Rating: 3/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2017 | 36/52 | USA Up All Night
A Hi-Lite Delivery van stops at 21 Shady Lane Avenue and drags a distressed wooden crate to the front door. The delivery men ring the doorbell, waking the disheveled Henry Jordan. Inside the crate, underneath a small forest of balled-up newspapers, is a television with a mirror strapped to it. While Henry writes at his typewriter, the TV turns on itself, showing a movie called Zombie Blood Nightmare. Henry turns the TV off, but it comes back on, so he unplugs it. Later that night, while Henry sleeps, the unplugged TV comes alive, and five zombies crawl out. The following morning, the delivery drivers return to Henry’s, realizing they had mixed up a delivery meant to go to the Institute for the Studies of the Occult. When Henry doesn’t answer, they push the partially opened door open the rest of the way to find Henry dead, bound, and wearing a party hat.
Three months later Henry’s house went up for sale after his death, and the Blair family soon purchased it. Zoe Blair, the daughter, arrives in a taxi with the moving truck, and Zoe lets them in and starts unloading kitchenware. Meanwhile, muddy Chuck Taylors and mossy jeans amble from the woods to the house and shake open the front door. But don’t worry; it’s only Zoe’s brother, Jeff. The two will live at the house alone for the next week while their parents finish up living abroad in Saudi Arabia—a familiar arrangement for Zoe and Jeff. The next day, a truck with a Texas license plate arrives. Joshua Daniels is looking for a TV set that he mailed to the Institute for the Studies of the Occult. Joshua worries that it will claim more lives. Jeff isn’t amused, leaving Joshua on the doorstep.
Later, Jeff hears a woman’s voice beckoning him to the attic. When he gets upstairs, he sees the unplugged TV. He carries it down to his room. Outside, Jeff rakes when his neighbor, April, walks by with Abe and Beverly Turchow’s beloved black poodle, Chocolate. He invites her in for a tall glass of refreshing water. April takes the dog off the leash. It immediately runs into the woods and encounters one of the zombies. April and Jeff run out looking for Chocolate and find him dead. They pick up Chocolate’s remains and walk home. A zombie follows.
Will these teens fare better than poor Mr. Jordan? What will Jeff see when he plugs in the television?
They look just like you and I. But inside, they're different. They have no soul.
The film revels in the grotesque: moldering goldfish in a filthy fish bowl, chewing tobacco spit on the pavement, a sink full of old, food-stained dishes, bleeding and festering zombie wounds, and the biggest plate of beanie-weenies you’ve ever seen. The effects are ambitious and look quite good for a direct-to-video 80s horror.
While it obviously riffs on Videodrome and Demons 2, the movie has its own take on the concept. You could argue that the film is making an argument about how television turns people into zombies. The role mirrors play suggest that self-reflection on what you’ve become is your only hope. I don’t know how much the filmmakers thought about that, but these ideas are in the text, intentional or otherwise.
The film isn’t hysterical but has effective (and intentional) funny moments. The rules around the zombies don’t feel thoroughly thought through, but it’s not that distracting. I wouldn’t call it a forgotten classic, but it is underrated. The biggest gripe I can imagine horror fans having is that the kills aren’t all that interesting—the zombies tend just to strangle people to death—but the film has enough going on that it didn’t bother me. My biggest complaint is the slow second act—you could cut 20 minutes easily.
I’m not the biggest zombie movie fan, but this movie is fun enough that I quite enjoyed it!
** Stray Thoughts/Spoilers **
- Zoe is attending university to major in aerobics and minor in music videos, much to Jeff’s chagrin.
- Chocolate likes to mate with skunks. They don’t like it when he tries to mate with them, so they spray him. Then he REALLY gets turned on.
- April tells Jeff, whom she’s known for 45 minutes, that her dad is sleeping with the maid.
- Jeff rolls a joint while watching Zombie Blood Nightmare. Jeff flushes his stash after the woman and the Garbageman appear—like 40g!
- The Garbageman MUST have been an influence on Too Many Cooks.
- Why did the police let Jeff just waltz into a crime scene?
- There’s a poignant moment of April grieving, wishing time would fly so that it could all be a distant memory. While brushing her teeth, she remembers them dying, and she brushes too hard, causing her mouth to bleed—just a nice little moment to inject blood that isn’t murder.
- whispering to the non-existent person beside me That’s the Video Dead.
- I love how small that chainsaw is.
- The rats are crawling out of the zombie’s guts! [puke]
- I always carry copies of How to Kill (Vol. 1), Understanding Guerrilla Warfare Techniques: A Step-by-Step Analogy, and The Bible.
- I love the pick slide when Joshua hits a zombie with an arrow.