The Video Dead (1987)

I'll preface today's post with this: this is one of the hardest posts I've ever had to write, for reasons I'll reveal shortly.

It all starts so innocently. A shot of deliverymen dropping off a mysterious crate to an irate jackass who lives on, I shit you not, a road called "Dead End Lane". (For those of us versed in horror film vernacular, we know damn well that this is shorthand for "Hey, don't get attached to this character, 'cause he's, like, totally going to die.") Anyways, the crotchety old coot opens up the crate to find...

BOOGA BOOGA BOO!

Yep, a television. Which just so happens to turn on by itself, even when turned off or left unplugged. Which just so happens to only show one plotless, mindless movie (with a killer soundtrack, by the way) on endless repeat:

Again, all the more reason to, oh, GET THE FUCK OUT.

As expected, given the name of both the film and the film-within-the-film, said zombies emerge from the television in the middle of the night and perform their civic duty by killing off the angry old man. The deliverymen show up the next day, anxious due to the fact that they delivered the wrong package to this address--apparently, the killer tube was supposed to be sent to the rather-official-sounding Institute For The Study Of The Occult.

We're gonna file that one under "Oops".

So, three months pass, the zombie escapees apparently just idling their time away doing fuck all in the woods, and--stop me if you've heard this one before--a pair of totally radical teenagers move into the house. Jeff and Zoe (pronounced "Zoh") Blair (pronounced "Blair"), proud offspring of The Most Irresponsible Parents In The World, are taking care of their new place until said Irresponsible Parents come home from Saudi Arabia, which I infer to have been a common occurrence in the Reagan 80's.

It was the best of times.

We see the tubular teens meet their new neighbor, April, as she's walking her poodle, Chocolate. Jeff, who graduated from the George Michael Bluth Academy of Social Skills with highest honors, is instantly smitten, inviting the lovely April into the house for a nice, warm glass of water. There's a terse, awkward conversation, mercifully cut short by the poodle doing as we would have done and escaping the house--only to meet a nasty end at the hands of the walking dead, who seem absolutely jubilant to finally have something to kill again. Our teen sweeties realize the dog's gone missing and leave the house to search for it, leading to an overly-long search-and-rescue scene documented religiously here in this episode of Spongebob Squarepants:

You think I'm joking? This movie pioneered the YouTube subgenre of "X for five minutes". IN 1987.

We're treated to a delightfully bizarre aw-sucks bonding scene as April and Jeff come together over concocting an excuse for the dog's death, and then there's this line:

Thanks for the news, April. And now to Jim with sports!

Don't worry, Jeff seems as confused by it as we are. Anyways, sure enough, Jeff finds the TV locked away in the attic, brings it down to his room, and enjoys watching ZOMBIE BLOOD NIGHTMARE while smoking what appears to be yard trimmings.

Suddenly, a Zola Jesus impersonator (played by the lovely Jennifer Miro of legendary Bay Area punx the Nuns) pops out of the boob tube, drops her dress, shows her boobs (not full-frontal, kids, sorry), then sneaks back into the TV and gets immediately killed by The Garbageman, who warns Jeff of the powers of the dastardly device, telling him to lock the TV in the basement with a mirror taped around it.

If you made sense of that last paragraph, congratulations, you're a better man than I, and I watched the fucking movie. Jeff chalks it up to hallucinations due to whatever his dealer might've been cutting his lawnmower clippings with, and heads to bed--only to find Zola's dress on his floor in the morning and realize (with appropriate dun-dun-dun!) THAT IT WAS ALL TRUE.

The movie coasts from here on out in a delightful way. We get to see the zombies at play, mercilessly slaughtering the neighbors one by one and shambling about in a downright childlike manner, giggling like Daffy Duck nonstop as they toy with appliances to wake up their victims, pop up from washing machines to give little boo-scares, and generally mess with the corpses they leave behind in the way that one cousin you have used to do with those squirrels he killed.

If you didn't have that cousin, chances are, you were that cousin.

April moves in with Jeff and Zoh after her parents meet their ends, and a yeehawin' Texan, the prior owner of the demon screen, pops up to aid the trio in defeating THE VIDEO DEAD. But not until after, y'know, playing the role of Mr. Exposition to let us know what the hell is going on. It seems the dead are afraid of knowing that they're dead, so they're repelled by mirrors, and can only be killed by convincing them that they're dead by wounding them like a human--or locking them in somewhere with each other. Oh, and they're driven to kill by seeing people be afraid of them, so if someone was able to confront them without being afraid...

Fuck it, I'll buy it. Still a better set of rules than Inception.

The gang dwindles in number from there. April's the first to go, having had the least amount of lines so far in the movie, and the Texan and Jeff, while making a valiant effort with a chainsaw to dismember THE VIDEO DEAD, both meet their grisly ends out in the woods while stalking their prey.

And then, in the most stunning display of "fuck the rules we set up, we've still got a quarter hour of movie left" I've ever seen, the dead just ignore their injuries and get back up and head to the house, where Zohh lingers all alone.

I'm glad that someone in this movie shares my feelings about these developments.

Zohhh, cornered by THE VIDEO DEAD and too chickenshit to kill them, decides to do exactly what Cowboy Yee-haw warned her about and invites the dead in unafraid, fixing them chili and trapping them in the basement afterward--finally ending the CRT nightmare and sending poor Zohhhh to a mental hospital, where she gets her comeuppance in a totally-saw-that-coming twist ending you'll never forget.

OR IS IT???

So why has this been harder to write than all of my college essays combined? Could be the low academic standing of my school. Could also be the fact that I betrayed the number-one rule of shitty movie reviewing and actually liked the damn movie.

Yeah, sure, it's a piece of shit, but it's a good one at that. The jokes are corny in all the right ways. The scenes in which Zohhhhh has to put on her best face and pretend she's not scared shitless are actually sorta downright terrifying. There's no mucking about with explanations for the monsters, they're just there and they like to mess everything up, that's all. The zombies don't even eat people, they're just pissed that people get to be alive and they don't. And best of all, there's a sense of fun running undercurrent to everything in the movie, especially where the goons are concerned; making up for the fact that the budget only allowed for a half a dozen or so creatures, we're allowed to get attached to each of the zombies as their own individual character, with their own likes and dislikes and own ways of causing chaos. The bride likes to play dress-up. Four-Eyes likes to laugh. David Bowie likes to just glare menacingly.

And they say there's no truth in cinema!

The playfulness the goon squad shows in their dismemberment of the human victims more than makes up for all of The Video Dead's fault; heck, I was even actually a little sad when they got locked in the basement and started chewin' on each other, although that might just be the liberal arts major in me.

First boob: 26 minutes, 6 seconds. NOT FULL FRONTAL.
First blood: 8 minutes, 46 seconds.
Overall rating:


















The Video Dead is available on VHS and Netflix Instant. Any DVD copies you may find are bootlegs and not to be trusted.






The theme music from ZOMBIE BLOOD NIGHTMARE is still stuck in my head.

Open House (1987)

There's a certain kind of 80's gunk that I can't wash off of me after Open House: a fiendish brew of Hollywood cheese and San Fernando skeeze. And no, it's not the neon, the permaperms, or the polyester; it's the unshakable feeling that Open House is an accident of a film, the unfortunate result borne from a group of filmmakers who were trying to make a porno, failed at that somehow, and decided to do a slasher movie instead--because, y'know, that's easier. I mean, just look at the lead actor('s name):

I'm sure he had a fantastic childhood.

But, funnily enough, despite the air of porniness that pervades the film, there's actually very little in the way of actual titillation; most of the boobage we get is more suggested at than actually shown, the director shying away from full-frontal nudity and instead exploring backsides and side-angles. No, the truth of Open House's origins come across in the camera angles, the title, the budget, and most importantly, the dialogue:

REAL ESTATE AGENT
Well, this is the master bedroom.

MR PEARCY
(running his hand through her hair, pulling her up for a kiss)
Mmmm, it sure is.

............................

DAVID
What really turns him on?

MARYLOU

Oh...wine, candles, those little baby carrots...and me, in black lingerie.

............................

BARNEY RESNICK
Your rear end is negotiable if I want it to be!

...and so forth, for 98 minutes straight.

For the most part, though, Open House fails to live up to its own self-created hype. A much better title would be Sexy Radio Psychologist Does Stuff; Bottoms plays the role of David Kelley, a psychiatrist who hosts a call-in radio show. Most of the film centers on David, who's only tangentially tied to the murders through most of the film thanks to his realtor girlfriend Lisa. Well, that and the fact that the killer likes to call in to David's show to constantly remind us that the victims of these murders are "uppity real estate bitches" (the phrase is used in every call he makes, which, by my count, was roughly five) who "had it coming".

Thankfully, David is as perplexed by this overt braggadocio as we are.

The film drags on at a languid pace from there, almost episodic in its presentation of its material. A realtor will be showing a house, she'll be killed, David's show will be called, we'll have some footage of the police investigation, and David will go to a house that his girlfriend was showing that day to boink her brains out and then sleep.

Inexplicably, said diddling requires a large array of balloons. No, I don't understand it, either.

Things only really pick up with about a quarter of an hour left in the movie; the killer (surprise!) kidnaps Lisa, sending David on a chase through Los Angeles in order to save her. David, sadly, reduces the time he has available to save her from one hour down to 30 minutes thanks to his inability to stop insulting the killer when he telephones the radio station. Some psychiatrist indeed.

And, in its most stunning moment of realism, the film doesn't shy away from the gritty realities of driving in Los Angeles.

But David arrives in time, and the day is saved. Almost. We have to sit through the obligatory lengthy rant from the killer, first, though--and it's a doozy, folks. You see, Mr. Killer is a homeless man, living in abandoned houses in LA that get bought up by real estate companies. Poor Mr. Killer takes good care of these places while he slums it up in 'em and then just gets tossed to the wayside when these "uppity bitches" (6!) try to sell his home. They've made homes too expensive! Them and the corporations with all their stuff! Poor Mr. Killer can't get by! The cognitive dissonance of the screenwriters kicks in to maximum overdrive, and yet David lets Mr. Killer just talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and...fuck, it's enough for you to wish that someone would just come in and shoot the guy.

Which, thankfully, happens.

So we get our happy ending. The hobo gets shot (he comes back to life for a bit, but a little bit of They Live-ish fight choreography takes care of that), Lisa's saved, everybody pats themselves on the back, and we're able to go back to our standard running gag of Lisa calling into David's show and making innuendos as the credits roll. Yawn.

I'll give credit to Open House where it's due. There's some creative deaths, for sure: a plunger with razor blades stuck in it that might just be the inspiration for the razor-bat in Hobo With A Shotgun (2011) here, a woman bound and gagged and electrocuted by a light switch there. There's even a truly haunting moment when the film shuts up for a bit and just focuses on a corpse hanging from a garden hose as seen through an outside window in complete and utter silence.

By far, the best part of Open House is the character of Barney Resnick: a sleazy real estate agent in competition with Lisa whose only purpose in life seems to be to fuck everybody else's shit up. Barney hires local punx to wreck properties other realtors are planning on showing, uncomfortably hits on every female character that crosses his path, and damn near gets away with it all. The fact that he's played by an enormous ham who likes to yell all the time only helps his cause.

In a better world, this man has his own movie.

My biggest problem with the film is the fact that the killer cannot fucking shut up. Even before his horrendously long monologue about the evils of the late-80's real estate boom, he's a loudmouth. His calls into David's radio show last for agonizingly long periods of time and go absolutely nowhere, and during the slayings, he giggles uncontrollably, laughing like a Teletubby attacked by nerve gas and breaking any sort of creepy tension the film might have been setting up. The effect is less Norman Bates and more Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988).

Of special note is the soundtrack: it reeks of "we-stole-this-all-from-Bladerunner", with its silky tenor sax lines interwoven with cheesy Casio synth sounds, to the point where the music begins to grate on the listener by about a half hour into the movie; like I said earlier, that hanging scene is serious fucking respite.

Aside from that, the film falls apart due to its own damn clunky fault. Open House refuses to decide whether it's a sex romp, a straight horror, or a detective story, instead just joining all three together and hoping you won't notice. There's even lunkheaded attempts at making the film some sort of social problem picture, thanks to the homeless culprit. Of even greater note is the side story involving the LAPD and the character of Lt. Shapiro, the world's laziest cop, who refuses to do anything to actually investigate the murders and instead just mumbles/yells (he changes depending on his mood) about checking the local loony bins and sorting through the loony toons who might've done this and rambling about all the wackos in the world. It's enough to make you think the real purpose of Open House was to criticize the LAPD, a very easy thing to do in the world of the late 80's and early 90's.

And then it tosses something like this at you.

First boob: 28 minutes. NOT FULL FRONTAL.

First blood: 2 minutes, 46 seconds.

Overall rating:

Open House is available on VHS and Netflix Instant.

Return to Horror High (1987)

You can't fault them for trying. After the box office success of Horror High (1982), it only made sense for them to go for a sequel, re-uniting some of the original cast and bringing along some fresh new faces (such as a very young and talented George Clooney) for the ride. The gang heads back to Crippen High, five years removed from the murders of '82, as the killer begins to strike again...

Oh, wait. You can go ahead and forget all of that. You know why? Because there never was a fucking Horror High. Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen, you are proud watchers of the world's first and only Sequel to a Movie That Doesn't Exist. It's a Hollywood wet dream: you already know the story, you already know the cast, you already know the killer...

Except, you know, you don't. But rather than waste precious screen time on that, Return just assumes you do, plowing through every moment where a plot could've been extrapolated and instead just running ahead with the blood and tits, character development or dramatic tension be damned. What we're left with is a trainwreck; essentially, Return to Horror High is some sort of blending of Scream and The Blair Witch Project, only it's directed by Tommy Wiseau and stars the kids from Cabin in the Woods who didn't figure out that there was something fishy going on. The result of this film is a tryhard postmodern mess, with box art scarier than anything the movie itself could've conjured up (except maybe the Cloonmeister's role, trademark twinkling smile included).

The bulk of the mess comes from the fact that there are, by my count, roughly three to four plots going on at any one time (a la anything Stephen King), with very little hint as to which scene comes from which plot until it's over with and we've moved on to the next scene. There's, of course, the original Crippen High murders, but there's also the current murders, the police cleanup of said murders, and the part Return likes to focus on a little too much: the filmmakers, making a film about the original Crippen High murders, who are the victims of the current slayings in a twist that absolutely nobody saw coming.

Well, except maybe the guy in the back here.

A much bigger problem, though, is the fact that the film likes to kill off its cast a little too quickly; foregoing the standard Twenty Minutes With Jerks that most slasher flicks love to subject their audiences to, Return plows straight ahead into its first death at about the ten minute mark. The victim, thankfully, being George Clooney, playing (wait for it)...an actor, leaving the movie because he has better things to do with his time.

His role just screams, "I'm outta here."

Furthermore, the characters that Return kills off for the first hour or so are completely inconsequential to the plot. They'll be brought in for a scene, we'll follow them afterward, and oh, surprise, they meet their end. I know it's a lot to ask of my slasher movie, but some sort of attachment to a character would be really nice before running them through a turbine or something like that. The deaths aren't even enjoyable on a visceral, gruesome level because of this; it's hard to smile or laugh as a character meets their end when you're trying hard to remember if they've even been named.

As far as clever lines go, well...Return fails at being a "horror comedy" there, too. There's an overly long bit about a black janitor bragging about how he'll use his newfound movie cameo as a springboard for a pornographic career. There's seriously bad line about a "schlong" being a "schlort". And then there's the line, "Nobody hits one of the Trolls!", which comes out of nowhere, has absolutely nothing to do with anything before or after it, and, arguably, is the movie's high water mark.

Aspiring filmmakers, take note: when this goober delivers the best line of your movie and you didn't even write it, you have seriously fucked up.

Ostensibly, something resembling a plot begins to form around the hour mark, but by then you're too bored with the film and the characters to bother giving a shit. There's a chase scene, a shootout, some deaths, a couple lines self-referencing being in a movie that I guess were supposed to be funny, but honestly there's just not much to write home about. Return to Horror High fails not really by being a bad film, but by being a completely mediocre one--a sin, truly, far graver than badness. As the trailer reminds us: "Return to Horror High--it's ass cream!"

First boob: 6 minutes, 50 seconds.

First blood: 12 minutes, 52 seconds.

Overall rating:

Return to Horror High is available on VHS, DVD, and Netflix Instant.