A videotape that turns anyone who watches it into an obedient killer, disguised as a 1950s science fiction cheapie nobody would think twice about renting.

In REMOTE CONTROL (1988), Kevin Dillon plays Cosmo, a video store clerk who notices customers who rent a particular tape going violently strange soon after watching it. With Belinda, played by Deborah Goodrich, and his friend Georgie, played by Christopher Wynne, he traces the tapes back to an alien plot to brainwash the population one rental at a time, before the cassettes go out nationwide.

Jeff Lieberman wrote and directed. He had already made Squirm, Blue Sunshine, and Just Before Dawn, three films with cult followings of their own, and knew exactly what kind of movie he was making here. Jennifer Tilly appears in the cast, and Tim Suhrstedt's cinematography keeps the look glossy enough to send up the B-movie footage at its center.

The film is a time capsule of the rental era, centered on video stores at the peak of their hold on American life, made by someone who saw the joke in turning them into a delivery system for the end of the world.