I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

Ow My Mother Lovin' Freakin' Eyes

The Video Dead (1987)

I thought Flesh Eating Mothers was going to be my worst pick of the year, but it's been beaten - badly. Fitting because that's how this movie was made - badly. At least with FEM you had the humor, the funny lines, the silly inconsistencies that made it watchable. This.. this is something you show people while they're chained to chairs being given regular electric shocks. They will beg you for more electricity if you only will turn the movie off. Worst. Movie. Ever. Worst. Makeup. Ever. Worst. Acting. Ever. Worst waste of 90 minutes... EVER. I have such a headache right now. This is a movie about a zombie spewing TV y'all. I put in a bit of Southern because we have a Texan in it who keeps calling the blasted thing a TAY VEE and wow, what a massive stinker this thing was. Literally. I can still smell it - is that even possible? Or has it caused some sort of brain damage that's affected my olfactory senses? Okey dokey let's get this over with:

My whole look cost under five bucks.

A writer finds that a television has been delivered to his house by accident. Instead of returning it, he opens it. It is a POS 13" B&W set (Did they still have those in 1987?) that he sets up even though he never watches it. With no cable or antenna, it works just fine anyway... it keeps turning itself on and showing the same movie - Zombie Blood Nightmare. That must be the second worst movie ever made, topped by this one. Anywho, the thing starts to spark and flash although he's unplugged it, and these full grown 'zombies' in the worst makeup ever devised (They look like they got all their materials from The Dollar Store) 'climb' out of the TV and kill him (which, although it makes a ton of noise, never wakes him up). Next morning the delivery guys go to retrieve their 'mistake' only to find him dead - rate of gore from 1 to 10 it's a -5. They remark that the TV was supposed to go to The Institute For the Study Of The Occult (Wiki says Paranormal Research, they were woefully misinformed, or never bothered to actually watch the thing.). Can't really blame them for that though. I wouldn't have if... you know. My favorite zombie was the blue Ziggy Starzombie, who was very hip and suave in a rotting corpse kind of way. I'm kidding, none of them was even close to zombie material.

Why couldn't I get into a REAL college and get Rap 101?

Flash forward three months - apparently the TAY VEE hid itself in the attic, because it's still there when two brainless siblings start to move in. Their parents are out of the country so they have to fix the place up for when they return (nice parenting). The boy inexplicably walks with a sideways limp which disappears after ten minutes and the girl - she is majoring at the local university (not naming it was very smart) in AEROBICS with a minor in MUSIC VIDEOS. Oh that's real. The boy, high on weed hears the TAY VEE calling to him and he finds it and puts it in his room. Again without cable or antenna, the thing works, this time a long haired blonde tries to lure him to her, but a fat ugly guy shows up as she's trying to seduce him (coming out naked with that magical hair that keeps everything covered) and, I dunno, drags her back in somehow, slitting her throat. The boy actually talks to the TAY VEE and asks why. The guys says he's the Garbageman, because he cleans up human garbage. Why this is a plot point nobody knows, because you never see or hear of him again.

Oh well, there's always ITT Tech...

The worst zombies in the world, meanwhile, never went back in the TAY VEE, instead they've been living, uh sorry, unliving in the woods waiting for God knows what. But when they 'see' the two moved into the house the TAY VEE is in, for some reason that sets them on a door to door killing spree, leaving the two for last. Enter the Texan I mentioned. He is NOT from this Institute mentioned, nearest I could figure from the horribly boring story he told, he had it in his house and it killed his wife. I guess. He tells the kids how to get rid of them: they must put mirrors all over their front door to keep them out (ok, ripping off The Last Man On Earth) and also a mirror in front of the TAY VEE (ripping off uh, Poltergeist?) and they must 'convince' the zombies that they're really dead 'cause they think they're alive. Huh? What the hell? So the boy and Texan go after the horrible things and I'm praying, literally holding my head in pain, that this will end soon. After the boy wants the chainsaw because he's seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre six times (they should have sued this movie for even mentioning them) they shoot arrows, saw and smash the zombies to 'convince' them they're dead, hopefully 'tricking' them until they rot into the ground. Okay what? They've been zombies for how long and NOW they're going to rot into the ground? Oh my freakin' head. Why are the zombies killing people? Do you really want to know? Really? They're jealous. Period. That's it, sorry.

Non-Texas Chainsaw Yawnfest.

To provide more convenient exposition (and making the movie interminably longer) the Texan says that if you don't re-kill them (that's a Max Brooks term by the way, I would have thought it was 'destroy' but oh well), you can trap them in a space they can't get out of which will make them go nuts (They're sane now?), zombie-cannibalize each other, and boom, movie over. Oh, so sorry, not to be. We get about twenty minutes of chase and bash scenes in the forest before both the Texan and kid finally get dead. And don't get back up. Be thankful for that.

Ziggy Starzombie

So these zombies in denial come back to the house where the last living aerobics learning girl is. She remembers what the Texan said (Yeah he would know, it kept him alive right?) and treats them like they're alive. They don't kill her (please don't ask why) and she 'feeds' them dinner at the table, then, seeing they want to learn how to dance (oh goody, some Thriller action) somehow tricks them into the basement with promises of lessons where the TAY VEE is. They go nuts, eat each other, and get sucked back into the TAY VEE. Why? I have no freaking idea.

Being blonde and a freaking aerobics major, she loses her mind - which is kind of a oxymoron, literally. She's placed in a mental ward and the loving parents saying things like 'how could this happen we did a good job raising them', yeah that happens when you're in Saudi Arabia and your kids are in the states, goes to visit her. As a 'present' they give her the TAY VEE they found in the house so she won't be lonely. And she's not. As soon as they leave, Zombie Blood Nightmare comes on and she begins to scream. THE END. And give thanks that the movie was limited to 90 minutes and has no sequel. 

Now I have to go put ice on my head and pray for death.