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NIGHT OF THE CREEPS
Eighties cheese about slug-like things burrowing into people’s bodies and turning ‘em into zombies that in the intervening years has developed a sizeable cult following. Why? I’ve no idea!
The Package
NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, released in 1986, is one mid-eighties B-movie that
somehow slipped under my radar, which in those years was NOT easy to do (NIGHT
OF THE COMET...ONCE BITTEN...THE HEAVENLY KID...INVADERS FROM MARS...BETTER OFF
DEAD...WEIRD SCIENCE...DEADLY FRIEND...I know ‘em all intimately!). Therefore
I’m free of the nostalgic memories apparently besetting those who’ve made this
film such a cult favorite (although I’m afraid I can’t say the same for those
other movies mentioned above), which is the only reason I can think of why so
many otherwise sane movie-lovers have made so much of this frankly mediocre film
written and directed by Fred Dekker (who’d go on to make THE MONSTER CLUB) and
starring Jason Lively. (Mr. Lively also appeared in EUROPEAN VACATION--speaking
of eighties cheese...)
The Story
Up in space, a bunch of goofy looking aliens are engaged in trying to stop
an “experimental subject” from jettisoning itself into space--too late! The
subject escapes the aliens’ confines and ends up crashing to earth in a fiery
ball near a popular teen make-out spot...and an insane asylum. It seems that a
homicidal escapee from the asylum is on the loose as the comet hits the Earth,
so just as a guy bolts from his car to check the crash out and leaves his GF
behind, the ax-wielding nutcase reaches her and does his bloody business.
Cut to several years later: at a college campus near the sight of the meteor
crash the nerdy Chris is looking to hook up with the luscious Cindy, but is too
shy to make a move. He and his buddy J.C. decide to join a sorority, whose
pledge assignments include leaving a dead body outside a prominent campus
building. No problem: Chris and J.C. ransack a nearby laboratory and discover a
frozen man--a “mansickle”--and decide to use the ‘sickle for the prank. A bad
idea, as the frozen guy’s head bursts open upon hitting the ground, disgorging a
gaggle of slimy slug-like critters that waste no time slithering their way
throughout the campus and into the bodies of its inhabitants, whose ranks come
to include Chris’ buddy J.C. The creatures, it seems, kill their hosts and then
bring them back as blood-thirsty zombies.
Things come to a head at a sorority party with Chris and Cindy in
attendance. Naturally they’re among the few nonzombified members of the student
body and, together with Rick Cameron, a grizzled cop who years earlier witnessed
the meteorite crash and its initial effects on the surrounding populace, take on
the zombies in an orgy of blood, fire and exploding heads (which, trust me,
sounds much better than it actually plays).
The Direction
Like most eighties low-budgeters, the filmmaking here is flat, poorly paced
and slapdash in a way that no filmmaker today would be allowed to get away
with. The acting is uniformly lackluster and the special effects ain’t much,
consisting mostly of a series of patently fake heads that in the climax all
explode one after the other, each in exactly the same manner. As in Dekker’s
THE MONSTER SQUAD, there are innumerable movie in-jokes and “homages”--an
opening sequence that goes out of its way to imitate that of THE BLOB, a
character named Cronenberg and a cameo by the ubiquitous Dick Miller--none of
which did much to enhance my viewing experience. I understand a laserdisc
version of the film exists (the film, FYI, has yet to be released in DVD format
and the VHS version is long out of print) with an alternate ending, but I simply
don’t care.
Vital Statistics
NIGHT OF THE CREEPS
Tri Star Pictures
Director: Fred Dekker
Producer: Charles Gordon
Screenplay: Fred Dekker
Cinematography: Robert C. New
Editing: Michel N. Knue
Cast: Jason Lively, Steve Marshall, Jill Whitlow, Tom Atkins, Dick Miller, Wally
Taylor, Bruce Solomon, Vic Polizos, Allan Kayser, Ken Heron, Alice Cadogan, June
Harris, David Paymer, David Oliver, Evelyne Smith, Ivan E. Roth