Dead on Dsitribution

Directed by Alasdair Gretton

2025



Dead on Distribution tries to tackle a lot in its brief 17-minute runtime. Taking place just as the VHS market was starting to boom, flooding shelves with low budget horrors, the film satirises the prevailing thoughts of the time.

The kinetic introduction includes voiceover snippets from Mary Whitehouse, decrying the levels of violence and sex in the cinema of the day. We then cut to scenes from a fictional effort called Lead Rained Down at Midnight – a violent revenge fantasy, but one that seems to lack the necessary narrative, or sufficient gore and nudity to be a smash hit.

Producer William Flagg (Brian Clarke) is forced to distribute it on video, rather than on the big screen. This new market is a mystery to the man; according to the distributor, it’s less about the content of the tape, and more about the sleaziness of the cover. No doubt an uncomfortable truth for us horror hounds who remember strolling through the local Blockbuster.

At the same time, the leading man, Danny Felt (Jacob Poole), is devastated by the lack of success the film has had and is encouraged by Flagg to do something outrageous to drum up publicity. Here, the film does bite off a little more than it can chew, and while it’s clearly not supposed to be a serious expose on the impact of cinema or mental health, the decisions writer/director Alasdair Gretton makes do mean it’s worth a little bit of discussion.

The impact of violent entertainment on mental health and the actions of young people has been an on-again/off-again concern since the dawn of the comic book. It’s most notable occurrence in the UK happening during the video nasty panic. Felt is shown to be a disturbed young man from the offset, using a kill-list he created in school as proof that he should play the killer in the schlockfest.

Gretton goes to great lengths to show that the film has little to do with Felts’s own violent urges, but the climactic scenes verge on the tactless, even for a film paying tribute to the video nasties.

If you can stomach that, however, this is a well-done effort. Gretton does a great job on the edit, snapping back and forth between reality, and the characters’ own view on events, and working with Julia Zieba to create some excellent practical effects. The performances are also good, relishing the over-the-top characters.

Gretton closes out the film with a sharp little jab at critics who constantly reassess films that were previously dismissed outright, retrospectively finding masterpieces in the some of the dross that was deservedly put straight to video. But he does this while retaining a clear love for horror, and the videotapes that caused so much furore.

★★★

3 / 5

Matthew Tilt

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