Oct
30
“Night of the Creeps” Review
Filed Under Movies
Fred Dekker’s “Night of the Creeps” finally hit DVD earlier this week. I’d heard that VHS rental copies of the film had at one time commanded princely sums on eBay, and not unlike Dekker’s other ’80s horror-comedy, “The Monster Squad,” DVD bootlegs have been making the rounds for years. I held out for the rights holders to put together a legitimate DVD release of the film, complete with shittily Photoshopped cover art and a decent amount of special features I’ll never get around to watching. Well, my patience has been rewarded.
“Night of the Creeps” blends the sci-fi/horror tropes of 1950s films with the then-contemporary conventions of “Revenge of the Nerds”-style sex comedies and adds some slasher movie shocks to satisfy the investors. I think the film’s partially successful, but never quite feels fully-formed. There’s simply too much going on. It begins with dwarfish aliens chasing around a starship — ray guns blazing — as one of their crew members inexplicably jettisons a canister of some bio-weapon into Earth’s atmosphere. The canister lands in Small Town, USA where it’s promptly discovered by a ’50s teenybopper. A slug leaps out of the canister and into his mouth. His girlfriend, meanwhile, falls victim to an escaped lunatic with an axe. Then we flash forward to the mid-’80s and two geeky college students on their endless quest to score with feather-haired coeds. When they pledge at a fraternity in hopes of boosting their rep, they’re asked to carry out a campus prank that has them accidentally unfreezing the ’50s teenybopper, who’s now a zombie, from the film’s extended prologue.
And that’s just the first 30 minutes or so.
The zombified teenybopper shambles around the campus before his head explodes and unleashes a bunch of fast-moving slugs that turn other people into zombies. Hard-bitten detective Ray “Thrill me!” Cameron (Tom Atkins) is put on the case. And the film races towards a climax where a sorority sister straps on a flamethrower and incinerates a group of zombified fraternity brothers.
“Night of the Creeps” might be uneven, but it’s never boring. Unfortunately, it’s not terribly scary, either. And yet, I don’t think that was what Dekker’s going for. He’s bringing the films of his youth, movies like the original “Blob,” into the 1980s. Once you get past the overly expository first third, I think the film finds its footing. It’s not as tight as his next film, “The Monster Squad,” whereupon Dekker really shines.
Then he went on to make “RoboCop 3,” the movie that landed him in director’s jail for twenty years to life.
’80s horror is a mixed bag. The slasher craze pretty much owned the decade, so films with a sci-fi bent like “Night of the Creeps” were few and far between. It’s not without its moments. Maybe it isn’t the best cult favorite, but it’s one of the more lovingly-made. That in and of itself makes for an enjoyable viewing experience. Thrill me indeed.
-Brad Lohan
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