THE VIDEO DEAD (1987)

THE VIDEO DEAD (1987)

Tagline: Look what's buried inside your television.

(Horror, Zombies, Might as Well Just Toss That Old Black and White TV) [R]

I’m April, don’t you hate it, is sounds like the smell they put on Kleenex. 

In this one, somewhere in Texas, a writer named Henry gets a TV delivered to him by mistake. It should have gone to the Department of Occult Warfare (because where else would a death TV be sent to?). He never turns it on or even plugs it in, but it doesn’t take long before zombies on the screen come out of the TV and kill him. Later that house was sold to another family and the TV was never gotten rid of. They just left it in the attic. Meanwhile, the new owners left the country and their kids Zoe and Jeff are trying to clean up the house before their parents move in. Jeff for some reason decides to go up to the attic and bring the TV down to his bedroom. Later, he befriends this girl April and they start to hit it off. She tells Jeff that there was a murder in the house they just moved into and Jeff just kind of blows it off. It won’t be long before Jeff and his sister regret moving to Shady Lane. 

First off, Jeff reminds me of a pretty typical teenager, but when I was a teen, if anything came out of my TV, I was running. I don’t care what it was. Not Jeff man, he’s all about it. He does heed the warning from the “garbage man”, but dude? When I was about 20 I had my own apartment and I was doing a lot of counseling so pretty much everything got brought to my door by people that knew me. One time it was this vampire chick. I specifically told my best friend at the time to not mess around with this chick. Like don’t date her or anything. Not this dude. He fell for her and it messed up his life. SO – Jeff in THE VIDEO DEAD, you are not the only idiot out there. Bottom line, never fall for vampires, werewolves, witches, zombies, or anything that comes out of your TV.

This is a pretty low-budget flick so I am not going to lie, some of the effects are pretty bad, but we do have other scenes where it’s actually pretty good. They took an interesting approach with this thing, the zombies do not care about your brains. They are just going to choke you to death or something like that. Maybe because it’s just less of a mess? I am not sure. They do put a bit of humor in here. One zombie takes the time to get into this lady's drying just to surprise her. There is a scene where some random character is reading The Wall Street Journal and the headline is “Confused by IRA Rules? So are Tax Advisers and Even the IRS”. I have no idea if this was a real headline back in the 80s, but that is pretty hilarious. 

There are also a lot of inexplicable things in this movie. Jeff basically knows everything that is going on, and at one point he tells April that it is going to take a long time for the cops to figure things out. Why? He already knows, can he just tell them? Then again his sister Zoe had a terrible reaction to the news “Video Dead…somebody better tell me what’s going on and the better tell me right now!”. Jeff is probably just assuming everyone is going to think he’s crazy. Then he’s gotta deal with April and her over-aggressive tooth brushing, so, it is what it is. 

Acting wise I thought Roxanna Augesen actually did fine as Zoe. I guess no one else agreed or this movie made her quit acting altogether. This is the only movie she was ever in. This is also Rocky Duvall’s only film. He plays Jeff in this and really, to be honest, both these two are on par with most other horror flick actors and actresses of the genre. Victoria Bastel (THE DEAD POOL) also does pretty good in this as April. She actually got plenty of roles after this but stopped acting in 1998. Sam David McClelland (PARTNERS IN CRIME) also gets a decent amount of screen time as Joshua. He’s kind of a jerk in this, but he’s helpful. 

If you are in the mood for a completely nonsensical nightmare, the bluest zombie you have seen in your life, a classic horror movie failure to call the authorities based on “they won’t believe us” rationale, and mirrors, lots of mirrors. Then THE VIDEO DEAD is for you. Oh yeah, we also have zombies and some gnarly sequences.

Overall, this thing has a few good aspects and I didn’t mind the different takes on zombies and how they work, but do not expect anything mind-blowing. This is a B-movie through and through and the cheese level is to the ceiling. 

I give it a 3 out of 7. It makes a couple of mistakes that I can’t stand and I think a lot of stuff given this concept wasn’t executed well. Example. Do we really need a shot of Jeff spitting on a leaf twice?

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