VHS Beyond Segments Ranked, Analysis & Recap: Analprobia

Okay, I really cannot comprehend the level of bravery or, if we're being honest, entitlement that one must possess in order to enter an alien spacecraft all alone in the middle of the night in the middle of the desert and then once inside to start touching shit like bro. For all you know, touching the wrong thing could cause Earth to implode or your body to flip inside out. Absolutely unhinged behavior. And then imagine you're the alien. Like you park your intergalactic whip with the custom paint job, step out to explore these new frontiers only for some primitive being to walk all up in your shit.

Just went in there, started rubbing her grubby hands all over everything out here acting like Goldilocks. Shameful. I'm Brandon O. This is Terrorific and we're chopping up 2024's VHS Beyond. Welcome back to the place where it's perpetually spooky season. Although there are still some remnants of love in the air, we're a few days removed from Valentine's Day, which I personally don't believe in. But if you celebrated it, hope it was good for you. Hope you clapped some cheeks or got your cheeks clapped if that's what you're into.

And if you're not, then hope you got some good alone time or whatever floats your boat. I just find Valentine's Day to be overly commercialized. Like why do we have to exchange gifts because we make the mutual decision to be together? Like don't we spend enough money on each other the other 364 days of the year? Why do we have to go the extra mile for this one? I just don't get it. It does not compute for me. But my wife does like Valentine's Day, and I know what you're thinking. You're probably thinking, okay, if she likes it, that means you're celebrating it.

Wrong. Well, half wrong. Our anniversary is three days prior, so we reached the agreement that we would just celebrate them together. But in my mind, I'm not acknowledging Valentine's Day. I'm just acknowledging our anniversary, which was nine years, by the way, that we hit. So, yay. And last year, we established a new tradition where we would get matching tattoos every anniversary. So we haven't nailed down our design for this year yet. But that's coming soon. I got to fill in this left sleeve at some point.

And I'm getting close. There's just these awkward gaps here and there, like around my elbow. And I don't know what to put there. So we'll see. Anyway, let's get to the reason you're really here. We've gone through six films in the VHS franchise so far on our quest to crown the best segment of them all. And we have now arrived at the penultimate film and therefore the penultimate episode of season three. We have chopped up 30 segments. Well, technically 31 if you split No Wake and Ambrosia. So to recap our current leaderboard as it stands, our bottom three remain unchanged as they have been for the past.

three four films however long it's been so tape 56 coming in at number 28 from vhs with a score of 2 .38 slumber party alien abduction from vhs2 with a score of 2 .13 comes in at 29 and at number 30 bringing up the rear vicious circles from vhs viral with a score of 2 .0 and the cream of the crop our top five at number five we have amateur night from vhs with a score of 4 .13 At number four, The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger, also from VHS with a score of 4 .25. At number three, we have that double feature of No Wake in Ambrosia from VHS 85 with a score of 4 .63.

At number two, Safe Haven from VHS 2 with a score of 4 .75. And at number one, Our Top Dog, The Subject from VHS 94 with a score of 4 .88. Now, I mentioned at the end of last episode that after the first viewing, VHS Beyond was my favorite film in the VHS franchise. And I was curious to see if it held up, you know, two years later or a year and a half later. And I'm here to tell you right now, it certainly did. So our leaderboard, I think we're going to see some movement here. But VHS Beyond has six segments.

So kicking us off at number six, we have the frame narrative. This segment was written and directed by Jay Cheal, whose other directorial credits include 2011's Beauty Day and 2016's How to Build a Time Machine. He also wrote, directed, and edited both seasons of Shudder's documentary series, Cursed Films. The story is framed as a documentary interviewing various skeptics and debunkers who were trying to determine the validity of a claim that an anonymous Redditor has purchased two videocassettes at a flea market which allegedly depict proof of an alien encounter.

And the documentary's filmmaker, a fictionalized version of Jay Cheal, has received an email, also anonymously, containing digitized footage from those tapes. There's an estate in Toronto known as the Farrington House, but in real life, it's known as the Spadina House, and people have reported experiencing paranormal activity here. So if you want to dive down that rabbit hole, go ahead and look that up. But in this segment, the Farrington House, people have reported seeing gray figures. In the 1950s, a family immigrated from Hong Kong to Toronto and they were successful in some real estate ventures.

And so because of that, they were able to purchase this big ass house. Now, the parents of the family died in the 1980s and they left the house to their eldest son. He put it up for sale in the 90s and while getting everything prepped, he was staying in the house and he began to experience night terrors. He held the belief that the house was either haunted or was being visited by mysterious beings, so he decided to film things to prove his sanity. Using two cameras, one was a POV cam and the other one was a static cam set up in his room.

And once the house was sold, the son disappeared shortly thereafter. Now with this being the frame narrative of VHS Beyond, its interludes are interspersed with the other segments of the film and in my opinion the interludes didn't really add a whole lot to the story they basically just talk about how typically ufo footage results in skepticism and they talk a little bit more in detail about other sightings and whatnot in past vhs films the frame narrative i think had moments in those interludes that either had action or did something to kind of set up like what was coming there was some kind of like fear inducing or dread inducing situation within these interludes.

But here, the interludes felt like an actual documentary, not like a mockumentary inside of a horror film, which on one hand is cool. But on the other hand, it's like, well, I am trying to watch a horror movie here. So yeah, those interludes, they kind of made me lose interest a little bit because I was waiting for something to happen that was more like horror related. or scarier I guess and it just didn't happen until the very end which okay I guess saved the best for last but yeah those lulls in between kind of dampened the story for me but as we reach this final interlude they explain that the documentary team has stitched the footage together from the two tapes and it shows the people who are being interviewed for the documentary their reaction as they are given like a preview of this footage and the common thread here is that they all find it to be grotesque so roll the footage we see old dude asleep in his bed and there's some mysterious figure that's approaching he pulls up on him while he's asleep and he has like gray skin and four eyes and kind of like two foreheads looks interesting you know and he starts pulling little balls on a string out of dude's throat which i guess we can assume are eggs of some sort so yeah i guess dude's being used as a human incubator not unlike one of my favorite segments the sick thing that happened to emily when she was younger but yeah it doesn't stop there because then the alien takes the camera and sticks it down the guy's throat.

And so we get to see his interior passages as the footage ends. So ratings wise for abduction slash adduction story, I gave it a two. I respectfully, I thought it was hella underwhelming and anticlimactic. I was just waiting for more alien action. Like the ending scene was eerie or, you know, discomforting or whatever but it was still relatively short and it took a long time to get there like we have to wait literally the entire film before we finally see this conclusion to the frame narrative and i just felt like i wanted to see a little bit more activity the alien we barely got to see a glimpse of its face you know which it looks it looked cool the design was great but it was just so brief special effects i went with the four like i said the alien design was pretty cool despite its brevity and then also the view of the camera traveling down old dude's throat that looked wild you know reminded me of the phase one clinical trial segment from vhs2 where the ghost shoved the cybernetic eye down old dude's throat i wonder like if these filmmakers draw influence or pay homage intentionally to prior segments in the franchise if so that'd be pretty cool situational fear i went with the two i mean dude was paranoid or you know he was thinking that he was being haunted or visited by aliens at night but he never really got that confirmation because he was asleep when they visited and i can't remember if his eyes were open or not but he didn't seem to be moving so

unless the alien had some kind of paralytic agent administered which i guess is definitely a possibility i'm gonna say that he was still asleep so yeah the fear was just based on paranoia and never got confirmed from what i could tell but if i'm wrong let me know and finally for likelihood of death i also went with the two Even though the camera was shoved down his throat, there was a point that it like stopped like a barrier that it reached. And I'm not like a biology person or like an anatomy major.

So I don't know what it's called. And I don't feel like looking it up right now. But if you know, you know, that barrier between, I guess, at the bottom of the esophagus before you get to the stomach, whatever that's called. Yeah, the camera, I don't think made it past that. And so he might have survived. He's growing eggs, so they probably want to continue to use him to grow their eggs, I would imagine. So yeah, likelihood of death was probably pretty low, at least for the time being. So that brings abduction slash adduction to an overall score of 2 .5.

Coming in as the fifth best segment in VHS Beyond is Stowaway. Stowaway was directed by Kate Siegel and written by Mike Flanagan. As an actress, Siegel is a bonafide scream queen, having appeared in horror films such as 2013's Oculus, 2016's Hush, and Ouija Origin of Evil, which came out that same year. I covered Ouija Origin of Evil in a prior episode in Season 2 titled Anatomy of Isolation, so if you haven't listened to that, feel free to check it out. Kate Siegel has also been a mainstay in Netflix's run of horror TV shows, such as 2018's The Haunting of Hill House, 2020's The Haunting of Bly Manor, 2021's Midnight Mass, and 2023's The Fall of the House of Usher.

And the director or showrunner for all of these projects was her husband, Mike Flanagan. And it was announced earlier this month that Flanagan would be writing and directing a remake of 2007's The Mist. And I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. Well, I lied. I do know how I feel about this. I hate it. I'm not a fan of remakes or reboots for the most part, especially movies that are less than 20 years old. Like, nah, let it let it live a little bit. You know what I mean? And also like the ending to The Mist was so bleak.

I think it's reached a point of like, I don't want to say like top 10 endings, but it's a notable ending that people think about. And so to remake that, would he change that ending or would he, you know, keep that same ending? Either way, it's going to reduce the impact of the ending originally, in my opinion. So I. I'm not on board with this, but Mike Flanagan does make good ass movies, so I'll probably watch it reluctantly. But Stowaway centers on a woman named Haley who was shooting a documentary in the Mojave Desert to prove whether claims of UFO sightings are true or not.

And she's going around interviewing different people who claim to have seen like a string of lights in the sky. And she uses this eyewitness testimony to map out six different campsites along the path of the lights. And at one of these campsites one night she sees six lights in the sky and as she's watching them one breaks off and like dive bombs towards the ground and so she decides to hop in her truck and attempt to follow it. Somehow she does end up finding this spacecraft and its surface as she approaches it.

appears to be reflective she's seeing some light in the distance but every time she waves her hand in front of her camera the light disappears so she realizes that it's her camera light that's being reflected back at her and as she peers more closely at this spacecraft not only is its surface reflective but it's also transparent or something because there appears to be this kind of moving swirling motion going on as if the ship itself might potentially be alive but what's most certainly alive is whatever left the inhuman footprints leading away from the ship bro fuck that as soon as i saw that i would turn my ass around and get the fuck out of town matter of fact i never would have even followed the ship to begin with yet alone walked up to it yet alone camp out in the desert for a week but that is neither here nor there the point is hayley she's made of sterner stuff because the ship's door opens and she decides to take her ass inside bro and once she's inside the ship does seem alive its walls have kind of a fleshy feel and look to them there's a lot of squishing and and squelching and there's also a dark hole on the wall and hayley yet again yet again showing off that sterner stuff she's

made of and maybe i should put sterner in air quotes because she reaches her hand inside some dark hole on the wall in an alien spacecraft and she describes it as some sort of like membrane that's wet bro bro bro we're touching wet membranes and alien ships right now son like that's really what we want to do That's really what we want to do right now. I cannot comprehend this line of reasoning. But there are also some kind of strings hanging on the walls. And Haley, because apparently she is a tactile learner, decides to pluck these strings on the wall.

And when she does... It makes like a gong like sound. And she also looks at her finger and that shit is bleeding because the string is hella sharp. And as she looks at her finger, some little flaky kind of flittery things begin to descend from the ceiling and they head towards Haley. And she like freaks out, stumbles, drops her camera and is like, oh shit, no. Thinking that she's about to be murdered by alien technology. But instead, it heals her cuts. These are like some kind of like nanites or nanobots or whatever.

And they heal her cut finger. So she's like, oh, wow, this is incredible tech. Like we see the future of the medical industry, bro. Do you? Do you? You think this tech is going to wind up in the hands of the human medical industry? OK, sure. But as she ponders all these applications for this advanced alien tech that apparently she thinks she's entitled to have, one of the aliens returns, or I guess the alien who owns this ship. And Haley is like, oh, wow, that's awkward. Don't see me. So she goes and hides and she's filming things using the infrared light on her camera.

We never really get like a clear glimpse of the alien. Like it seems like it maybe had like a lobster kind of claw for a hand. But eventually it like retreats into a pod seemingly to rest. And so Haley emerges from her hiding spot, which apparently if you can see, there's a hole large enough to fit a camera through. I'm not really sure how well hidden she was, but hey, you know. I can't comment on aliens, alien awareness. But anyway, Haley comes out of her hiding spot and she starts like speaking out loud, like narrating shit.

Like even though the alien is in the same ship with her, she's like, oh shit, the aliens here. Wow. that's crazy what else is going on in here she continues her tour her her self tour of the ship and there's like some little like specimen collection jars or tanks or whatever and she sees an octopus in there a spider a lizard and they're all suspended in some sort of stasis goo and so she hypothesizes that this goo is to put them in stasis because the trip back to wherever is going to be a very long time like earlier in this segment she was kind of going through like distance and stuff and so whatever the nearest star fucking proxima centauri or some shit she said that journey would take like if you could travel at 99 .9 to the speed of light That journey from there to Earth would take like four years or something.

But for people on Earth, it would feel like 200 years or whatever. And then another one is like, if you're in the Andromeda system, going from here to there would take like 26 years, but feel like 4 .5 million years, people on Earth, whatever it may be. So this stasis goo is apparently built to withstand this 26 year journey. But it's important to note that earlier when she was interviewing like the eyewitnesses, one of them claimed that his friend saw aliens collecting animals. But the caveat was he didn't actually see them.

He saw it in one of his vision quests. So she dismissed him as being a fucking idiot, right? Turns out bro was right. So shout out to peyote or ayahuasca, whatever man's was on that night because he nailed it on the head. And if you're hearing like some jingling or something in the background, my cats have entered my office. So that is their collars as they do whatever they're doing anyway. In addition to being a tactile learner, apparently Haley also needs repetition because she yet again plucks this string despite knowing that it is ridiculously sharp and that it's going to make this gong -like sound despite the fact that an alien is mere feet away from her.

I guess she assumes that it's already in stasis or that it's pod or whatever. Has super thick noise canceling walls. Or maybe she's just like. Fuck it. Nothing bad is going to happen to me. Because I have every right to be here. In your ship. And you cannot harm me. Sure whatever. Anyway. As the nanites come to repair Haley's finger. This time. It kind of leaves. Like a claw type of deal behind. And so. She posits that. These nanites are using the DNA from the collected specimens to initiate these repairs.

And since they don't have Haley's DNA or maybe not any human DNA period, they can't rebuild her using that. So that's a little bit concerning. But after plucking a string, lights begin pulsating in a fashion that resembles some sort of countdown. So now Haley finally... The alarm bells start to ring in her mind and she's trying to get out of the ship. But lo and behold, now she can't find the door. So the ship takes off. It accelerates near light speed and the G's just like crush Haley's body. And like the time begins to distort.

She kind of like stretches out and it's pretty cool looking effects. And the damage. appears to be catastrophic because the nanites come out immediately and they start repairing her but she's not looking very hayley like anymore because they're using this this other dna and then as the ship kind of sits in orbit other ships take off from earth as well and they're all like out there and then they hit warp speed again and leave the solar system galaxy whatever further damaging Haley's body because she's not strapped into anything and so these nanites come out to repair her some more and she becomes essentially trapped in this cycle of being torn apart and rebuilt using animal DNA and she becomes mutated.

She mutates into something monstrous and the segment ends. so for its story i guess stole away a rating of 3 .5 it was cool it was original you know had some unique qualities there but at this point you know me i like a little bit of action a little bit of activity so i would have preferred to see a clearer shot of the alien itself so that we kind of had a better idea of what exactly we were working with i like to be afraid when i watch horror movies so Seeing that alien might have helped drive up that fear factor a little bit, which I think would have added a little bit of quality to the story.

There's also a moment where Haley, when she first sees those six lights in the sky and she wonders if she captured them on camera, it's revealed that she's been filming this documentary by taping over her daughter's birthday party. And the daughter doesn't play a role in the story outside of that little quick moment there. So I wonder if this detail was added as kind of a way to emphasize that, you know, here's Haley pursuing something that's, I guess, her dream or whatever, and showing the things that she's willing to sacrifice in order to achieve that or give herself the opportunity to achieve that.

And I wonder if this kind of maybe mirrors. kate siegel and mike flanagan's relationship with their own children because i mean they're both very successful in you know what they do and with the rapid rate that they were pumping out shows and whatnot for netflix sounds like or i would assume that their schedule was pretty busy so maybe this was like their way of like acknowledging the fact that they haven't been home as often as they would like to themselves For special effects, I went with the 4.

There was a lot of CGI, but it wasn't like that cheap looking CGI. And there was some practical effects thrown in there as well, but I'm giving them some allowances for the fact that you can't practically go to space. You know what I mean? So whenever the ship like took off at light speed or near light speed and Haley's body was getting stretched out from the temporal distortion or whatever, I... you can't really do that practically. So I understand the use of CGI there and it didn't, it didn't look bad.

So yeah, situational fear. I went with a three because look, I know we like to joke around that white people aren't afraid of anything besides equality, but Haley, Haley really embodied that joke because bro, like First of all, you're pursuing a UFO in the desert, okay? You see it, it's landed on the ground. Not only do you approach it, but you enter. You enter this spacecraft, bro. Like, that is absolutely unhinged behavior. So, if she was afraid, she did a good job of masking it or her excitement or desire to prove the existence of aliens the fame or fortune or whatever respect comes from that all that either outweighed the fear or she didn't have any fear to begin with or had very minimal levels of fear so yeah the fear level here not very high that is until that countdown started going off and hayley couldn't find the door to escape and that ship took off and turned her into some fucking noah's ark mystery meat type deal you know what i mean like yeah at that point i'm sure she was probably shitting her pants but a little bit too late so we'll take that five level and balance it out with probably her one from before and get that three and finally for likelihood of death i went with a two first and foremost she never should have entered the ship that was definitely avoidable so Should give her a one, but I'll cut her some slack and just say she was so overcome with being so close to realizing her dream or whatever it may have been, her ambition to make this documentary that she couldn't control herself and got onto the ship.

But even then, once she was aboard and her body started disintegrating and shit. She's still being repaired over and over and over and over again. So yeah, likelihood of death is probably at least 26 years away once she reaches the destination. So that brings Stalway to an overall score of 3 .13. Now here's the point where I humbly request that if you're still here listening to please rate and subscribe to Terrorific wherever you're listening, especially if you're listening on Spotify or Apple. These things help the show continue to grow, expand our reach.

And yeah, I would be very appreciative if you could do that for me. Thanks. Next up, our number four ranked segment in VHS Beyond is Fur Babies. Fur Babies was written and directed by Christian Long and Justin Long. Christian also directed 2021's Lady of the Manor, and his brother, Justin, has reached Scream King status, starring in films such as 2001's Jeepers Creepers, 2009's Drag Me to Hell, 2014's Tusk, and 2022's Barbarian, which I also covered back in a Season 2 episode titled The Breastfeeding Dungeon.

And if you haven't listened to it yet, I highly recommend that you do because it's one of my personal favorite episodes. I feel like it really embodies the kind of tone that I want to set for terrorific as far as balancing that humor with providing legitimate analysis and insight as well. Plus, I think the breastfeeding dungeon is just a really dope title. But anyway. The story of Fur Babies kicks off with a group of people, Stuart, Angela, Miles, Pat, and Christina, who are watching a commercial on YouTube for a business named Doggy Dream House that's run out of the home of a woman named Becky Baxter.

Now, Miles is the ringleader of this group, and they are an animal rights activist group. And they've been tracking Becky online for a few weeks because in the background of her commercial, they noticed that she has some taxidermy dogs. And they think that they have or they think that she has desecrated the corpses of these animals. And that's wrong. So they want to go scold her for this. hmm okay so last segment we saw where a sense of entitlement took hayley let's see where this sense of self -righteousness takes this group of people one of the dudes i think it was pat asked how they're gonna take this old lady down and everyone's like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa don't be ageist bro like these cats are super woke okay And they hatch a plan for a sting operation.

They're going to have Stuart and Angela go undercover posing as a couple named Tom and Sarah who want to board their dog Pickles at Doggy Dream House. And they're going to capture all this evidence using the hidden camera that they've stuffed in the kennel. So once they arrive to the house, they're speaking with Becky. And in the commercial, when they first viewed it, there were three stuffed dogs on the mantle in the background. But now once they arrive, there are only two. Awkward. And they comment on the missing dog because there are like name plaques underneath each one.

And so this one is named Gary. It's like, hey, where's Gary? But here we go. Another Gary in the VHS franchise. So I have a feeling things aren't going to go very well here. Becky says that even though Gary was a Pomeranian, he had the heart of a pit bull and he sacrificed himself to save her from an intruder. And so he is going to be receiving a special treatment. At this point, Stuart gets all self -righteous and says it's barbaric to not bury these dogs after they die. And that taxidermy is body mutilation.

He is really up on his soapbox here. And Angela slips and calls him by his real name instead of Tom while she's trying to get him to be quiet. Becky notices this slip and they try to cover it up by saying Stuart is a pet name. And this causes Becky to launch into a monologue about how pet names are whack. Pets should have like these regal names. And if Pickles was her dog, she would name him something strong like Henry or Julius. And as she says this, she bends down to look into the kennel. And she gets this very ominous look on her face as she stares directly into the quote unquote hidden camera.

Oh, they are in danger, boy. But as Becky gives them a tour around the house, they see a dude sitting very quietly and very still at the kitchen table. And they're like, well, that's weird. And Becky says it's her brother Bo, but Pickles starts snarling as soon as he sees him. And you know what I say, when it comes to horror movies, always trust dogs. Anytime a dog starts whining or barking or acting up or refuses to enter a house or whatever it may be, a room, you need to get the fuck out of there expeditiously.

But hey, they got to save the animals. earlier they had asked if Becky lived alone and she said yes but now she clarifies saying it feels like she lives alone because Bo hasn't talked much since the accident bro what the fuck what are we even doing here bro but she says they used to get into these crazy fights and they would just like growl and bark back and forth at each other okay she's crazy bet You know how there are those sounds like those very high pitches that only dogs can hear and humans can and it like really bothers them and shit.

Well, I guess in this instance, the warning bells are ringing at some super high pitch that Stuart and Angela can't hear. Only Pickles knows what's up and they are not following Pickles lead. So they continue the tour and Becky leads them down into the basement because the basement is where good things tend to happen, of course. And this is where the dogs are like kept and trained and fed and all that stuff. And shit looks like a dungeon with like medical tools and like equipment and anatomical sketches laying around.

Like, honestly, what the fuck are they still doing here? Like, just turn the kennel. One time in a circle around the room, you'll have all the footage you need. You don't need to continue walking deeper and deeper into the situation that clearly looks like you're about to die from. But hey, what do I know? Becky then leads them to a section that's closed off by a plastic tarp. Because, because, hey, I guess there's some cool surprise back there, you know, that needs to be covered by a fucking plastic tarp.

And Becky refers to this as the timeout corner. She says it's where she keeps the naughty boys and girls to sneak into people's homes and ask rude questions just like they did. And then just like he did. And as she says he, she pulls the tarp back and there's a dude in a cage begging for help. Yeah. Shit's fucked up. If only there had been some warning signs. But at this point, Bo then comes up behind them with like a chloroform rag and knocks them out and drags Stuart and Angela off. The footage then cuts from the hidden camera to Becky's camera at her desk.

And we see that she has caged Stuart and Angela while also renaming them Cynthia and Marcus. Angela has had like dog teeth and like a dog's lower mandibles surgically grafted into her mouth. And Stuart gets sedated and operated on to have his hands converted into paws. And then his teeth installation is up next after that. The footage then cuts again this time to the front door camera. becky's house and the rest of the animal rights folks have pulled up to confront her because miles called and becky is dodging his calls and he's like hey two of my people came to your house and we haven't heard from them so pick up the phone otherwise we're gonna call the cops and do whatever uh it turns out that's an empty threat because once they pull up they're recording everything and miles is like yeah we were gonna call the cops but and pat jumps in is like they're corrupt fascists yeah so like i said uh super woke but also apparently cool with trespassing property damage and breaking entering because miles takes his shoulder and rams the front door down and he's armed with his trusty baseball bat bro what are we doing right now you should definitely be calling the police in this situation but They are pot committed at this point.

And once they're standing in the living room slash play area, they hear some screams coming down from below. And someone's like, oh, shit, is that Angela? And so they go down to the basement and they see Angela in her cage and Stuart in, I don't know, I think he's on the operating table at that point. But they realize that, yeah, some shit is definitely awry here. And while they're confronting Becky and Bo, Bo was like recording them filming everything. And Becky's like, you know what? Hey, I got something for that ass.

And she gives this, you know, villainous monologue as they do about her two attack dogs. And she six them on this group. And these quote unquote dogs are people, of course. And they have like razor sharp claws. They have their teeth and they just tear everybody to pieces. And one of the dogs, of course, is our aforementioned Gary. And he gets a treat for being such a good boy. And all these dogs or both of these dogs, they have cameras fitted to their collars. That was one of the selling points to the doggy dream house.

Mentioned back in the commercial at the start of the segment. And so we get the camera view shifting to the collar cam on Gary. He runs upstairs and is playing in the play area for a while, having fun. And then we see a porch pirate approach through the doorbell camera or the front door camera. And Gary senses him. So he runs to the doggy door and jumps on this porch pirate and tears him to pieces as well, pulling out his intestines and shit and just going to absolute town in broad daylight. So, yeah, I don't know who lives in this neighborhood or whatever, but apparently it's a porch pirate hotspot.

So I guess people aren't typically around. So pretty awkward. And this segment ends as Gary plays with his new chew toy. For its story, I gave Fur Babies a rating of a 4. It was very engaging. I was into it. I had to dock it though because of the Justin Long connection. It was very similar to Tusk. Essentially, Tusk for dogs. You could have called this Snout and it would have made sense. You know, the whole concept of humans showing up to a place and being turned into animals through surgical means and being retrained to the point that they believe that they actually are that animal or behave like that animal.

Yeah, very, very similar stories. But still, it was interesting. It was engaging and it was well acted. So Becky, she had vibes of like Kathy Bates character from Misery. um and so yeah i was i was rocking with that and i also think there was some commentary here on like performative liberalism like just because you're woke doesn't mean you're a good person i mean miles broke into someone's home and the first question he asked i think it was something like did i look cool or did you get it on camera something like that like he he's concerned with looking badass not the fact that he's At that point, he didn't even think about, you know, his missing friends.

You know what I mean? Like, he's still a self -centered person, even if he tries to make it seem like he's looking out for the everyman or animals or whomever it may be. And the dark side of wokeness is self -righteousness. And self -righteousness, foundationally, is rooted in ego. And it was that ego that prevented the friends from calling the cops and having them take care of this. People who are armed with something more than a baseball bat and a video camera. To assume that all the police officers are fascists is crazy, but also if we're being real.

This group of people, I think, would have the least amount to fear from a police interaction if anything were to kind of have some friction there. They are all white people. Let's just say what it is. White people in an area that appeared to be relatively affluent. So, yeah, I would think that the. police interaction here if they were to show up would be less hostile than it might be with other people in other circumstances but of course had this segment been released in 2026 post the renee good murder then i think we would have had a different lens through which to view this and it would be more understandable why they were so reticent to call the cops for backup because renee good's murder showed us that If law enforcement personnel can kill a white woman, they can kill anybody.

And they have and do and continue to kill anybody. But we don't need to dive too deeply into that right now. So moving on to special effects, I gave that a rating of a 4 as well. The dog surgical alterations were all practically done, so that looked pretty cool. Whenever Gary was ripping out throats, there was blood spraying and they were just going in. Gary and I think Abraham was the other name of the attack dog. So all the animal activist folks were just getting decimated and it was a lot of stuff splattering around.

And then whenever Gary attacked the porch pirate, he had all that meat just hanging from his mouth and shit. And yeah, practical effects, really well done. Situational fear, I went with the rating of a five because holy shit, you were being held captive and having your body surgically mutilated to force you to live in existence as a gross imitation of a dog. Enough said. And finally, for likelihood of death, I went with a rating of three. And honestly, I think I can make an argument for this to be lower than that because one.

The people who were held captive as the dogs were alive. And two, nobody had to go to that house to begin with. At least for the animal rights activist people. And three, could have called for backup. Could have called the authorities. Could have rolled deeper than you did. And you didn't have to film it. Because the old boy with the camera in his hand was not much help when shit started popping off, bro. so yeah most of this could have been avoided and you know what the more i think about it like okay there were two attack dogs right there were like four or five people that showed up to come rescue stewart and angela so respectfully if the first person when you see them getting attacked you have two choices here either you help them and like fight off the dog Or you take that opportunity to run away.

So either way, they had the numbers advantage. So there should have been or could have been more people that survived than did. But that could also be a lack of like situational awareness or, you know, fear paralysis. So I'll cut them some slack. We'll keep the three. So that brings the overall score for fur babies. I have to say that slowly because that's a tongue twister. Up to a 4 .0. My number three ranked segment in VHS Beyond is Dream Girl. Dream Girl was directed by Virat Paul, who also co -wrote it alongside Evan Dixon.

Paul directed 2016's Recapture, along with some various shorts in between. And Dixon, you may recall, wrote the frame narrative segment in VHS 85, Total Copy. The story centers on two paparazzi named Arnab and Sonu in Mumbai and they are trying to get shots of the next big Bollywood starlet, Tara. Their boss gives them a call and tells them to head on over to Film City because they have a guy there, an inside man, that will give them access to Tara's trailer to allow them to snap candids of her, which is weird as fuck.

And in case you don't know, because I didn't, Film City is a 520 -acre studio complex in Mumbai that was established in 1977 that serves as the heart of Bollywood. It features dozens of studios, outdoor shooting locations, and sets, all while nestled in the forest of a national park, bruh. That is a fucking flex. Y 'all are filming movies surrounded by a national park. That is fire, bro. Although there are various kinds of wildlife that live in this national park, including leopards, and there have been reports of people being mauled by said leopards, but we don't need to dwell on those blemishes.

Anyway, once Arnab and Sonu arrive at Film City, Sonu mentions that he's heard rumors that Tara is into witchcraft and black magic because her ascent to stardom has been so meteoric she's acted in a ton of movies this year. or that year that they're like hmm she must have sold her soul in order to get the success sonu also wonders aloud how tara deals with the pressure of stardom and arnaub flips his shit when he hears this because bro is a total hater he thinks he should be the big star and he hates his regular ass life he's gone to various auditions and things just have not panned out for him so Him constantly having to snap photos of people who he aspires to be like has left him in a bit of a funk.

But before they embark on their gross invasion of privacy, the paparazzi duo gets access to go watch a take of one of the scenes. And bro, that shit was like a fire dance number. I haven't seen a Bollywood film in probably like 15 years. And I was in college. I hung out with a group of people in my building. They were Indian. And so they put me on to these Bollywood films. So we watched them for like, you know, we were friends for like a year or two. So after that, I just kind of fell off. But anyway, watching this shit, I was like, bro, OK, I need to maybe get back into that because I thought it was dope.

But then things get a little bit awkward because. There comes a point where all the backup dancers like kind of stop dancing but Tara is still going and everyone's a little bit confused. And so Tara's manager gets mad and demands they cut and go on break. So while all this awkwardness is occurring Arnab and Sonu sneak over back to the trailer. And Arnab enters it while Sonu stands watch outside. Eventually, Sonu starts to pound on the trailer to alert Arnab. And he hides in the closet right before Tara and her manager come inside.

And the manager scolds Tara. He's saying that she needs to focus solely on the dance. She has too many other things on her mind and she needs to forget about them. He tells her that the only reason she has any value in this industry is because she does more for less. and stars are easily replaceable. But then he tries to be all sweet and loving, starts stroking her face and her hair and shit, because yay, manipulation. Manager, he leaves, and once he does, Tara breaks down sobbing, and as Arnab is watching all this unfold from his closet hiding space, he accidentally sticks his hand in some sort of mystery goo.

and bruh fuck that like that is insane if i stuck my hand in some kind of mystery goo i would lose my shit that is disgusting bro even if it had like no odor or anything at all and just felt like hand sanitizer i don't care like i i'm gonna freak the fuck out arnob though to his credit He manages to keep things together until he uses his camera light to take a look around to see like what he stuck his hand in. And that's when he sees a bowl filled with this clear goo. But there is Tara's face floating in it.

Bro is very understandably startled by this and forgets that he's supposed to be hiding. And he ends up stumbling out of the closet. So the jig is up. And as he awkwardly looks at Tara and she awkwardly looks back at him, the first thing she does is ask if he wants a selfie. Very strange behavior. Something does not appear to be quite right with Tara. But Arnab goes to grab the door handle as he's awkwardly trying to say, you know, make up some excuse for why he's in there. And he's about to leave.

He's literally about to leave, but he stops himself. He turns around after noticing the goo on his hand, I guess, and thinking about the face. And he asked Tara if she's okay. Oh, my God, bro. This is the one thing that I just can't stand. Like, you are right there on the verge of getting out. right there on the verge of survival or avoiding whatever impending doom is heading your way and he wasn't even really concerned about her let's be honest he is just trying to take this opportunity to form an alliance with a rising star or at the top of the game currently to get his foot in the door and hopefully break onto the scene but yeah we'll see how that works out for him buddy We already saw how the manager manipulated Tara and now we get to see Arnab try his hand at it as well.

He tells her that she doesn't even need her manager and she looks mad confused before replying with quote, but he made me. Very interesting choice of words there. But bro starts trying to give some kind of hype slash pep talk saying how great Tara is and how everyone wants to be her. But she just tells him that she wants to be normal and also that she likes his face. Again, very interesting choice of words here. At this point, the footage cuts to Sonu listening in on the manager speaking on his phone outside the trailer.

And he's telling someone that, quote, she's one nudge away from waking up. Okay, something is about to pop off here. But here comes this fucking guy Arnob with not a nudge, but a full on dropkick. He tells Tara that she's a goddess and she can do whatever she wants. And she's like, wait, say that again. And he says, you're a goddess. You can do whatever you want. She then creepily smiles at him and says, thank you. And proceeds to remove her face. She is a robot, bro. And I don't know about you, but I am definitely a believer in Skynet.

I think the machine uprising is inevitable and we are going to be fucked. And Tara decides to get a jumpstart on things. And she goes on a robot rampage. And her manager is the first one to get it. Once she exits the trailer, people are like, yo, what the fuck is going on here? And the manager walks up like, Tara, chill out. And since he's the one that made her, I guess he's really just like a scientist or whatever. A cybernetic engineer, whatever the fucking terminology is. And Tara like barfs boiling hot liquid, maybe water, I don't know, into this dude's face.

And his shit just melts off real gooey like. Another dude runs up and Tara just rips into his chest and pulls his heart out. Pretty awkward. And then she proceeds to just go into the studio and murk the entire cast and crew of this film with a mixture of like electricity and just like limb ripping. She rips out another dude's heart. And this is the dude that let the people into the trailer to begin with. So R .I .P. inside man. Now your heart is no longer inside your body. That sucks. Holy shit.

But then all this chaos ensues and eventually the last two standing are Sonu and Arnav. They're like kind of separated, but then they find each other because it's like totally dark and they have their lights on their cameras and whatnot. Then Tari gets the drop on Sonu and he falls down to the ground. He climbs on top of him. And she kills him by forcing her thumbs through his eyes. And it is absolutely brutal, bro. Like, he's, like, screaming and shit. Like, I was like, yo, this escalated hella quickly.

And Arnab, while he's trying to escape, ends up being cornered by Tara on the main set. And as he, like, tries to maneuver around her, this dude slips and falls. And she walks up on him all menacingly before kneeling down and ripping his arms off. And it's absolutely brutal, bro. Because again, this dude is yelling too. Like most times I feel like in these segments in VHS, there hasn't been like drawn out pain. I feel like the people usually are like dying pretty quickly, but like having to watch and listen to Arnob and Sonu like writhe and scream.

It was a lot. And Tara told Arnob that she liked his face and she said that for a reason. So she uses a nail to carve out his face before peeling that shit. off and as she does because he's on his back this man's eyeballs like flop backwards like towards the top of his head slash the ground and i was like what the fuck dog like the attention to detail right there was insane gravity on the eyeballs i mean it makes sense but i i don't think i would have thought to have that occur So shout out to that special effects team, which I guess you can probably infer where I'm going with my special effects rating.

Batara then proceeds to exit the studio and there is a gang of new paparazzi out there awaiting her, snapping all these photos. And it takes them a while to register that she's wearing somebody else's face. And once they do, they're like, okay, maybe something's wrong here. But she proceeds to just start massacring them as well. And the segment ends. For its story I gave Dream Girl a rating of a 4 .5. I already said how I felt about that Bollywood dance number. Shit was fire. But dog this whole thing was just a lot of fun.

Entertaining. Crazy. Unhinged. I mean we've seen movies or plots with killer robots before. But I personally have never seen. an indian killer robot so that was an awesome spin for me and i liked how things were laid out in such a way where you could infer details about the story without having too much exposition such as batara's particular word choice saying that her manager made her and that she likes arnob's face these things give us a clue to the backstory of the manager that he's a scientist and that It also foreshadows what's going to happen to Arnav, so that's pretty cool.

Anytime I have a gripe with one of these segments not giving enough detail, it's because, to me, the crumbs weren't there for me to fill in the blanks myself. I don't necessarily want it to be handed to me on a silver platter, but in this instance, I thought there was enough there that I was able to have a reasonable understanding of backstory as well as what I'm currently watching. so respect for special effects i'm sure you figured it out by now i obviously have no choice but to give a five even before we get to film city whenever arnab and sonu are first introduced they're on another job trying to snap photos and video of a different actress and at one point Arnaub falls on the ground and his arm gets impaled by a shard of glass and he pulls the glass out from his forearm.

So that's done practically. Really sets the tone for what is going to be coming later. And then, of course, the manager's face being melted off all gooey. sonu having his eyes gouged out like his shit was like leaking down his cheeks all the arm ripping and blood and arterial spray plus the creature design of tara herself she had like glowing eyes and blood all over her face and you know hair looked crazy and as she's wearing arnav's face at the end it's just this uh uncomfortable strange gruesome mix of like technology plus a dead man's face uh so yeah all that shit looked crazy and then again gotta give props to the gravity eyeballs when arnav's face got peeled off just that attention to detail excellent for situational fear i also went with the rating of five i mean you're being pursued by a killer robot um yeah and i think she kind of like locked them into the studio at first so the initial wave of like the cast and crew being taken out they were kind of fucked so yeah that has to be terrifying and then whenever sonu has his eyeballs being gouged out i mean that took a little bit of time for him to die so i know that fear factor was stupid high and then Our boy Arnob, Mr. Hey, you don't need that manager.

You're a goddess, girl. This dude getting his arms ripped off and just having to lie there while his face is then carved and peeled off. I mean, holy shit. Holy shit. That is insane. So yeah, easy five for situational fear. And finally, for likelihood of death, I went with the rating of a two. first of all fucking arnob you were on your way out of the door and you stopped to try to pursue your own selfish goals so one dude literally caused the deaths of dozens at least so fuck that guy you suck but also for everybody else once things did pop off i mean just like the sheer numbers of everyone involved i mean i guess the cast and crew notwithstanding because they got locked in the studio but once tari came out with the rest of the paparazzi and they were getting like mowed down the people at the back or furthest away from her i think had an opportunity to run away and escape so yeah but arnob definitely is the lvp in this scenario like bro Honestly, like what exactly is the best case scenario here?

Hey, you're a goddess, girl. You can do whatever you want. Like what? What did he think that she was going to say? How did he think she was going to react? Like, oh, my God, thank you so much. And just like suck his dick and then be like, and by the way, I can introduce you to my manager and you can be my co -star in my next film. Like what scenarios are running through his head? Where he's not a random person that broke into her trailer, trespassed in her personal space and on her property. And he can just like walk away and like be thanked for that.

Like, what the hell, bro? At best, at best, she should have called security and had him hauled off. But at worst, obviously, he got his arms and face ripped off. So, yeah, I mean, I don't think he deserved all that now. I mean, that shit was brutal. That was brutal, but still, like, bro, what the fuck are you doing here? Go home, alright? You fucked it up for everybody. But anyway, that brings the overall score for Dream Girl to a 4 .13. Coming in in the number two spot for the best segments in VHS Beyond is Stork.

Stork was directed by Jordan Downey, who also co -wrote it alongside Kevin Stewart, and the two are frequent collaborators, including on Downey's 2008 debut feature, Thanksgiving, which I have not seen yet. I really need to add this to my list or move it up higher on my list. One of these days. But Stork centers on a group of police officers who belong to a special unit called Warden. And their members are Broom, the Captain, Albert, Bennett, Ivy, Segura, and E .T. Segura is the rookie, and he's riding around with Broom, and they go to meet up with the rest of the squad at a warehouse.

They are planning an operation. And during the debrief, they explain that there have been 17 kidnappings in the last three months, all of whom were infants, and a witness followed the latest kidnapper back to a house. and Warden plans to raid it. And as they prepare for this mission, the amount of guns they have suggests that they don't plan to take anyone alive. They are locked and loaded. It's also revealed that one of the unit members, E .T., is the father of one of the 17 missing babies, so there's some personal stakes involved as well.

warden pulls up on the house where the eyewitness said the kidnapper retreated back to and it is extremely dilapidated not only that there's someone outside like ambling around while carrying a chainsaw very ominous and once warden enters the house they are immediately attacked by a horde of zombies and these are the fast kind of zombies the ones that be sprinting at folks bro down. Segura ends up getting separated from the group by the chainsaw man and he runs into the attic. Once he's there he sees some sort of shrine with like a bird -like humanoid figure made out of bundles of sticks and shit as the centerpiece.

Segura eventually rendezvous with the rest of the squad and after all the zombies have been put down they investigate the corpses and they notice that all of them have the same wound that's been bandaged up on their forehead. At this point they begin to hear strange sounds and other sounds of movement coming from upstairs and then a child crying. E .T. immediately takes off thinking that it's his kid. Not exactly the smartest tactical decision to make. Perhaps they should have left him back at home.

He's a little too close to the situation. But as the rest of the team continues to advance throughout the house and clear floors, they end up entering a room where there's a meteor that's crashed down through the roof. And they comment that it looks like it's been cracked open and that something appears to have crawled out of it. Fuck. that but at this point as my cat bats my microphone chill out bro uh at this point another zombie enters the room and they subdue it by blasting its kneecaps with a shotgun yikes they restrain it and then remove the bandage from its forehead and reveal a big ass hold right in the middle And Segura sticks the camera in there to get a closer look, and it reveals that there's no brains in this skull.

This zombie is literally mindless. Warden is fairly certain that whatever being is behind all this activity is at the very top floor, but the stairs to reach it have been barricaded, so they go back downstairs to retrieve the chainsaw. And at this point, the zombies that they previously put down rise up again. And after re -killing all these zombies, the squad heads back upstairs and clears the blockade. And at this point, they encounter another zombie. Bro, there are so many zombies in this house.

Zombie city. And the fact that nobody got taken out is miraculous. But they encounter a zombie who's holding one of the kidnapped babies. And they hear something or someone singing eerie nursery rhymes. I'm not gonna lie, if I heard someone singing nursery rhymes in the dilapidated, dank -ass house with tons of zombie corpses and body parts littered around, and it's pitch black outside, I would probably shit my pants, personally. But, you know, Warden, to their credit, they're like, fuck it, it's time for this final confrontation.

And the captain's trying to get them all hyped up. And he's like, yo, whatever's up there, let's make it pay. And one of the officers drops an all -time bar. She's like, there's no reward for going home with extra ammo. Bro, that is fire. And here's where things get wild. So as Warden enters the very top floor, that's a top bedroom or an attic, whatever it is, there are a bunch of cribs set up. As well as like tree branches that have been arranged in like a nest kind of formation. They get closer to one of the cribs and they see there's an infant in there.

And this infant looks pretty fucked up. It has pale skin, like stringy white hair. And a bloody mouth that's like in the process of mutating into like a beak. And then they hear this wheezing coming from the shadows. Just this... over and over and over again and as they approach closer they see et getting his brain sucked out by an et some giant wingless bird alien thing bro what the fuck and this is why you don't run off by yourself bro like this motherfucker was having his brain just sipped on like a mai tai absolutely insane but then this bird alien regurgitates the brains to feed the baby in the crib next to it what the fuck absolute madness and warden's like all right man we've seen enough light this motherfucker up and they just unload on this thing like this thing takes more shots than denzel in training day bro and while the stork is getting lit up E .T.

rises as a zombie and attacks Segura, so while Segura tries to fend him off, the stork capitalizes on that distraction and wounds Segura, but it's non -life -threatening. Eventually, it falls down from its injuries, seemingly dead, until a baby begins to coo, and the stork begins to move around like it's going to rise up again, and then one of the officers says, nah, we're not about to have that happen. And comes and stomps on the thing's head and just demolishes it, bro. Warden then takes a picture with the Stork's corpse and the segment ends.

So for its story, I gave Stork a rating of a 5. I thought it was crazy. This is one of the more action -packed segments in the VHS franchise, in my opinion. And I like my action. And I like the twist they put on the zombie genre. You know, we've seen zombies done countless numbers of times, but to have a giant alien bird be the impetus behind the zombie outbreak, I thought was a cool spin. And since they were all police officers, they were all wearing body cams. So we got multiple vantage points as they were fending off these zombies.

Had they been just regular people or some other, you know, non -law enforcement personnel, then I don't think we would have gotten that same kind of visual aspect. And I like what that added to the story. It made things more dynamic for me. For special effects, I gave it a rating of 5. This is arguably the best practical effects thus far in the VHS franchise. All the zombie makeup looked great. You know, practical, blood, guts, all that stuff. The scene when they looked inside the zombie's head was CGI, but still was a cool shot of this brainless skull.

And then taking the chainsaw to these reanimated corpses. There were intestines hitting the floor, blood splattering all over the camera, just wild shit. That mutated baby was just like nightmare fuel, and that was all practically done. The stoic design, practically done. It looked like Big Bird, if he was strung out, had this crazy...

heroin addiction and just went off the rails you know the the price of fame and being a child star like it was wild bro and then finally whenever they stomped on the stork's head at the end and it's that shit popped like a gusher bro like safe haven and the subject those were probably my top special effects so far but This one here, it may be like a 1A, 1B, 1C type of situation. And I'm not entirely sure how I would order those. For situational fear, I gave Stork a rating of a 4. I mean, having a chainsaw wielding zombie sprint at you is definitely terrifying.

But, you know, these people, I think to take this job, your fear center has to operate a little bit differently than Gen Pop. Like when Segura got slashed or stabbed by the stork, he wasn't really concerned about his wound. He was just more so excited about like, whoa, so this is what y 'all do, huh? Y 'all go around hunting monsters. Like he was looking forward to the next raid. So I think there's an element of excitement here that dampens the fear factor a little bit. And finally, for likelihood of death, I went with the rating of a three.

This is a highly trained unit that has been on raids before. And they only lost one person on this one because he was too close to the situation. He ran off when he shouldn't have, should have stayed in formation. So they could have gotten out with a flawless victory. These cats were strapped up. They knew what the fuck they were doing. They went in with intent to kill. They weren't trying to be like, wait, maybe there's a chance we can rehabilitate the historic or some shit. You know, they just they had a mission.

They executed the mission and they got the fuck out of there. So yeah, likelihood of death, I think was, it would have been lower had they not brought along someone whose child had been kidnapped. So people without personal stakes involved, I think their likelihood of death was probably a one or a two. And then obviously ET ratcheted things up to a four or five. So yeah, we'll land at that three in the middle. And that brings the overall score for Storic to a 4 .25. And last but not least, the number one ranked segment in VHS Beyond is Live and Let Dive.

This segment was directed by Justin Martinez, who also co -wrote it alongside Benjamin A. Turner. Martinez is a founding member of the Radio Silence Film Collective slash production company. whose other works we discussed earlier in the season in the first episode, Suck You, Bussy, as a couple of their members directed the segment titled 10 -31 -98 in the first VHS film. Live and Let Dive centers on a guy named Zach who is going on a skydiving trip with a group of his friends for his 30th birthday.

His wife Jess and his bestie Logan are the two that have kind of organized everything. And Logan's like the pro jumper. So he's the one that's strapped to Zack for this tandem jump. And Zack has a camera attached to his head, which serves as the primary POV for the bulk of the segment. But before the group can jump, they spot a UFO up in the sky with them. And they think it's kind of cool until military jets come booming in. And then it's like, all right, maybe we should get the fuck out of here.

Things really stop being cool when an alien jumps onto the plane and causes it to veer into the path of the main ship. And the plane gets demolished and everyone gets thrown out and they begin to free fall. So as Zack hurdles to Earth, he looks around and sees someone else falling. Half their leg is missing and there's like a stream of blood trailing behind him. There's debris falling from the plane. and zach can't figure out how to open his parachute he's asking logan to help him but logan is not responsive but luckily zach's chute auto deploys but unfortunately it gets tangled up and by the time it untangles there isn't enough time to slow down to a float and he ends up crash landing in like an orange grove But I guess because he's the birthday boy, he escapes with relatively minor injuries.

There's like some blood dripping down to the ground from his head, but he seems relatively okay outside of that. And he gets free from all of his straps and whatnot and discovers that Logan has been decapitated. His head flew off once the chute auto -deployed and it's still stuck in the chute. Really grisly stuff. Zack manages to link up with a few of the other survivors from the crash and one dude has like a big ass metal rod sticking out of his chest don't think he's gonna make it he also has deep gashes in his face and his arm is a little bit mangled so while people try to apply some emergency first aid and like put a tourniquet on his arm but I guess they put it on a little bit too tightly because his arm snapped and began spurting blood all over the place Pretty awkward.

And then one of the aliens shows up in the grove and starts going ham. It tackles one of the survivors to the ground and its forehead like splits open and shoots some kind of beam at him that stunts him and I think kind of partially fries his face as well. And then these metal spikes slid out of its forearms that it stabs into this dude. and generates all this electricity and fries him up completely at that point gotta be honest this is sounding like one of the worst birthday parties ever but as his boy gets fried up zach takes an orange and throws it at the alien bro what exactly what exactly is that supposed to do is vitamin c their fatal flaw i guess it's worth trying anything But Zach ends up running away and he finds Jess, his wife, kneeling on the ground.

And he's like, oh, my God, Jess, finally, I've been looking all over for you. And he thinks she's alive until he notices that her face is like falling off of her skull. So that's tough. She got laser beamed to the face by these aliens. And at this point, Zach's like crumbling. You know, he's not really seeing a reason to go on. But then a glimmer of hope arrives in the form of a truck. He hears it nearby on a road. And so he runs over towards the sound and he waves down the truck and just hops in the passenger seat.

And the driver understandably is like, hey, yo, guy, what the fuck? Who are you? What are you doing? And he pulls a gun on him. And Zach is like, yo, wait, wait, wait. Listen to me. There's like aliens around here, bro. Like we got to drive away right now. But the driver is like, excuse me, random guy. You have to the count of three to get out before I open fire. But before he can get to three, an alien runs up and tackles him, which causes the gun to fire off accidentally and blow off Zach's hand, like shoots half of it off.

And now Zach's like, what the fuck? Now I got a fucked up hand. My driver is done. There's aliens here. What's next? Well, what's next is that another alien crawls in through the open driver's side door and beams Zach to the face. But he stuns him. Doesn't seem to burn his face. And once Zach comes to. The alien is gone. And so he slides over into this driver's seat and attempts to drive off. And he makes it, you know, a few feet before suddenly the truck stops and its wheels just start spinning in the dirt.

It's been caught in the mothership's tractor beam. So now we get to see Zack in this car get beamed up to the ship. And it's crazy like seeing this from the POV perspective. It was wild, bro. And after a handful of chaotic moments, the truck eventually lands inside of the ship where door slides open and Zack is greeted by an unknown number of aliens, presumably either killing him or giving him a one -way ticket to Anal Probe City. Pretty awkward. And the footage ends. For its story, I gave Live and Let Dive a rating of a 5.

Like I said, it was really cool to see the tractor beam scene. I thought that was a very original take on an alien abduction. Having that first person vantage point and just the chaos that was going on inside that car. I mean, Zack was being thrown around all over the place. Bunch of loud sounds, rumbling, vibration. You get a glimpse. in between the beam where you can see like the clouds and the ground below just to put into perspective just how high up zach is like that was wild and just the unique plot point to be up in the sky when aliens pull up like you're not looking up at them from the ground and able to retreat into you know your house or drive away or whatever it may be like you're right there in the shit And to have the ship fly through your plane like bro.

To be then free falling as debris around you falls. Aliens around you fall. Like you see an alien attacking another person from your party in the sky. Like wild shit. And to have that then continue on the ground as well, it's like there's just no rest for the audience. As a viewer, you're essentially just being pounded by action and activity for the entire runtime. Like at the start of the segment, they're doing like video tributes to Zack or whatever, you know, just commemorating the moment. And that lasts maybe like three, four minutes before the UFO pulls up.

A lot of the runtime of Live and Let Dive is like you're really being thrown into this action of this invasion, and I really enjoyed that. For special effects, I went with a rating of a 4. CGI use was very heavy, but this is another one of those segments where I have to give some allowance for the fact that I don't think you can practically have an alien invasion during a skydiving trip without having an insanely high budget. Yeah, you know, with the dude free -falling with half his leg missing and the blood trailing behind him, I thought that was a nice attention to detail.

With Logan's head caught up in the chute after he got decapitated, that looked like it was set up practically, so I enjoyed that aspect. Dude with the rod in his chest and the fractured arm was also practically done with the blood spurting plus the gouges on his face. and before the guy who got spiked and electrocuted there was another dude who took a laser beam to the face and his face like fell off the bone afterwards so that looked pretty wild and gnarly and then zach's hand meat hanging on by a thread after the bullet blew it up that looked crazy too For situational fear, I went with the rating of a five and I will be completely honest.

Some of this is rooted in bias because personally, I am terrified of heights, bro. So the idea of being up in a plane about to skydive alone is terrifying, yet alone throwing aliens into the mix and having my plane exploded by an alien ship while I'm forced to free fall. is definitely shit your pants worthy and once you're on the ground and all these aliens are running around beaming people in the face and stabbing them with spikes and shit like that's insane and the tractor beam having to be beamed right back up into space after falling down going back up probably at just as fast if not a faster rate i don't know how alien tech works bro hell no He wasn't even wearing a seatbelt.

Dude was just flopping around like crazy. Fuck all of that, dog. I would not make it. And finally, for likelihood of death, I went with the rating of a 5. Because, first of all, just being able to survive the plane crash, that was a miracle in and of itself. Then, being able to survive the fall to the ground with... You know, the shoot deploying late and aliens in the sky going after people while they were falling to the odds of surviving that are pretty low. Then once you're on the ground being chased by a gang of aliens, beaming folks, spiking folks and getting beamed back up like there was really no chance for anybody to make it out of here in one piece.

So that brings Live and Let Dive to an overall score of a very strong 4 .75. And I know that's definitely going to shake up our leaderboard. But to recap the ratings for every segment in VHS Beyond, starting at number 6, we have Abduction slash Adduction with a 2 .5. Then we had Stowaway with a 3 .13. Followed by Fur Babies at number 4 with a 4 .0. At number three was Dream Girl with a 4 .13. Number two, Stork with a 4 .25. And of course, at number one, Live and Let Die with that 4 .75. So what does our top five now look like?

Well, Stork has booted out two segments from VHS that have been in the top five all season long. Amateur Night and The Sick Thing That Happened To Emily When She Was Younger are now... gone so coming in at number five we have stork from vhs beyond with that score of 4 .25 the sick thing that happened to emily when she was younger also scored a 4 .25 and both segments received a 5 rating on its story but stork gets the tiebreaker on special effects with its 5 compared to emily's 4 sliding down one spot to number four is no wake slash ambrosia from vhs 85 with the score of 4 .63 crashing the party at number three is live and let die from vhs beyond with that score of 4 .75 and it tied our number two segment still safe haven from vhs 2 also with that 4 .75 Both of these segments received a 5 for their story, but Safe Haven takes the tiebreaker on special effects with its 5 compared to Dive's 4.

And still holding down the number 1 spot, the subject from VHS 94 with its score of 4 .88. At this point, I think it's probably going to finish there. VHS Beyond had... the strongest chance to produce a segment to knock it out because that was my favorite film from top to bottom in the franchise. But we won't crown it just yet. We still have one film to go. That's all for me. I'm out of here. I'll see you back here in two weeks for VHS Halloween, and it will be the season three finale. But in the meantime, remember, always keep it spooky.

VHS Beyond Segments Ranked, Analysis & Recap: Analprobia

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