THE VIDEO DEAD (1987) – This gory low-budget zombie movie plays like an unused segment of Creepshow expanded to feature length. Long before The Ring, this production presented creepy zombies from an old black & white horror flick climbing out of a tv set and slaughtering anyone and everyone.
The Video Dead was made by a circle of friends and acquaintances on weekends over the course of a year. Monday through Friday were spent at their “real” jobs. The makeup effects for the zombies defy the movie’s low budget nature.
The cast are mostly unknowns with a couple of actors who worked in other films before and after this one. Among the latter were Michael St. Michaels, and Jennifer Mirro from the punk band called the Nuns.
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A supernatural television set being sent to the Institute for Paranormal Research accidentally gets delivered to the home of a writer. He grumbles at the interruption but turns on the tv to try it out. The only thing the black & white set picks up is a horror film titled Zombie Blood Nightmare.
The unnamed writer’s not interested and shuts off the television. It turns itself back on a few times with the zombie flick still playing. Puzzlement turns to terror when the writer sees the zombies notice him and approach the screen.
Impossibly, the shambling dead figures proceed to emerge from the screen, becoming full color, and bloodily finish off their screaming victim.
A few months later, an unsuspecting family moves into the home, which has been cleaned up and sold. The television set was indifferently stashed in the attic and forgotten about, but is discovered, plugged in and turned on.
The horror begins again, but this time while the zombies are still inside the tv a slovenly man calling himself the Garbage Man shows up and kills one of the living dead. This enigmatic character is somehow trapped in the movie Zombie Blood Nightmare and gives the set’s new owners some quick pointers about how to kill the zombies before static cuts him off.
Before you know it, the house and the surrounding woods and neighborhood are under attack and suffering the usual set pieces from zombie films. A man from the Institute for Paranormal Research at last locates the place where the supernatural tv was misdelivered and he helps the victims try fighting the rampaging undead.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Chainsaws are employed to dismember as many of the Video Dead as possible. Ultimately, the last few survivors get besieged in the story’s original house. Everybody dies except our Final Girl, Zoe, played by Roxanna Augeson.
She manages to lock the zombies in the basement where – with only each other to feed upon – they tear each other to pieces and chow down before the orgy of violence ends in Mutually Assured Destruction.
I’m certainly not saying The Video Dead is an all-time horror classic, but it has that certain independent film energy and a very inventive premise. I don’t get people who praise Creepshow despite the way it sometimes lapses into a bit of goofiness yet criticize The Video Dead for the same reason.
My personal complaint about this movie is that there are a few too many attack scenes set during daylight. Not as many as we got stuck with in other low-budget horrors like The Newlydeads or Ghost Riders, but still too many.
If there had been sequels, maybe more info would have been given about the Garbage Man. Who knows, he might have become to a Video Dead series what Ash and Reggie were to The Evil Dead and Phantasm franchises, respectively.
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