Event

Tales From the Quadead Zone

1987, Dir. Chester Novell Turner
With Shirley Jones, W.J. Rider, and Doug Daverport

The direct-to-video market not only created more opportunities for creating and distributing breakthrough cinematic works, it also fostered the creation of a new chapter in "trashterpieces," a genre of camp cinema that celebrates spectacular failures in traditional filmmaking techniques. Affordable home video equipment and an ever-expanding home viewing market paved the way for a slew of aspiring filmmakers. This created a "backyard Hollywood" movement in which many striving artists and opportunistic businessmen could capture and release their visions on video.

A horror anthology in three parts (thereby nullifying the theory that the "Qua" stands for four), Tales From the Quadead Zone is held together by a framing segment in which actress Shirley Jones reads stories to the ghost of her child from a book entitled Tales From the Quadead Zone. Failing on nearly every traditional level, Tales From the Quadead Zone is often described as a car crash of a film. However, the film's earnest ambitions, and resulting great failure, make it a true camp classic made possible by the VHS camcorder.