Night of the Creeps

Heya kids I am back and we are going for some 80s throwback. Why 80s? Well they are some of the most outlandish, bizarre and risk taking with stories. We are back with Tom Atkins (Escape from New York, The Howling, The Fog, The Rockford Files Halloween 3: Season of the Witch and Maniac Cop) and his awesome power imbuing mustache which has served him well via the 1980s and our film is being handled by writer/director Fred Dekker (House, The Monster Squad, If Looks Could Kill, Ricochet, Tales from the Crypt and Robocop 3) so expected weirdness. This is Night of the Creeps.

Yeah I didn't get lead, got stuck as love interest.

With an alternative title of Homecoming Night; our film already has cult classic status, as if college wasn't a difficulty enough but they now must contend with the Homecoming Dance. In the far away time of 1959, a spacecraft race to find an experiment from getting released by a member of the crew. This container holding said experiment crash lands on Earth.

A couple are parking and necking when they follow the path of a shooting star. An criminally insane patient has recently escaped and meets the creature, the aliens were in hot pursuit. A slug like creature makes the nutter butter even more crazy as he engages in a little axe murder. Said creature glurks out of ax murderer's mouth and the now ex-boyfriend captures it in a container.

Yes I am the hard ass. give it a squeeze.

30 years later... Sorry love the ellipses.  At any rate, 30 years later we have a gaggle of teens headed to college, jammed pack with hormones and need for identity.  Two frat pledges, Chris (Jason Lively of Brainstorm, National Lampoon's European Vacation, Monday Morning, Rock 'n' Roll High School Forever and Maximum Force) and JC (Steve Marshall of Night Heat, 21 Jump Street, Justice Denied and Sleeping in a Dream) end up releasing our film's evil McGuffin and the guy frozen in '59 and out and about infecting brohans and making slug wagons (pithy euphemism for zombies controlled by semi-intelligent, intergalactic slugs).

Damn Zombrohan! Use a door!

Chris while freaked out by the walking dead guy, he makes his way to the dance. Meanwhile the cops get a report from the cryogenics department in this small town college and head of investigations is none other that Detective Cameron (Tom Atkins of The Fog, The Howling, Halloween III: Season of the Witch and Maniac Cop), a hard-assed, bad ass on the ragged edge. Probably two weeks from retirement. He recognizes the frozen body as it was the kid from '59 that disappeared all those years ago. Cameron has to get to the bottom of all this.

And before it is asked, yes there is mild nudity so thank the gods we cleared up the age old question I get. "Will there be titty?" With Chris, Cynthia and Cameron working together, the slug wagons attack the prom pre-party for some monster mayhem. Still love that Cameron happened to have a flame thrower in police armory. In a small town. Totally believable.

The cluster of ideas and themes blends pretty well together with a mixture of 1950s Sci-fi alien invasions the zombie craze courtesy of George Romero, a dash of slasher film and even some teenage touchy feely dialogue worthy of John Hughes.

With seven days this script was penned by the director, selling the product with the notation, unless he directed it, he wasn't selling the script. The granite hew balls on this guy! Tristar floats him $5 million for his 1986 release. Not too shabby. While the gross was only about five hundred thousand in gross box office, this film did better with the video rental crowd and became a cult classic.

A quick side note. All main characters' last names are the names of famous Horror directors, Bruce Solomon's Sgt Raimi (Sam Raimi of The Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn), Jill Whitlow's Cynthia Cronenberg (David Croneneberg of Scanners, Videodrome, The Dead Zone and The Fly) Wally Taylor's Detective Landis (John Landis of The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London and Innocent Blood) Jason Lively's Chris Romero (George A. Romero of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Martin, Day of the Dead, Creepshow and Monkey Shines). There really is no one category for this film as it is comedy, horror, sci-fi and action.

This is another one of those flicks you can't simply quantify and group. Last film tidbit, Fred Dekker was roommates with Shane Black and they both worked on the script. Later Shane Black would go on to writing Lethal Weapon and Predator.   Scream Factory released a collector's edition Blu-ray a month ago. Considering it was in bootleg territory in 2005, it is nice to see it getting some love in the current format.

Evil slugs or sentient turds?