceful attackers of City of the Walking Dead.
The first thing to note about these revenants is that they aren’t “really” zombies. They emerge from the demonic TV set, and it would appear that they return to it after a certain amount of time, or else they would do far more damage than we see. It is also quite clear that none of their victims return to life. Something that is never quite resolved is whether the movie they come from is supposed to be “real” within the assumed world. The film-within-the-film, referred to as “Zombie Blood Nightmare”, is made to look even older than Night of the Living Dead, though the revenants clearly don’t look “old school” (see The Earth Dies Screaming). Whatever its nature, the movie is always the first thing on when the TV turns on, and seems to play long and well enough for Jeff to get absorbed.
Something that further emerges is that the zombies are relatively few in number, which allows most of them to be assigned a few identifying characteristics. The leader is the aforementioned “bride”, so withered she looks mummified, who in her finest hour gets hold of a chainsaw and turns the tables on Jeff. The one I find most memorable is a steel-gray revenant that grabs April, with a shock of perversely vivid blond hair that looks like it should be on a rock star. Others include a fedora-wearing zombie that proves to have a mice infestation, a bald zombie that takes a victim’s glasses, and an especially absurd individual that wanders around with an iron lodged in its head. Like the creatures in Killer Klowns From OuterSpace, they don’t show a lot of individual personality but share an impressive streak of almost naïve sadism. They show intelligence, including enough understanding of human speech to recognize deception. Henry says they attack the living if the show fear, which figures in the finale, but most of their attacks are clearly for their own amusement, particularly where the Bride and her companions stuff a victim into her own washing machine.
I haven’t said much about the humans, and there are certainly reasons for that. While Zoe is featured as a leading character, she doesn’t get as much screen time or development as Jeff, who spends most of his time vaguely amused and clearly high. Henry offers a more interesting character, but he comes in late and never feels fully realized; it doesn’t help that most of what he says doesn’t sound like what he could really know. The lesser victims have more to offer, particularly a maid who gets in a shot with the iron and a husband who doesn’t notice anything amiss while his wife goes in the washer. However, it doesn’t go that far, especially with the bride onscreen. What does redeem the movie are moments of self-aware social commentary, particularly in the final act, as Zoe literally entertains the zombies long enough to lead them into a trap that Henry hints can destroy them (not that his averages are that good). The comedy of manners continues with a few good gags in the hospital epilogue, right up to the nonsensical yet predictable ending. Wasn’t there a childhood keepsake to bring her?...
For the “one scene”, my pick is one that doesn’t quite fit, even by this movie’s standards. After watching the zombies actually in the movie, Jeff decides to channel surf a little. He shows no particular concern when he comes across a beautiful woman who talks to him; of course, he is smoking the whole time, and it’s obviously not tobacco. Suddenly, the woman appears before him. She soon begins shedding clothes as she flirts with him, only to retreat back into the screen. She seems ready to try to lure Jeff in after her, which would be intriguing indeed, until someone graphically cuts her throat. A disheveled man appears onscreen, identifying himself only as “the garbage man”. He further comments, “I take care of human garbage.” He reveals that the woman is one of the undead, though she doesn’t seem much like the zombies. He then proceeds to give a far more lucid account of them than Henry ever does, warning that they “have no souls”. So who is he? Is he telling the truth? Is he part of the TV world, or a human trapped inside? Alas, Jeff promptly disposes of the last of his weed, and nothing is said of him again.
This is one of the
longest reviews I’ve written for this feature, and it should be quite clear I
do like this one, a lot. Still, even I can’t avoid the honest conclusion, this
movie isn’t very good. What really makes it of interest is that it was already
quite late in the 1980s zombie wave, a year after Night of the Creeps among
other things. At the same time, its rudimentary production values and hazy
concepts feel more like a ‘70s production, or else an early preview of the
1990s direct-to-video torrent. Fortunately, its “primitive” character comes out
in totally unbridled creativity. This movie is what happens when somebody has
an idea and does it without going through the process of figuring out if it’s a
good one. Whether it could or should ever happen again can be set aside for
another day.
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