Skip to main content

The Deadly Spawn (1983) - Douglas McKeown


The Deadly Spawn is one of those giant alien monster movies that TerrorVision was so good at making fun of. It's cheap, it's confusing and it's full of gore. Unfortunately, it has good effects that suffer from underfunding. Much like 90% of everything horror that was put to celluloid during this era. It's just a part of the eighties. Bad movies that became cult classics. 

A meteorite crash lands on earth. Attached are man-eating alien parasites, that make their way to a nearby house on the outskirts of some town. They hide in the basement, growing larger and eventually maturing into a full blown giant monster. This thing brings chaos with it. Everyone is attacked by these arm-length worm like creatures with giant teeth. They even attack some random meeting of like eight old ladies just trying to enjoy tea. It's bloody. A woman has her face ripped off, people are devoured whole and the old women being bitten to shit by these things are just a few examples of the violence and gore. 

The filmmaker had been inspired by some National Geographic story about seed pods unearthed in Antarctica or something like that. It's interesting that he had been inspired by that small event to make such a crazy giant monster movie. They didn't have much money and this showed. Just about everything is suffering from this lack of funds. This includes the effects department. But that just adds to the charm. This is where cult classics come from. 

While this movie is portrayed as more down to earth, you can't help but laugh. It's just so bad, it's good. I really enjoyed watching the horrible actors getting ingested by this giant blob of flesh with massive teeth. I loved the wormites too. This was all around a good cheap monster flick. 

Directed byDouglas McKeown
Produced byTed A. Bohus
John Dods
Tim Hildebrandt
Written byDouglas McKeown
StarringCharles George Hildebrandt
Tom DeFranco
Richard Lee Porter
Jean Tafler
Karen Tighe
James Brewster
Elissa Neil
Ethel Michelson
John Schmerling
Music byPaul Cornell
Michael Perilstein
Kenneth Walker
CinematographyHarvey M. Birnbaum
Edited byMarc Harwood
Distributed by21st Century Film Corporation
Release dates
April 22, 1983
Running time
78 min
CountryUnited States


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