Roadshow’s Final Stop at Whammy Analog Microcinema on Oct. 17 – Los Angeles, CA
Spoiler Alert
At first, I thought Dead Media might be a horror movie anthology, but instead, it’s a tale within a tale about Maggie Sloke (Sammi-Jack Martincak), who is stuck with the consequences of her poor life choices. One night, she’s with her mates, Daniel (Antonio Teodoro) and Brenda (Jessica Fenton), for a streaming marathon of horrible pulp movies at home, including Night of the Lurchers. This forgotten piece of late-1990s horror has special meaning to her, and when Uncle Heppy (Sam Landman) shows up with a proper DVD version to watch, things shift from a “They’re here” moment to the characters becoming part of the movie itself.
Or is that the other way around? After Maggie goes poking at the DVD’s menu and finds a hidden Easter egg, her excitement turns into an oh sh*t moment as the people and zombies from the film start appearing. And for budget reasons, no, they don’t emerge from the television. I’d have loved to see that, but alas, some effects would blow this film’s budget, and what happens instead becomes a mix of Last Action Hero and Scream!
The characters suddenly have to deal with the fact that the rules of a fictional horror movie have crossed over into their own reality, and the DVD itself becomes more than something they’re simply watching. Even the folks who existed solely within the supplemental material can cross over, the most important of them being the director of Night of the Lurchers, played by Anna Sundberg.
Without her, I doubt anyone would survive this crazy night, and her presence also helps expand the idea that everything contained on a physical disc, not just the feature itself, can become part of the story. This character gives the film within a film some credibility, and as for Landman as Heppy, he’s the best part! He has more personality than the others, and I can identify with him a lot more.
I love it when he talks about the good ol’ days, physical media, and why the 90s mattered. Even though he’s forgotten about the home-video formats predating DVD, namely LaserDisc and VHS, I imagine there’s only so much writer/director Joseph Scrimshaw can cram in before turning the story into a history lesson about what truly counts as dead media rather than obsolete media.
Those black boxes containing magnetic tape are one thing, since they represent the mass-market home-video era that came before DVDs. Technically, the LaserDisc format is important because it helped establish the collector culture surrounding movies, complete with chapter access, supplemental material, commentaries and special editions. In that sense, DVD didn’t invent the physical-media culture Heppy loves; it inherited and expanded it.
As for why they’re streaming these films, that’s not addressed at all. If Scrimshaw is making an argument about the continued use of physical media, I’m not seeing it. The DVD format is treated as the embodiment of something from the past, while its successors, Blu-ray and UHD, are superior formats mostly for preserving cinematic detail. Streaming is convenient, but it’s never perfect. And what’s packaged with physical releases can hardly ever be considered complete. Parts of that production bible are rarely included with the DVD release. Well, that’s not considering what Peter Jackson insisted on including when Lord of the Rings was brought to home video on Blu-ray, as that feels comprehensive.
That’s because these home video releases can only cram in so much. I won’t go into the technical details on why, and perhaps that’s why Sloke isn’t seeing the whole picture. She wants all the answers given to her, and when the zombie invasion takes place and she can’t resolve it, she’s up in arms!
For Heppy, these old discs are more than totems or representations of life. He’s reminded of better times, since watching these films with his niece means something. They aren’t containers for good times, but reminders of them. This movie isn’t concerned with saving memories to discs (or cloud storage). Whether emotions can be retained too is a different story altogether, one to explore in a separate movie.
With Dead Media, what we see is more about surviving the night after zombies are unleashed into the real world. And while the practical effects and makeup are worth pausing to study, I’m thinking, much like Spock, about the greater meaning. Although I don’t find this tale all that memorable, the better takeaway concerns why we overthink films at all. When all those behind-the-scenes features and the director’s commentary are viewed instead of the work itself, that’s when my mind goes reeling.
Even the cheesiest of films deserves an MST3K treatment, and that’s what Dead Media seems to achieve in earnest. Since I own some of Film Masters’ releases of forgotten films produced by Roger Corman, which include some great mini-essays, I can relate to the ideas Scrimshaw’s screenplay wanted to explore, but doesn’t. It’s less about lampooning and more about picking apart why this film within a film deserves cult status.
When the gang chooses to watch this particular film, there has to be a reason that goes beyond an old salt appearing with Pandora’s Box in tow. And when Bill Corbett makes a fun cameo, we know why this film was made!
As the road show winds down with its final screening in Los Angeles, I’m wondering when the home-video release will happen. Eventually, it will be picked up by some distributor, and I’m hoping the bonus material will include a more tangible, or partial cut of Night of the Lurchers. Cheesy films deserve another cheesy work on top, and since I feel Sundberg’s presence steals the show, I just gotta see it. Also, if Dead Media gets the proper home-video treatment it deserves, perhaps the joke is that the package won’t just be another piece of random media sitting on the shelf. It’ll be a work to enjoy time and time again alongside forgotten classics in my cabinet, like The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.
And I have to end by saying: Long live Blu-ray and UHD!
3½ Stars out of 5
Dead Media Movie Trailer
