Night of the Creeps: Retro Review

Night of the Creeps: Retro Review

 

Year: 1986

Stars: Jason Lively, Tom Atkins and Steve Marshall
Directed: Fred Dekker
Running Time: 88 Mins Approx.

 

Hurray another retro review coming at you folks and it’s the 1986 cracker Night of the Creeps with a budget of $5million this was a lot for movie back then, unfortunately it bombed. Ah 86 I was a spritely 4 years old then I would watch this film till some mid-point in the 90’s either on bravo or sci-fi.

Only I can remember it was quite a fun and decent film back then, staring Jason lively who hasn’t been in anything since the mid-nineties but he was in a bunch of great films though ghost chase, brainstorm, and European vacation.
Oh and the one and only Tom Atkins Halloween 3 (yes the one we try to forget about) the fog and countless other shock horrors. Written and directed by Fred Dekker who wrote and directed the awesome Monster Squad film and the terrible Robocop 3, amongst other cool 80’s horrors.
So let’s get on with the film and see how it’s aged and stands up to the test of time!

So the film for a zombie film starts of quite oddly with some weird little pink aliens trying to stop another from jettisoning a failed (and deadly) experiment out of their ship. The experiment crash lands on a 50’s era earth while two love birds are canoodling in a car. Quite cool at the start in the 50’s as it’s in black and white there was definitely some thinking gone into this at least.

They go and check it out with usual teen vigour and silly eerie noises ensuing from the boy as he goes. I forgot this part that there was also a nut job escapee with an axe. So Johnny finds the crashed capsule and one of the black wiggly things inside breaks out and flies into his mouth, as his girlfriend is horribly axed in the car waiting for him, we know it’s all fun from here!

Switch to colour and it’s now 1986 on the same college campus in pledge week, strange things these college kids do! Jason’s character Chris is a typical teen who wants to sleep with the ladies though has eyes for only one lady. JC his friend shows him up trying to get her name isn’t this always the way?

The girl then heads into a BETA house where our idiot friend Jason follows, JC through some utter luck gets Jason in with the girl who we learn is called Cynthia.
To impress her they try to join the said BETA’s, they of course get sent on a stupid dog chase of a task to join the house. Which is to find a corpse for them and yes they stumble upon the corpse of the 1959’s infected guy, well they think it’s a corpse anyway!

They free the cryogenic frozen guy and when he grabs JC they freak out and run away leaving the bewildered scientist behind. Who in turn gets a mouthful of black wiggly things!

Back in their dorm JC and Jason have a little set to over how Jason’s chicken shit over this girl and how much JC has been trying to help him with her. After their little tiff they make friends we are then cut to Tom Atkins character who we learn was the cop from the 50’s scene warning about the mad axe man. He’s having a weird flash back to that night seeing the girl he knew being chopped up the axe man turns around with a weird zombie like face and he awakes on a chair.

He is detective Cameron and gets called in to the break in, in the experimental lab where we cut to a dead doctor being bagged up and no sign of the ex-frozen guy. After a bit of shouting at incompetence we join the dead guy on walkabout. We now get the usual 80’s staple of a cat scare before the main scares start. Scares we do get with Mr Icicle now looking a little worse for wear scaring Cynthia and spurting black slug creatures everywhere. The cops are called realising the body is the one missing.

Till near the end the films pretty straight forwards here people getting infected infecting others, except these things live to infect others so they can breed then they pop forth from the hosts head like a giant popper.
In amongst this Jason gets the girl they learn about the shit going on people think their nuts; you know the whole horror movie affair.
So towards the end of the film we get another 80’s movie standard the nudity! Yay so the unlikely hero saves the day not without some good old twists thrown in, which as you know I won’t spoil for you my friends in case you decide to watch, which I really think you should.

On little touch I loved in this film is the kids have all horror film people last names such as Romero Hooper and Cronenberg. Acting wise some scenes aren’t fantastic especially some of the cops they can’t seem to act. Aside from that it’s your usual 80’s affair with some decent performances here and there It’s like a lot of comedy horrors of this age it’s got a tongue firmly in its cheek and it wasn’t afraid to do what it did.

Effects well what can I say 5 mill was a good sum to be making a film back then and though some of the animatronics haven’t aged well make up and some other effects I’ve literally seen a LOT worse in even some up to date zombie films of our era. That is mainly due to them using really bad looking CGI rather going for make-up and props.
So did I love this film as much as I did back in the day? Whole heartedly yes I would recommend this to any zombie/80’s movie/horror aficionado any day.
This film is definitely worth the 4/5 star rating I’m giving it enjoy it

 

 

 

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