Night of the Creeps
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Movie Reviews of Night of the Creeps
Movie Review: night of the creeps
Summary: 5 Stars
im from argentina and im wait many year for this edition on dvd im buy the dvd but im disaponit of this edition no have spanish subtitleMovie Review: About Time!
Summary: 5 Stars
Thank God! It's about time. I am excited about the release on DVD. My VHS is hanging on by a thread.Movie Review: "Thrill Me?" O-K
Summary: 4 Stars
The underground horror masses screamed, "Thrill me!" Hollywood delivered, with the DVD release of one of cult horror's best kept secrets, Night of the Creeps, from Fred Dekker, the director/writer who brought you The Monster Squad.
The first time I saw The Monster Squad was an odd time in my life. I was barely double digits in age, and the only horror movie I remember having seen in its entirety was Carrie. However, I knew of, and had seen, the iconic movie monsters of film: Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the Wolfman, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Mummy, Liza Minelli. I knew of these monsters, yet never saw them as being in "horror movies." Horror movies, to me, was about a lot of blood and guts and some nut running around in a mask and a machete.
Director Fred Dekker seemed to play with this generational problem in The Monster Squad by making a comedy/action movie surrounded by a horror element. It worked. Granted, he hasn't done much of anything since Robocop 3, but at the time, it worked.
So why am I chatting about a totally different movie than my focus, Night of the Creeps? To explain how I even found this movie, for one, but also to explain why I like this movie as much as I do. Yes, it's campy. Yes, the actors aren't amazing, except for Tom Atkins (or is that my bias talking.) Yes, it is goofy with its one-liners. It is all of that, and I loved every minute of it.
The story starts out with some weird-looking aliens chasing each other around a spaceship in some of the most obnoxious latex costumes ever created. Think Ghoulies, but five times bigger, and in space. With some fantastic subtitled translation of alien-speak, we learn one alien is running around with an experimental virus, and jettisons it out of the spacecraft. Luckily for us, the module finds its way to earth, circa 1959.
On earth, we have gone to a faded film color, almost black and white, and meet a fledgling young playboy on a date. The guy sees what appears to be a meteor fly through the sky, and crash some distance away. Being an adventurous young chap, he drives to the crash site with his date. He finds the module, which we learn is the home of some space slug that jumps into the guy's mouth, apparently killing him. Back at the car, the date is killed by a random ax-wielding maniac who escaped from an insane asylum and who just happened to enter into the movie. *Shrug*
Fast forward to 1986, in 80s "in your face" neon film color. Chris and his gimpy friend J.C. are in college, and like all college guys, are trying to pick up women. To impress one particular girl, Cynthia Cronenberg(Dekker's tribute to David?), Chris and J.C. go to the science labs to get a dead body for a fraternity in the hopes of joining. Coincidentally, they find that young chap from 1959 that ate a space slug in a cryogenics lab. The boys de-thaw the body, which naturally comes alive again, kills a scientist, and returns to where he picked his girlfriend up 59 years ago. Upon arriving there, his head explodes, letting loose a group of space slugs which begin hopping into other people's mouths, turning them into zombies as their brains help multiply the space slugs, etc. etc.
I know how it sounds. Cheesy. Odd. Retarded. It is all of this, just how it was meant to be. From seeing the latex aliens, to zombies trying to do what they would be doing if they were still alive(bringing girls roses, mopping floors, smoking, hacking people up with axes), the movie is just fun. Fred Dekker takes the horror genre and almost does a spoof of it, while keeping enough gore to make it seem like a horror movie.
The star of the show is Tom Atkins as Detective Cameron. As a broken down homicide detective trying to make sense out of bodies whose heads blow up and release a bunch of space slugs, he seems to fare pretty well. Well enough to entertain us with some of the greatest horror movie quotes in history:
Detective Cameron: I got good news and bad news, girls. The good news is your dates are here.
Sorority Sister: What's the bad news?
Detective Cameron: They're dead.
Detective Cameron: I suppose Rip Van Winkle would be the other body; where is it?
Sergeant Raimi: The other body isn't here, sir.
Detective Cameron: What? Did he have a date? Whaddya mean it isn't here?
[answering phone] Detective Cameron: Thrill me!
Sergeant Raimi: Detective Cameron?
Detective Cameron: No! Bozo the Clown!
Detective Cameron: Corpses that have been dead for twenty-seven years do not get up and go for a walk by themselves!
So, rating the movie for what it is, I have to give this move 4 out of 5 Wolfman Nards. Yes, another reference to The Monster Squad.
Movie Review: Creepy movie and features, Crummy packaging
Summary: 4 Stars
THE MOVIE:
The movie concerns two college freshmen, Chris and JC, who want to pledge a fraternity so Chris can impress a girl, the adorable Cynthia. In the process, they unleash a scourge of alien slugs upon the earth and meet the butt-kicking and one liner spewing Detective Cameron, played by the always awesome Tom Atkins. As the slug menace becomes an ever-increasing threat to the college and perhaps the world itself, Dekker manages to keep the audience entertained with lines, references, and special effects that are always jocular but never tip their hand too much by becoming overly farcical, while the action and horror are balanced with a handful of characters whose personalities and interactions actually come across as genuine. As such, we come to care greatly about Chris, JC, Cynthia, and even the haunted Detective Cameron, and when a tragedy occurs near the middle of the movie, it's truly one of the most heart-wrenching scenes I've ever witnessed in a horror film.
THE FEATURES:
This movie may've taken far too long to come out on DVD, but the abundance of features almost makes it worth it. There are commentaries, the original ending, a trivia track, an hour's worth of behind the scenes interviews and retrospectives, and a whole heck of a lot more, including 7 deleted scenes, half of which should have made the final cut, as well as a big treat for Atkins fans like myself.
THE PACKAGING:
This is the only area where this release falters. The first blow was felt months ago when fans learned that, of all of the original posters and VHS tape covers, none of those was going to be used as the artwork for this release. Instead, we got a middling cover that, while by no means is terrible, I can only view as an inferior stand-in for the original artwork.
And there's more: there's no chapter insert or booklet of any kind, and the DVD disc itself is plain-looking, with the movie title and related DVD information printed on the disc in black ink. That's it: there are no images and the print is spare, leaving most of the disc surface blank. Finally, the last blow is that this comes packaged in one of the Eco-Boxes that is proliferating among the major movie companies, so that pieces of the black part of the DVD case are cut out to save plastic. Speaking as someone who's been an environmentalist for close to two decades, this blows, and I immediately recycled this case and replaced it with a more standard one.
FINAL TALLY:
Commercially ignored upon its release, "Night of the Creeps" plays like an idiosyncrasy from the 80s, as it doesn't function as yet another straight ahead horror movie. Rather, it's a pastiche of sci-fi, horror, comedy, and more, and in an era where we're accustomed to movies that both parody and pay tribute to their respective genres, Fred Dekker's film (along with the also-overlooked 80s movie Student Bodies) seems one of the elderly statesmen of the lot, presciently helping to blaze the path that the postmodern horror and hybridized movies of today tread.
Finally released on DVD (and Blu-Ray), this movie is given a superb-looking Widescreen presentation, and instead of a weak barebones release, it's packed with an array of different special features. Unfortunately, this same devotion was not granted to the packaging, so like my Dancing Aunt Gertie, it's good to listen to and to watch, but the packaging's kind of tough to look at. Still worth a buy, though (as if you needed my advice on that!). Thanks for reading.
Movie Review: Night of the Creeps
Summary: 4 Stars
Before today I had only seen bits and pieces of Fred Dekker's cult classic, Night of the Creeps on cable channels. Before then I had heard little about the movie (I didn't even know it was the debut of Dekker who helmed the other eighties cult classic The Monster Squad) and really hadn't made any real attempt to see the movie. Not that I didn't like it, just what I saw of it seemed cheesy and uninteresting to me. Strangely enough though it was The Monster Squad connection, and the praise of several fans that drove me to make a blind purchase, and yes I'm glad I did. I didn't find the movie to be the horror comedy of horror comedy's, but it was an enjoyable mash up of bad monster movies from the fifties, an effect Dekker was going for. It even has a character watching Plan 9 From Outer Space to hammer this bit home.
The movie best aspect is that in truth it never tries to take itself seriously. From the opening color scenes interspersed with a black and white opening the movie achieves this silly little tone mixing a Pleasantville feeling, with the usual bad movie cliche of a radio advising that theres a serial killer on the loose and He's heading fast for a where a man character just happens to be parked, waiting for her boyfriend who happens to be investigating a meteorite He saw fall to the earth.
It then cuts the present day of 1986 where two happless geeks are trying to win over the affections of the prettiest girl in by joining a fraternity where they're challenged to steal a body to dump on a frat house lawn. Of course unwittingly the two geeks unleash the creeps, sluglike creatures who turn people into zombies. And and theres a police detective with a secret past played by perfection from Tom Atkins who delivers the movies catchphrase "Thrill Me". I'll admit I had seen Atkins in a dozen things before this including Lethal Weapon and The Fog, but before this I had never really given him much credit. In short Atkins Ray Cameron was a better leading character than the two leads of JC and Chris.
In summation this is a fun little film, an R rated companion piece to The Monster Squad. Theres gore, theres nudity and people perfectly delivering cheesy one liners. Unlike a recent horror comedy I couldn't get into it perfectly balances the horror aspect and the humor. And lastly its a terrific film to view, and perhaps discover this Halloween.
Not having seen the original I can't really comment on the directors cut's quality. I will say that Sony put out a perfect disc with extras galore including two seperate commentaries from the director and the cast. Theres a good making of cut up into four main sections discussing the making of the movie, an alternate ending, a trivia track and lastly the trailer. Best of all the film is beautifully presented with excellent picture and sound.