Skip to main content

Night of the Creeps (1986) - Frank Dekker

I have to give it to Frank Dekker. He was really ambitious with his project Night of the Creeps. It felt like he wanted to do so much and pack it into an hour and a half. Maybe a little too ambitious. Creeps has a lot of problems. So many grey areas. I found myself asking "Why did that happen?" more often than not during the movie. I know it's just an eighties schlock piece, but come on! You have to pay more attention to continuity. I am still scratching my head at some parts. 

The movie is about these strange parasitic slugs from space that lay eggs in your brain. Who crash land on earth back in 1959. The first victims are a young couple who were necking out at the point. (always a couple necking at the point) During this time a Psycho Ax Murderer is also wandering the streets. Needless to say. While our hero "Johnny" (Always Johnny!) goes into the woods and gets infected, leaving his girlfriend to be chopped up by the killer. While the alien eggs are incubating you walk around like a zombie, even if your dead. Cut to 1986, Chris and J.C. aren't the coolest kids on the block. When the two get mixed up in a Frat pledge prank, they mistakenly unleash the slugs. Now they have to exterminate these bugs with extreme prejudice. 

The movie is pretty decently cast for the eighties. Tom Atkins stars as the grizzled detective that was there that night in '59 and is ready for the Creeps in 1986. Jason Lively, Jill Whitlow, and even a young David Paymer round out some of the starring roles as young college students at Corman University. The acting leaves a lot to be desired. However, the special effects are really cool. I love the comic book ascetic. It is done really well... so well that I think Frank Dekker might have sacrificed the storyline and continuity for it. Making this movie nothing more than fodder.

The continuity is a real problem. I am not talking about a clock that says one time in one shot and then immediately another time with the next. No, this is more than that. The continuity problems are almost Uwe Boll worthy. There needs to be more explanation as to what is going on in the movie. I don't know how half of the characters were infected in the first place. There is a scene where a person is holding a shotgun and then all of a sudden a flame thrower... It's a problem. 

Overall, I like the movie. It's not the best film but it has it's moments. If your a fan of Tom Atkins then I would suggest checking this out. If you don't look too far into it, then you will see that the movie is actually really fun. It has some funny moments. Is it scary? No. It's too comic bookie to be scary. 
"Thrill Me"

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Human Monster (1939) - Walter Summers

Bela Lugosi turns in a fantastic performance. It is right on par with the exact same films that had made him famous like Dracula . My personal favorite being The Black Cat . Like the latter, this film suffered from poor circulation and lack of advertisement. Either that or the public wasn't interested in seeing Lugosi in anything else other than his famous bloodsucker. This film has a broad and well acted plot that was rich with detail.  Lugosi has two sides in this picture. His well loved and compassionate side. The other is a strict, brutal lone shark that acts as a sinister villain to blind and handicapped people. He really brutalizes his victims. It's a macabre message to pay your bills.  The film is slow moving and plagued by the usual setbacks from its time. Most of the nation wasn't really that concerned with horror at the time. But studios knew that they would always have an audience. This film is a prime example of that. It's sad because it's 

Ju-On (2000) - Takashi Shimizu

Watching Japanese horror is similar to watching British comedy. If you enjoy dry whit then you probably enjoy the boys of Monty Python in drag. That's the joke, they're dressed like women. Get it? Well, that's British humor. But if you're like most Americans you probably prefer Adam Sandler farting his way across a football field and hooking up with chicks that are way out of his league. Americans usually prefer this more in your face, crass brand of humor. My point is funny in England is different from funny in the US. The same goes for J-Horror. What the Japanese consider scary is very different from what Americans consider scary and it shows in this horror film. Japanese horror is generally slow (a little too slow sometimes), suspenseful and creepy. Ju-On is a creepy effing film. The movie has almost no soundtrack. It is incredibly suspenseful and the pay-offs are pretty awesome, but I think that it was done better in the American version (cultural t

Inseminoid (1981) - Norman J. Warren

What can be said for mindless schlock pictures like this one. They were pumped out in droves during the eighties. Inseminoid !? give me a break! It sounds like some pre-pubescent teenage boys came up with the title. On the plus side the movie isn't horrible to look at and it has a decent amount of gore. If you can separate yourself from the political incorrectness, then you might have a perfectly decent Sci-Fi Monster Feature.  A research team exploring caves on Jupiter accidentally awakens an ancient alien that rapes and impregnates one of the team members. She suffers from terrible shock and trauma, leading to a complete mental breakdown as her pregnancy accelerates faster and faster. Feeling threatened she decides to kill anyone she deems a threat. Can the rest of the research team survive or will they all become victims of INSEMINOID! Apparently this movie had a million dollar budget. That's really shocking considering the outcome of the picture. The acting