The Video Dead (1987)

Original UK Medusa VHS cover

Tagline: ‘Look What’s Living In Your Television’
UK Running Time: 87 Minutes
Film Quality: 3.5/5
Gore Content: 3.5/5
Entertainment Value: 4/5
Originality: 4.5/5

Introduction

 You may not have seen this hidden gem of a zombie film and that’s a crying shame because this is something of a one off. We live in an age where zombie movies are ten a penny and fall into the Romero flesh-eaters or Boyle infected varieties – ‘The Video Dead’ falls into neither category, in fact I’m struggling to think of a comparable zombie flick.

In a nutshell

"It's my party and I''ll die if I want to..."

The basic plot concerns an author who is the unwilling recipient of a TV that was meant to be delivered to the Institute of Paranormal Research. It switches itself on to a screening of an old zombie film, the shuffling characters from which cross the fourth wall and have a bit of fun with our friend the scribe (see left!!!). Enter your typical teenage moron, his sister, the obligatory blonde ‘girl next door’ and a mysterious, elderly ‘precursor of doom’ who seems to know a little too much about these zombies and what you get, despite the actors’ best efforts, is a surprisingly entertaining, original movie with some excellent mythology and surprising gore effects.

What’s good about it?

 For me what embedded the film into my psyche and made it so memorable is that it has the confidence to be different and create its own mythology. The zombies wish to kill the living because they have what they want – life. They can be fooled into thinking they are dead if sufficiently injured (say for example if they’re cut in half with a chainsaw) but only for a short period of time. Far from total bodily dismemberment or a gunshot wound to the head, the best way to dispose of these meandering cadavers is to trap them in a room full of mirrors where they are forced to be confronted by what they really are and eat themselves! This must be a first…a psychological profile of zombies including full psychoanalysis and diagnosis, highly original!

We also get a glimpse into the nature of the curse that appears to haunt the TV. Our hapless teenager, Jeff, discovers the TV set in the attic after answering the call of a seductive temptress who appears on the screen. It wants to be discovered and knows precisely how to get Jeff’s attention by presenting him with the very thing he desires the most. We’re also introduced to a character, The Garbage Man, who kills or disposes of the temptress before the TV has a chance to completely overwhelm Jeff. Again, the curse has its own ‘antivirus’ protecting those unsuspecting morons from becoming a victim of their own sexual desires.

"I figured if I made a pig's ear of the ironing she
wouldn't ask me to do it again..."

There is a strong vein of humour running through the film. One of the zombies, quite early on, is walloped with an iron, doomed to spend the rest of the film shuffling around with the painful looking kitchen appliance sticking out of his head. A zombie bride starts laughing when she sets off a washing machine with an unfortunate victim inside. Another zombie looks perplexed and doesn’t know what to do when he attacks Jeff’s sister and she simply faints – her way of coping later on is to sit the zombies down and serve them tea and cake. It is a funny film which makes the darker scenes much more eerily effective.

This brings us onto the subject of gore. The film reportedly had a budget of $80,000 and it certainly didn’t go on the acting talent, many of whom were drama students from the local college who hopefully had a back-up plan. The effects have held up surprisingly well. We get a chainsaw evisceration at the waist in close up and in broad daylight. We get an iron plunged very graphically in the head with all of the expected splatter. We get throat slittings, a little flesh eating, a machete decapitation all done with real gusto and the zombie make up is excellent as well, very crusty and, well, dead looking!

What about the bad?

Yes it’s gory, yes it has some very eerie moments and yes, it’s hugely entertaining but most of the truly horrific moments come courtesy of the acting! That said, it’s on a par with your average Troma movie and it does kind of add to the B movie charm. However, the music does not…it sounds like a demo tape Jean-Michel Jarre might have made on his Casio keyboard and Fisher Price tape recorder when he was 4.

My only other complaint is that it would have been nice to have fleshed out the mythology a little. I know many horror films have been ruined by exposition but they really had something here. The scene with the Garbage Man and seductive woman is a genuinely memorable scene and it’s a shame that this isn’t explored further.

Any themes?

The old ball and chain...............saw!

Just because it’s a trashy B movie doesn’t mean it’s not smart and there is something here about television giving you what you want to the distraction of everything else. The author is killed by the TV because he can’t switch it off, Jeff very nearly bites the bullet because he’s seduced by its cathode ray charms…perhaps there’s some social comment there about the effects of TV on attention spans. How many times have you sat down and mindlessly turned on the TV, sitting there for two hours and not really watching anything. Did you become ‘The Video Dead’?

Also, the only way to keep the evils of the TV at bay is to put a mirror up against it so, is TV mirroring us or are we mirroring TV. It might not be art but there is something going on as subtext, intentional or no.

Release history

Here in the UK it was released straight to video by Medusa completely uncut, rated 18. It did have a bare bones dvd release which is long since out of print so is currently, sadly, unavailable. It seems ripe for the picking for Arrow or 88 Films to do a number on it as a US blu-ray is out there. Personally I think this one suits 88’s catalogue…it’s never been released in the UK in its original widescreen format.

Cultural impact?

None, although allegedly a sequel was written but the director turned it down because he wanted a bigger budget. I’ve not seen the script but apparently it would’ve flipped the coin and seen a character watching the original zombie movie sucked into the film and must try to get out before the film ends. This would’ve made for an interesting sequel but sadly, that will never happen. It would make a very interesting extra feature for a blu-ray release.

Final thoughts

A hugely entertaining movie that stands out on its own in the zombie sub-genre as an oddity, kind of unique. It stays just the right side of light-hearted without descending into spoof or parody and refuses to conform to the rules of its own sub-genre, following its own path. For this reason the film makers deserve credit…director Robert Scott has remained in the industry as assistant or second assistant director of TV series of the calibre of ‘Heroes’, ‘Banshee’, ‘House’ and the original ‘Beverley Hills 90210’ but never wrote or directed another film…shame.

If you like this, you’ll like…

‘Evil Dead 2’, ‘Demons’, ‘American Werewolf in London’, ‘Rabid Grannies’, ‘Body Count’.

So there you go, my first review...if there's an old horror flick you want me to take a look at then leave me a comment and in true horror movie fashion..."I'll be right back!!!!"

Horror Films from the VHS Era

I grew up in the days of VHS, a time that holds a nostalgic appeal for me. I was drawn to the horror genre fairly early on after a recording we made accidentally caught the final ten minutes of an old Hammer House of Horror. My tiny little mind had never seen anything like this before and, though it scared the daylights out of me, it left me intrigued as to how something that placed me in no danger whatsoever could leave me feeling so vulnerable.

Of course this is what horror is all about, it opens up our minds to what COULD be out there, lurking in the shadows, round the corner, over the top of the duvet, just out of view but fully realised in our own imagination as dread. I'm going to use these pages to re-visit some of my old VHS favourites, many of which have been released in pristine prints on blu-ray with enough bonus material to fill several VHS boxes. It's great to be able to see these dubious classics and 'jump to a scene' safe in the knowledge that the tracking won't hide the gruesome close up of the chainsaw evisceration or the shadowy movement of the masked killer but VHS had a charm that these beautiful shiny discs will probably never have. They're the sidekick that never gets the credit, the spotty kid who never got the girl, the insignificant crew member who perishes a third of the way through...the underdog that made the quarter-finals.

I'm working on my first review and, if your tastes lie in obscure 80s horror then the above photo may give it away. If you're reading this and there's a film you want me to take a look at then leave a comment and I'll do my best. Let's have a bit of fun together and re-live those glory days!