Night of the Creeps
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Movie Reviews of Night of the Creeps
Movie Review: A true underrated gem.
Summary: 5 Stars
Night of the Creeps (Fred Dekker, 1986)
Like A Nightmare on Elm Street (q.v.), I had a chance to catch another classic from my college years, Night of the Creeps, on the big screen over the weekend. Now, Night of the Creeps has been on my list of the top 100 movies ever made since I started keeping such a thing, but I hadn't seen it in probably fifteen years. After the relative disappointment that was a re-viewing of A Nightmare on Elm Street, and my strong affection for 2006 movie Slither, which was basically a riff on Night of the Creeps, not to mention three and a half hours in between seeing the two movies (The Dead Matter (q.v.) and Primal (q.v.) were shown between), I actually went into Night of the Creeps with some trepidation. Did I still have my rose-colored glasses on? I was thrilled to discover not only that, but that Night of the Creeps is, if anything, even better than I remember it being.
Plot: Chris (National Lampoon's European Vacation's Jason Lively) and J. C. (Sleeping in a Dream's Steve Marshall in his screen debut) are dorks in college. They are discussing their dorkdom, in fact, when Chris sees Cynthia (Weird Science's Jill Whitlow) across the street and pretty much falls instantly in love. In order to win her affection, Chris thinks, the two of them will have to mainstream it up and join a fraternity. They choose the Betas, home to a clique of sadistic preppies led by Brad (Shimmer's Allan Kayser), Cynthia's annoying boyfriend. They give Chris and JC a task: steal a corpse from the medical building and dump it on the lawn of a rival fraternity. All well and good, except that they stumble on the cryogenically preserved corpse of a former student we met in the opening flashback who's infected with a kind of alien slug that turns its hosts into zombies while it breeds. As they're trying to get it out of the lab, it grabs ahold of Chris' wrist, and the two of them hightail it out of there. But the cat's out of the bag, as it were, and the body's had twenty-odd years to breed alien slugs...
Whereas what made A Nightmare on Elm Street a classic was Craven's use of new and flashy special effects no one had ever seen before, Night of the Creeps took pretty much the opposite approach: quietly build what turned out to be an amazing stable of personnel and make a movie with cheesy special effects, but impeccable acting, timing, and the like. Tom Atkins, who plays a detective investigating the break-in, was already a bona fide horror superstar thanks to his extensive work with John Carpenter, but everyone else was at the dawn of his or her career, pretty much. And some of them went on to big, big things. Dekker, though he didn't do much more directing, was responsible for the original stories behind such disparate-yet-brilliant films as House (the 1986 comedic horror film) and Ricochet (a 1991 gangsta film Jonathan Rosenbaum has on his list of the thousand best ever). Stumbling around in the film, you can find Gregory Nicotero and Howard Berger, who have gone on to be two fo the best make-up artists in the business (Nicotero is currently the go-to guy for , while Berger's work has recently been seen in Surrogates and Predators, among many others). Working with Berger in the make-up department was Robert Kurtzman (The Green Mile, Army of Darkness) and the late Kyle Sweet (Ghost, the 1990 Swayze pic). See where I'm going with this? You build a movie with great bones, who cares how cheesy the special effects are? Then you put in a stable of actors who are actually chosen for their ability to act, and as long as you've got a cracking script, you're almost going to make a good movie by default. This is one. In fact, I'd say it's one of the greatest zombedies ever made; its only real competition is the original Return of the Living Dead. **** ½
Movie Review: REMEMBER TO KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!
Summary: 5 Stars
DVD UPDATE: November 3, 2009
While Sony Pictures has given "Night of the Creeps" fans a lot to cheer about, they still managed to skimp on the DVD disc packaging, disc & cover artwork and disc features. The DVD case is flimsy and cheap looking and it's missing portions of the plastic on each side. In my opinion the final artwork cover chosen isn't as nice as the Blu-ray edition and this cover artwork doesn't do the film justice. Sony Pictures should have just used the original VHS cover artwork instead. As for disc artwork, well they're just isn't any. The disc is as plain as can be with just the title printed on it and personally I expected a much better effort from Sony Pictures. As for disc features, where are the chapter stops?
Well enough of the bad, now for the good. The widescreen picture is absolutely fantastic and Sony did a great job with the transfer. The 5.1 Dolby Digital sound is really good, but I preferred the stereo mix much better. The bonus features more than make up for the cheap disc packaging and lack of disc artwork from Sony Pictures and fans will enjoy what they see and hear from Dekker and the gang.
The year is 1959 and a young man spots a mysterious canister after it has crashed nearby, he leaves his date alone in the car while he sets out to investigate the crash site. After opening the canister the young man is infected with a mutant slug creature which transforms him into a zombie; now the real nightmare begins!
The mutant slug creatures contained in the canister were never meant to be released but one of the aliens during a battle on the spacecraft ejected the canister and it fell to earth. Luckily for the rest of the town the infected young man turned zombie has been captured and he has been cryogenically frozen in the basement of Corman University where he is being studied and monitored by a scientist played by veteran character actor David Paymer.
Everything has been quiet in the basement of Corman University for years until two students J.C. (Steve Marshall) and Chris Romero (Jason Lively) accidentally stumble across the frozen body in 1986 while trying to pull off a school prank and they unknowingly unleash the slugs on the University campus. Now that the terror has started up again it's up to J.C. , Chris , Cindy and everyone's favorite cop of course Detective Ray Cameron to save the day. Thrill Me!
Photos from a recent screening and cast reunion for Fred Dekker's "NIGHT OF THE CREEPS" at Austin, TX's Alamo Drafthouse can be viewed on-line and they've created quite a buzz in the horror community. The films screening took place on Saturday, June 13, 2009 and the event was also taped for inclusion on the long-awaited Director's Cut DVD of "Night of the CREEPS" which Sony Pictures is finally releasing on October 27,2009. Did I say Finally!
60 Minutes of Behind-the-Scenes material and Bonus features including:
-"Birth of Creeps" featuring Dekker talking about the origins of the project
-"Cast of the Creeps" featuring Jason Lively, Tom Atkins, Steve Marshall and Jill Whitlow
-"Creating The Creeps" featuring interviews with SFX creators David B. Miller and Robert Kurtzman
-A special Tom Atkins centric piece called "Tom Atkins: Man of Action"
-"Escape of the Creeps" a detailed look at the post-production.
-Deleted scenes
-Fred Dekker solo commentary
-Cast commentary featuring Atkins, Whitlow, Marshall and Lively
-The original theatrical ending
-Trivia Track
Movie Review: Zombies, exploding heads...and a date to the prom
Summary: 5 Stars
If you like a decent horror film complete with old fashioned make-up effects, you will LOVE this this film. If you like to have a good laugh and some gore when you watch a horror film, you will LOVE this film...If you like a combination of both, you will have the time of your life ! This film by Fred Dekker easily joins the chosen few; funny and at the same time good horror films of the 80's. It's right up this list together with Evil Dead 1 & 2, Re-animator, the Blob and maybe a few others. The story begins in the 50's. An extra-terrestrial experiment escapes from the spaceship and falls to earth ( By the way...Night o/t Creeps has the funniest aliens you'll ever see ) During the same night an psychopath with an axe is loose, this experiment makes its first victim on earth. How ? Slugs enter your mouth, crawl up your brain and there they lay eggs. They breed while the victim walks around...dead. Zombies in other words. Very cool. The axe murderer get slaughtered by rookie cop Ray Cameron and the infected person gets frozen. Then the story moves to the 80's. As a prank the frozen man gets released and the terror can begin. Rookie cop Ray Cameron is now detective Cameron and he joins Chris, J.C and the lovely 80's babe Cynthia in their hunting game to kill as much slugs as possible.
I realize this is just one man's opinion, but as far as I'm concerned all the elements to great horror are here. Good story with a few nice twists and decent make up effects. Ray Cameron is played by Tom Atkins, a great B-film actor who has amazing expressions in his eyes and a terrific body language. The script contains very funny lines all fired off by him. Example : "well girls, I got good news and bad news... the good news is your dates are here." "What's the bad news ?" "...they're dead". I assure you, this is great fun to watch. And did you think BRAINDEAD was the first film to use a lawnmower as a zombie-weapon ?? Think again. Add to this a soundtrack with golden oldies from the 50's and you got yourself a piece of pure entertainment. What else could you possibly wish for ?? Nudity, you say ? OK, the story mostly takes place in a sorority house, so we'll throw in a couple of boobs in as well. My advise, get your hands on it as soon as possible.
And then finally this little extra for the horror buffs : Do the following names of the leading characters ring a bell ? ray CAMERON - Cynthia CRONENBERG - Chris ROMERO - J.C HOOPER - Detective LANDIS - Detective RAIMI ... Indeed, all characters are named after the biggest horror directors. This is a lot of fun when you're watching the film for the 2nd or 3rd time. Heck, even the small roles are filled in. The janitor's name is Mr. Miner ( The first "House" film was directed by Steve Miner) and even the cat is named GORDON ( Stuart Gordon directed Re-Animator). Buy this film. You'll love it and re-watch it over and over again.
Movie Review: One of the true horror/comedy cult classics of the 1980s
Summary: 5 Stars
Night of the Creeps is a must-see 1980s cult classic that almost seems to get better with age. With its unusually impressive blend of horror and comedy, this low-budget classic should serve as an inspiration to today's independent filmmakers. I've read that writer/director Fred Dekker wrote the screenplay in seven days, but it's as solid and witty a script as you're likely to find among films in the campy horror genre. The special effects are surprisingly good for the most part, and even the acting is solid all the way around. Dekker's love and appreciation for science fiction and horror is incorporated nicely into the dialogue, granting the film a special appeal to fans of those genres.
Way back in 1959, a pod carrying an alien experiment plummeted to the earth and - by infecting those exposed to it - caused the violent deaths of several young people before it was stopped. Things have been peaceful ever since - until a stupid fraternity prank by a young man desperate to impress a beautiful sorority girl. While Chris (Jason Lively) sort of draws the line at freeing human popsicles sealed up cryogenically for almost three decades, his gung ho buddy J.C. Steve Marshall) has no qualms about such an expulsion-deserving offense. They don't get far with the body, but they do more than enough to turn their bucolic college town into a veritable zombie killing ground. It's not long at all before zombies' heads start exploding across campus, releasing a myriad of alien worms eager to infect new hosts. As a few random murders escalate into the equivalent of a zombie invasion, only veteran Detective Landis (Wally Taylor) has any real insight into what is truly happening.
When they're not performing idiotic fraternity pledge pranks or running away ("screaming like banshees") from the undead, Chris - with plenty of help from J.C. - is trying to figure out how to separate Cynthia (Jill Whitlow) from her obnoxious boyfriend and (forgive the pun) worm his way into her life. I certainly can't blame the lad for that, as Cynthia is flat-out gorgeous. In fact, Jill Whitlow is a perfect example of why I and so many other fellows love the 1980s so much. It's just too bad that the only way for a normal guy to get such a babe is to take on a city full of monsters and somehow survive.
Night of the Creeps is a perfect candidate for multiple viewings. I must admit that Detective Landis' catch phrase and J.C.'s seemingly endless antics eventually got on my nerves, but there is plenty of memorable dialogue scattered throughout the entire film. The gore is satisfying enough to placate the slasher fan without scaring away those with a more delicate constitution, and the comedy and cultural references should appeal to just about everyone. Night of the Creeps is B-movie horror/comedy filmmaking at its best.
Movie Review: At last, the classic 80's horror flick is available after all these years! It's about time!
Summary: 5 Stars
NIGHT OF THE CREEPS is one of the best horror films from the 80's. It influenced so many horror films - SLITHER for example - and it is sad that it has been unavailable for so many years. I have been treasuring a VHS copy all these years and finally I can replace it for a Blu-ray edition (and the film is also available on DVD).
Oddly enough, this Tri-Star Pictures film was not a success when it was released back in 1986... but has developed a huge cult following like other horror gems from the decade like NIGHT OF THE COMET and THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD that manage to mix horror with elements from sci-fi.
The story is quite simple. It starts hilariously bad as some pygmy aliens in a spaceship get rid of an "experiment" after a hilarious chase across the corridors of the ship. Fast forward some time and we're on Sorority Row, 1959. A couple of teens is making out in the car. They see a shooting star falling nearby and go look for it. Interestingly enough, there's a murder on the loose. So the guy goes looking for the shooting star while the girl stays in the car... and what follows is a BEAUTIFUL moment of tension as the murder is getting close to her with an axe...
The guy finds the shooting star location and slugs enter his mouth. Fast forward AGAIN to 1986 and we're back to the Sorority Row (Pledge Week) where everything is about to begin again...
This film is so stylish as it masterfully blends killing slugs and ZOMBIES.
In fact, it has some of my favorite lines ever!!!
DETECTIVE "I have good news and bad news girls. The good news is your dates are here."
GIRL "What's the bad news?"
DETECTIVE "They're dead!"
In a nutshell, this is one of those classic horror films from the 80's that blends horror and comedy: it has lots of amazing effects, great makeup, a great cast and a near-brilliant script. Here you have slugs, zombies, jokes, heads exploding, lots of pace and a great performance by veteran actor Wally Taylor.
Also, as a trivia, screenwriter Fred Dekker named his characters Ray CAMERON, Detective LANDIS and Sgt. RAIMI.
Ring a bell?
Recommended if you want a delightful night of screams and laughter.