Had The Video Dead been made at any time other than the VHS heyday in which it was, I feel like we wouldn’t care. But because it celebrated those days of browsing big boxes at your mom-and-pop video store as those days were happening, it possesses an admirable, of-its-time innocence that offsets obvious deficiencies. If released today, in our post-Ringu world where cursed videos have become de rigueur, it’d be nostalgic, sure, but unable to replicate properly that very ’80s look.

As the writer, director and producer, Robert Scott is not just a triple threat, but a triple treat. In the prologue, he establishes everything the viewer needs to know about the next 90 minutes: A TV set mysteriously delivered to a suburban house plays only the George A. Romero-esque movie Zombie Blood Nightmare; said movie serves as a doorway into our world through which these single-shoe shufflers can shamble.

Shortly thereafter, aerobics major Zoe Blair (Roxanna Augesen, in her only screen credit) and her little brother, Jeff (Rocky Duvall, ditto), move into the house while their parents are away in Saudi Arabia. It takes them a while to grasp the televised danger, partly because Jeff (who sports some gray hair) is too busy enjoying being visited by the tube’s blonde woman (Jennifer Miro, 1989’s Dr. Caligari) who embodies all his teenage sexual fantasies.

Surprisingly, The Video Dead‘s members of the undead stand out from the zombie-tape fray by actually having personality; one of them looks like singer David Bowie under a face mask of Noxzema that has dried to the point of cracking. Obviously, Scott’s little meta movie wouldn’t exist without Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, but its blend of horror and humor bring the related Return of the Living Dead franchise to mind (although Scott’s scattershot skills puts it more in line with the second chapter than the first). —Rod Lott

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Nothing in Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III is quite as good as its teaser trailer, depicting a not-in-the-movie goof on 1981’s Excalibur. It does try a little.

An opening title scrawl informs us that only one member of the cannibalistic Sawyer family lived to see trial from the crime spree depicted in 1974’s original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and that the jury reasoned Leatherface was merely an “alternate personality” rather than an actual person. Therefore, he’s still out there, and well, Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III.

This time, the human-skin masked killer is played by R.A. Mihailoff (Trancers III) and has been gifted a new, pimped-out, gold-plated tool of terror emblazoned with the saying “The Saw is Family.” It’s a present from brother Tex (Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises), and Leatherface aims to christen it on the young couple (Rapid Fire’s Kate Hodge and Ghoulies II’s William Butler) traveling from California to Florida who unfortunately stopped for fuel at the clan’s Last Chance Gas station, run by milky-eyed, porn-obsessed Alfredo (Tom Everett, Death Wish 4: The Crackdown).

Initial scenes of the saw-and-mouse chase take place outdoors at night, and are both hard to see and clumsily assembled by Stepfather II director Jeff Burr. Much better is the second act, taking place in the surprisingly clean Sawyer kitchen; here, the movie reaches an apex with black humor and bloodletting. When you introduce a brother with a hook for a hand, a matriarch with a throat harmonica and a malevolent little girl who quotes The Coasters’ “Yakety Yak,” that tends to happen.

As an ally to our unappealing vacationers, Dawn of the Dead’s Ken Foree livens things up as much as he can. It’s not enough to be great. —Rod Lott

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Ad copy for Jess Franco’s twisted little horror film promises, “Nothing ever stripped your nerves screamingly raw like The Diabolical Dr. Z!” And that’s true, but mostly because my nerves have never been stripped before, screamingly raw, pan-fried or otherwise.

Presumably “Z” only to his pals, Dr. Zimmer (Antonio Jiménez Escribano, Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror) bides his time wearing Coke-bottle glasses and sticking syringes full of ungodly fluids into kitty cats. Some poor schmo stumbles to their door, so naturally Dr. Z takes him into the lab, shoves a needle through his head and makes the guy his slave.

Then, with his daughter, Irma (Mabel Karr, The Colossus of Rhodes), pushing his wheelchair, he crashes some sort of international cerebral summit, where Dr. Z tells his peers about his research. They don’t exactly scream “Diabolical!,” but they sure don’t cotton to it, either, enraging the good — I mean, diabolical — doctor to the point of a fatal heart attack.

Destined to carry on her father’s work, Irma goes to catch some dinner theater. She sees the brief show of Miss Death (Estella Blain), a young blonde in a see-through black leotard who performs a bizarre interpretive dance number on a floor painted to resemble a spider’s web. (Okay, so it’s not really a “dance” number, as she mostly shimmies across the floor on her tum-tum at a snail’s pace until she reaches Mortimer Snerd’s transvestite cousin. But this display of talent is met with voluminous, approving applause all the same.)

Irma, needless to say, is inspired, so she decides to fake her own death. What Miss Death’s performance had to do with this epiphany was lost on me, but face it: She’s creepy anyway. To me, the smile-free Irma looks like the lead singer of The Cardigans after being locked inside the freezer at KFC for a week.

To fake said death, Irma picks up a hitchhiker that resembles Irma only in that she is female. After stopping for a swim, Irma runs the girl over with the car. As she’s dousing the vehicle with gasoline from her neighborhood Mobil (who knew Franco was into product placement?), she gets burned herself, which causes her to acquire what looks like a guacamole beard. No problem — with the help of a mirror, she simply numbs her face and carves a scalpel into it.

With her death now faked, she poses as a Hollywood big shot to lure Miss Death into her clutches. The ruse works, as Miss Death is as dumb as rocks, and Irma uses her to do her dirty work, murdering the doctors who laughed at her father.

With lots of needle-stickin’ action, Dr. Z is a first-rate flick from Franco (Vampyros Lesbos), who has an eye for shot composition and a feel for ambience, yet rarely had good material. —Rod Lott

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Deride it all you want, but Paranormal Activity 4 performs a valuable public service by illustrating the dangers of helping a hot single mom in need.

The found-footage film begins with the end of Paranormal Activity 2, which saw the demon-possessed Katie (Katie Featherston) kidnapping her infant nephew, Hunter; a title card informs us neither has been seen since. Turns out, Katie and her creepy kid, Robbie (Brady Allen), live right across the street from Alex (Kathryn Newton, Bad Teacher), the blonde teen through whose eyes — or various camera lenses, to be technically precise — we see the events unfold.

Katie has to go to the hospital for a few days, so Alex’s pushover parents (Alexondra Lee and Stephen Dunham, married in real life until his unfortunate death shortly before the film’s release) take in Robbie … and his imaginary friend, who turns out to be not particularly a figment of imagination. In fact, the malevolent spirit tries to kill Alex with a falling chandelier and lifts her off the bed. It also plays Xbox.

Needless to say, more sinister forces are at play, and discovering them on your own is part of the fun. This franchise continues to be a punching bag for many, yet each entry to date is wildly profitable and popular, and I’ve figured out why: They work. They tap into one of the most common fears shared by all: that someone — or something — might be in our house, invading our personal space, penetrating that one place we feel safe. And if we can’t feel safe there, boy, are we screwed.

The fact that Hollywood can do all that for relative pennies helps, too. —Rod Lott

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Damn, do I love a great haunted-house movie! And then there’s Ghosthouse.

In a large Massachusetts home — a ghosthouse, if you will — 11-year-old Henriette Baker (Kristen Fougerousse) stabs the family cat. As punishment, her father locks the girl in the basement, where she hugs her terrifying clown doll for comfort. Upstairs, somehow (and never explained, because ghosthouse), her parents are slaughtered brutally.

Flash-forward 20 years later, when Paul (Greg Scott, Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II), a ham radio operator who makes a good bowl of chili, hears a cry for help over the airwaves, so he and his girlfriend (Lara Wendel, Tenebre) track the plea to its source: our ghosthouse.

Other dumb young people are there camping out, so they all experience the manse’s terrors together: a head in the washing machine, a Doberman with nips the size of novelty giant pencil erasers, a sink that spews blood, an errant fan blade, a rocking camper, visions of the creepy Henriette and her clown doll, which occasionally sports fangs and looks to have been ordered straight from the Poltergeist merch store.

As Paul says, “It’s all just one big horrible mess.” The same can be said for the movie, directed with by-the-numbers passivity by Umberto Lenzi (Cannibal Ferox). Little effort is put toward spatial orientation in the titular residence; even less toward the script, built upon illogic. Lenzi seems intent only on getting his money’s worth for its indecipherable theme song, played in part no fewer than 17 times in 95 minutes, yet one that drives you insane upon first listen. —Rod Lott

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