The Video Dead

Released direct-to-video in the United States only to be discovered and properly appreciated in all its glory in the USSR, The Video Dead sees otherworldly flesh-eaters arrive through a horror movie playing on a TV to wreak havoc. A thoroughly relatable narrative…

Every nation has its own special cult videos – sometimes works that (in their day) weren’t too highly regarded in their country of production but became huge somewhere else. The Video Dead is a perfect example of that: in the United States, it received little fanfare as a direct-to-video release – while in the video salons of the USSR, it was venerated as an instant classic, thanks in no small part to the dubbing efforts of the legendary translator Aleksej Mihalev whose artistry, some Russians claim, often made films better than their original.

Those who want to hear Mihalev can find his version called Telemertvecy on the internet – here we’re showing the original, and shall discover that the Soviet citizens had been right. The Video Dead is a true gem, whose story of flesh-eating fiends transported into our world by way of a TV set showing a seemingly endless horror movie called Zombie Blood Nightmare feels more poignant now than ever before…

– Olaf Möller

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