Video Dead
Low budget zombie films are all well and good for young amateur filmmakers to show off their various makeup and camera skills, but since George A. Romero had beaten everybody to the punch in perfecting the formula for the subgenre with his Living Dead films (and Dan OâBannon had added a nice exclamation mark to it with his Return Of The Living Dead), the question remains, what more can really be done to make a zombie film that could possibly be considered better? The answer is of course, no way. But nonetheless the homages and tributes keep coming since it is always fun to gather up some friends and a camera and see just how crazy everyone can get. One of the first âstraightâ homages / ripoffs to be made that ironically is still fondly remembered by some to this day is this 1987 release with a budget to the tune of only $80,000. The one added innovation on display here? When a zombieâs midsection gets cut open with a chainsaw, on top of his blood and guts, we see a couple of live mice emerge and then run off squeaking away. Thatâs about it. Everything else is just beyond derivative, but whatâs worse is just about all of the writing and acting here is possibly the worst ever put to film, featuring conversations that nobody would ever have in real life and actors who clearly should have never been allowed to have speaking roles in front of a camera. The fact is that this helps amplify the biggest irony in the movie which is that the actors playing the zombie characters do a far better and more expressive job than the actors who are playing the human characters here (with one primary zombie character actually switching actors when the original actor fell ill and so they just slapped the same makeup on a different actor without missing a beat). Reportedly, writer / director Robert Scott had envisioned that each of his 5 primary zombie characters would have elaborate backstories that would be told through flashbacks and help flesh out and explain the motivations of each of them including having one be a bride murdered on her wedding night, another being a victim of a fiery car crash that had left him charred black and yet another having been a pretty boy jock who had drowned and thus walked around with blue skin, with the most interesting one having been a serial killer who strangled women and now continued to use that method to kill women rather than eat them. Unfortunately, incorporating these backstories into the zombies became unfeasible due to budget constraints (although the actors most likely knew while portraying them on set) so that extra wrinkle which could have made a difference storywise wound up being left out, leaving the heavy lifting up to a bunch of human actors who wouldnât be able to give acceptable performances in summer stock playhouses. The film opens up with the delivery of a TV to a drunken slob of a writer. While the writer wonders just exactly why a TV was delivered to him, the TV manages to turn itself to what is apparently the only channel that it contains: a really bad black and white zombie movie which very closely resembles Romeroâs Night Of The Living Dead. While the writer lays passed out in the bedroom, the zombies actually emerge out of the TV and brutally kill him. Thatâs just about it for the haunted TVâs direct involvement in the story, having served as a gateway for the zombies (âThe Video Deadâ) to enter into our world and now be flesh and blood threats to our reality. Shortly after the writerâs corpse is hauled away, we meet a teenage brother and sister who now move into the house as we are told that the house has been obtained by their fatherâs company and since their parents are away on business in The Middle East, the teen siblings have apparently been told to move right on in and make themselves at home. Fortunately, the younger brother has gotten to meet the sweet, gorgeous girl next door (Victoria Bastel, a acclaimed belly dancing instructor who is the most charismatic person in the film) but it isnât long before both her pet poodle AND her parents fall prey to the zombie hordes (who seemed to have been hanging out in the woods for months before striking again). But all is not lost for the kids as their âsaviorâ soon arrives from Texas, the previous owner of the TV who informs them that it had been sent to their house by accident instead of going to a special paranormal research center who were going to keep it under wraps. As played by Sam David McClelland, this performance literally aims to be perhaps the worst ever seen in a horror film, a lame attempt to generate a scene stealing, colorful, comedic / heroic character saddled with an actor who seems to recite at least half of his dialogue in a sort of whispered mumble that the viewer canât even understand clearly. Even when we get to the big scene where he âexplainsâ everything that is going on and why, the director chooses to edit around things by continually cutting back and forth between him and the progress of the zombies outside in such a way that itâs made clear that he has indeed explained things to the other characters but not to us, the viewers (and weâre the ones who count). Worse, the character is portrayed as being a sloppy idiot who doesnât even seem to take his so called âmissionâ all that seriously, at one point actually setting one character up as bait so that he can pick the zombies off from afar, but then he FALLS ASLEEP, only waking up after a gunshot, much screaming and the firing up of the chainsaw. As for the other two leads in the brother and sister, first we have Roxanna Augesen as the sister, an empty headed moron whom we are told is getting ready to attend university so that she can âmajor in aerobicsâ but more disturbing than that is the fact that the actress (who surely is a lovely person in real life) comes off as being a bit short in the looks department which makes her doubly unappealing whenever she acts bitchy or stressed. But the real Golden Turkey acting dishonors would probably have to go to one Rocky Duvall (no relation to Robert obviously) as the obnoxious kid brother âheroâ of the film. Actually 16 years old at the time of filming (and never to act onscreen again like the majority of the cast), Duvall seems trapped in that awkward period between puberty and adulthood, compelling the others to take action in a squeaky, high pitched voice before going out zombie hunting with the equally stupid redneck character all while making a complete fool of himself during the pseudo courtship scenes with the sexy blonde neighbor. As the bad acting escalates to a crescendo, it manages to hit its zenith with the help of the wretched script, featuring exchange after exchange amongst the characters of things that real people would never say all while somebodyâs obviously good sized backyard is used for the majority of the zombie hunting scenes. The scriptâs big revelations for how to stop the zombies is to 1) attack them just like you would regular people for if they become incapacitated enough, they will actually start to THINK that theyâre really dead and (if only temporarily) just lay there as if theyâre not coming back from their injuries (okay) and 2) find a way to trap the zombies in a place from which they cannot escape at which point they will go crazy and start to eat themselves as it turns out that luring them into the basement before locking them in there will do just fine in that regard (okay). Weâre also told that holding a mirror up to a zombie will ward them off since zombies absolutely hate to look at themselves in the mirror. But the most ridiculous defense that we learn about is in the strategy of showing them no fear whatsoever to the point that if you start to talk to them and treat them like regular people, then they will not attack you(?) which gives us the utterly ridiculous sight of the sister being cornered in the house before pasting on the phoniest smile imaginable and actually having the zombies sit down at the table and serving them food (a tactic that would probably get you torn to shreds in Romeroâs world)! Itâs this and many other horribly done bits (the first use of the chainsaw immediately leads to about 10 consecutive Texas Chainsaw references) that cancels out the admittedly fun quality of the makeup, gore and zombie performances (more than once thereâs a glance or exchange amongst them that indicates that theyâre all having a good time), proving that pacing, writing and acting are still all important even when you have a great makeup FX guyâŚ
3/10