The Video Dead (1987)

Movie Info

We can’t even convincingly look for a dog…what if we really have to act?!?!

When a cursed television is mistakenly delivered to a suburban home, it and the movie Zombie Blood Nightmare unleash zombies on the homeowner. The house and television are accidentally sold to the parents of Zoe (Roxanna Augesen) and Jeff (Rocky Duvall), and Zoe and Jeff are about to find out that the curse has come with the house. As Jeff and a man named Joshua (Sam David McClelland) goes on a desperate mission to save his potential girlfriend April (Vickie Bastel), Zoe finds herself alone to fend off the threat of the zombies…and she can’t just change the channel.

Written, produced, and directed by Robert Scott, The Video Dead is a low-budget zombie horror thriller. The film was released direct-to-video.

I remember the cover for The Video Dead, but movies like it and things like TerrorVision and Evilspeak that are tied to technology never really interested me (even movies with killer cars like Christine are a stretch). Watching The Video Dead is like watching a movie where the idea of so-bad-it-is-good is challenged.

I shall call you…Iron Head!!!

The story is that there is very little story. There’s a cursed (not really explained) TV and there are zombies walking around when it gets turned on. The movie switches tone over-and-over again but never really feels like a horror comedy as much as a bad horror film. The meandering story has a couple of surprises involving deaths, and a bizarre third act involving the sister (while ending on a typical horror movie trope). It feels more like an episode of Tales from the Darkside that goes on forever.

As much as the plot has problems, the cast is the biggest challenge. The entire crew comes off as porn star quality actors. You know the movie has problems when a scene has Rocky Duvall and Vickie Bastel searching for a dog in the woods and that isn’t even believable. The whole cast is so wooden and dull that you not only find yourself rooting for the zombies, but you also don’t want them to turn into zombies…because they’d still be around.

I hate having to cook for the dead…

The only thing The Video Dead has going for it is that there are some decent visuals on the zombies. The make-up and the style of the zombies goes a long way, but can’t make up for the acting or the story. It does also feature a nice (gross) scene of one of the zombies being sawed in half…but still it isn’t great.

The Video Dead is a bad movie. There are many great horror movies and even some average ones that are more worth your time than this film. The zombies might not be awful, but that doesn’t really matter in the big picture. The characters in The Video Dead might not be able to shut their TV off, but you should if it comes on.