If you love regional shot-on-video horror, public access eccentricity, or anything else in that ballpark, you'll go crazy over Dead of Night, a cable-access program created for peanuts in Spokane, Washington for Cox Cable by its two stars, Wayne Spitzer and Andy Kumpon, who were security guards by day. Spitzer has since published multiple spin-off books from the show among his other publications, but the debut Blu-ray double-disc release of the series from VHSHitfest will likely be the first exposure for 99.9999% of the population. You still might not be ready.

Disc one is devoted entirely to the twelve-episode series itself including "Introductions" (29m1s), two-parter "Basilisk" (50m4), two-parter "The Forty Milers" (77m58s) with optional Spitzer/Kumpon commentary, two-parter "Taste for Terror" (54m50s), "The Infection" (30m20s), "On Goldenball" (17m23s), the unfinished "Siren's Song" (13m59s), and "Tool" (36m34s), also with optional commentary. We start off with an intro to our two characters as a badge and walkie talkie get bestowed on newbie security guard Wayne, a.k.a. Status (Spitzer), by his new partner, AK (Kumpon), just in time for Christmas. Together they work for the mysterious ViktorCorp (or VictorCorp, depending which episode you're on) in a town that seems to attract the alien and uncanny, albeit at random intervals in between long stretches of tedium. They also use a computerized radio to keep in touch with anything they might need to check up on or to keep in touch with others in the area, which comes in handy when they're confronted with an escalating string of menaces. Thanks to the protection of their seldom-seen employer who allows them to circumvent certain enforcement regulations, they're able to go after threats in the various "sectors" of the corporate-controlled town as they're faced with giant plastic dinosaurs, interdimensional dodgeballs, a vacuum hose snake, malicious robots, a would-be green sidekick named Frank, a toolbox from hell, and other creatures from beyond our mundane existence.

Drawing obvious influence from The X-Files and Doctor Who along with a synth-heavy dreamy soundtrack reminiscent of Twin Peaks, this is a lo-fi treat that's fascinating to watch evolve over the short lifespan of the show. The first episode essentially sets up our two main characters and their job, and while the first few episodes have extremely hit-and-miss audio (you'll be very grateful for those optional English SDH subtitles which still surrender and say "inaudible" from time to time), the show really hits its stride by the halfway point. The locations are all mundane places like factories, parking lots, apartments, storage units, garages and so on, with lots of fake fog, flashlights, and moody lighting doing the rest of the visual work here.

Obviously the 2026 Blu-ray edition marks the commercial debut of this series, which has a hazy, droning quality appropriate for both late night local TV and the current love of DIY video projects from bygone eras. Image quality is dependent on the source, of varying degrees of the capabilities of SD video shooting over the latter half of the '90s with production quality inching up as you go along. The DTS-HD MA English 2.0 audio sounds fine given the limitations and again gets much more coherent and slick after the first couple of tales. The two commentaries mentioned above are fine but very casual and loose; you'll be better off starting with the two biggest video extras starting with a lengthy interview with Spitzer and Kumpon (46m) about the show's origins, the intentions to appeal with the right mood for a late-night audience, the tactics they used to avoid getting cut into by informercials, and local resistance they faced despite plentiful positive local press coverage. Then you get an episode-by-episode history of the show with Spitzer and Kumpon (34m52s) chatting about the major lack of editing time early on, riffs they made on Star Trek and The Prisoner, the limitations they had to face, the creation of the various foes they faced, the bits they especially liked or thought didn't come off, and the creation of various "Halloween-style" lighting effects. An archival 8m26s behind-the-scenes featurette is basically a fun blooper reel, followed by a 5m15s reel of local TV coverage, a 10-image press gallery, a 16-page Black Vvideo Zine article, a 25m4s standalone interview with the duo about the final "Tool" episode and the inspiration of Trilogy of Terror, and a whopping 246m22s (yes, really) collection of raw footage from the shooting of that episode. On top of that you get six short films from the creators including 1983's silent Super 8 quickie The Salvage (2m50s), 1988's The Weird Zone (10m20s), 1997's Don't Look Up? (23m30s), 2001's Last Stop Station (19m39s) featuring a Spitzer and Kumpon commentary plus a 5m58s Kumpon interview about his filmmaking beginnings, the influence of John Carpenter, and the three-year production process, 2002's Shadows in the Garden (20m31s) with a duo commentary and a 12m36s Spitzer interview, and 2008's Zombie Red (10m47s).

Reviewed on March 21, 2026