Just when you thought it was safe to discard your VCR, the triumphant return of Terror Tapes. Yes ghoulies, I am back from a long sabbatical to once again bring you what no one ever asked for: horror films on VHS. Through only a partial fault of my own, there is no slowing the passage of time. As one decade slips slowly to the shadow of another, certain beloved objects are bested by innovation and forgotten. Basically, what I'm saying is I want my freaking VHS back dammit! As much as I whine, I am fully aware of not only the improvement in picture quality offered by DVD and Blu-ray but the preservation benefits as well, but some part of me will always long for the days of giant videocassette cases with elaborately painted cover art that was often far more impressive than the films contained within. To wit I offer The Spookies.

I'm not going to waste too much time on the plot here mainly because saying The Spookies is about anything is like saying that garbage dumps are about used diapers or about rusted mufflers; the camera is merely pointed at various piles of things. Basically it takes place at an old house where a bunch of goobers show up for no given reason. The house is the home of an old guy with a bad accent, a half-man-half-cat in an usher's vest, and a Little Rascal from Hell. Some evil occurs, some ancient relics, perhaps, and an undead bride of sorts. I swear to Cthulhu that I did actually watch this film, but that's as specific as is any given moment.

This thing is mind-liquidating in its sheer craptitude. It is truly wretched in all ways, shapes, and forms. From what I've read about this film, it's described as a horror comedy...it also had two directors. The comedy of the film is perpetrated by actors who compiled all their humor aptitude from various used-car dealership commercials in Des Moines. The funniest parts of the movie are the moments wherein we get to watch these morons fail miserably at comedy. The guy with the puppet has got to be my favorite; doing things with such spastic brevity that we often wonder whether what he does is actually supposed to be funny or if there is a deleted scene of him suffering a massive head wound. I also like the hopelessly bogus tough guy character who is equally imbecilic but insists on calling everyone else stupid.

From what I've gleaned during my flummoxed viewing, I theorize that the comedy angle was the brainchild of the "cleanup" director. It's rare to see the tone of a movie completely rehashed as an afterthought, but that's what makes The Spookies such a pioneer of drek. This genre con is hinted at in the moments where everyone else in the room is holding very typical, poorly-written conversations and, for absolutely no reason, they just insert shots of the "funny puppet guy" making faces. But the ultimate indication of the scam the director pulled on us comes in the zombie attack.

This is a scene that was clearly shot with the intention of being the scariest sequence in the film that is not played for laughs but at all...and the director went back and added ADR fart sounds. At no point during this scene do either of the actors make disgusted faces and there is no reference during the scene, or at any point afterward, to the fact that they encountered flatulent undead. Nope, the director was simply banking on the equation fart = funny to transform this tedious haunted house flick into a juvenile comedy. Farting zombies, people!

The script is a total abomination, even within the context of b-horror. The relationship between these people and why they are going to this house is left to the audience's imagination; whereas a less bold director would have used that popular crutch known as exposition. Compounding the confounding is the fact that while one character will say she's known these people her whole life, in the same scene another character will make mention of the fact that no one in the room had ever met. And don't get me started on the patriarch of the ghoul family living in the house and the cyclical bullshit of his story. The guy's accent is enough to make me want to put a spike in his head. But I think my favorite thing is that the 40 year old party-goer, mixed inexplicably with this group of youths and two fake Euro trash filler characters, knows absolutely everything about what's going on despite the fact that we've been with him the whole time and not one clue has surfaced. Should the hapless characters in your film really know more than the audience given the same context clues?

The saving grace of The Spookies is that it is absolutely hilarious for reasons it never intended. My favorite scene in the whole film is the child that gets buried alive. I know that sounds crass, but the weird werecat lounge singer is gleefully smacking a real child in the face with real shovels-full of dirt and giggling the whole time. It is a testament to the film's classiness but the child actor's reactions to the onset of sod is hysterical. Almost every line delivery is a wash and some of them are so horrid that you cannot help but guffaw. I even found myself enjoying an immature snicker or two at the farting zombies, but more out of the fact that the farting was clearly not originally intended and sounded like someone was hiding behind my TV with a whoopie cushion. There are also a few really killer special effects. It's interesting to note the sheer barrage of differing types of practical and computer effects utilized in a vain attempt to make something stick. The result is a host of dreadful effects and one or two fantastic achievements. The spider woman transformation is pretty freaking phenomenal.