Review: Night of the Creeps

Prologue: 1959. An alien lands on Earth near a local ‘Lover’s Lane’ area near Corman University (!) and attacks a couple of lovebirds. Present day: Jason Lively is Chris Romero, a nerdy college kid, who along with his disabled buddy James Carpenter-Hooper (Steve Marshall) joins a fraternity to impress hot chick Cynthia Cronenberg (Jill Whitlow). In order to get into the fraternity, however, they have to go through the usual ‘steal a body from the morgue’ frat house nonsense. Things hit a bit of a snag when on their mission instead of stealing a regular dead body, they find a cryogenically frozen body from a lab in college research facility. Said frozen body currently houses parasitic alien slugs which, now unleashed, soon set upon the local college campus and turning people into zombies! Tom Atkins turns up as Det. Ray Cameron, a veteran cop plagued by nightmares of similar events from long ago. David Paymer turns up as an attendant at the research facility.

 

Although it has its fans, I think this 1986 horror/sci-fi/comedy is a less successful attempt by debut writer-director Fred Dekker at the nostalgic blend of horror and teen movie that he mildly succeeded with the following year’s “The Monster Squad”. That was a cute teen-oriented homage, but Dekker doesn’t quite get the balance right with this one, it’s never as satisfying a combination of horror and comedy as you’d like. The opening B&W 50s sci-fi/horror movie homage with the giant baby alien suits that totally don’t show the zippers is effective/cute, and the photography looks nice. All of the name-dropping to famous film directors (Corman University, whilst Romero, Hooper, Cronenberg, Carpenter, Cameron, Landis, Raimi, and even Miner- hack director Steve Miner- are character names here) is cute for a cinephile like me, too. Dekker even shows “Plan 9 From Outer Space” playing on a TV at one point. Sadly, Mr. Dekker (who also directed the disappointing “RoboCop 3”) is no John Carpenter or Joe Dante, and the film is somewhat bland and lukewarm, really.

 

It’s not bad, but you keep waiting for it to get good and it never really does. And that, as I said is because Dekker doesn’t get the balance right (Confusing plot elements certainly don’t help, either). He surprisingly does alright with the horror, especially in building tension for the scary scenes. However, the jocular teen comedy material undercuts it, instead of complementing it, as it’s all just a little too laidback. The humour also frankly isn’t strong enough, despite some solid performances by an ideal Jason Lively (still best-known for playing Rusty Griswold in “European Vacation”) and particularly Steve Marshall, as basically this film’s Stephen Geoffreys/Evil Ed ‘sidekick’. It’s just not that funny, though character actor Tom Atkins is having an absolute ball in the film’s best performance as a nightmare-plagued, hard-boiled cop. He’s good fun (it’s apparently his favourite role of his own), as is ‘one scene wonder’ Dick Miller as a guy in charge of the police armoury. Love that guy. As for leading lady Jill Whitlow, she is one of the most smokin’ hot chicks you’ll ever see (even if her mammaries aren’t to my particular, Russ Meyer-esque personal taste), but not quite a Jill Schoelen or Jennifer Connelly in the acting stakes, to say the least. She’s just OK. Fans of character actor David Paymer, meanwhile will delight in the fact that even in 1986 he still looked like a dork.

 

The film is really weird at times, but is proof that weird doesn’t always equate to interesting or worthy, hell sometimes it just doesn’t make any damn sense (I’m not sure the 50s prologue was really all that necessary to be honest). The gory FX are amusing at times (the gore isn’t offensive or disgusting, more goofy and fun), it’s certainly a little more mature than “The Monster Squad” (whose protagonists were kids), just not as good. The budget definitely shows in the final big ‘explosion’ where it’s blatantly obvious that small portions of the house have merely been lit on fire, not an actual explosion. Nice try, LOL (Is that my first LOL in a review? And to think, I have a Masters in Communication!).

 

This ain’t no “Gremlins” or “Fright Night”, hell it’s not even “The Monster Squad”. The directorial name-dropping and gory FX take it some of the way, and Tom Atkins is a hoot. However, overall, this one’s pretty mediocre. It does have a fairly decent following out there, though, so don’t necessarily take my word for it. Probably best aimed at fans of the much later, quite similar “Slither” or even “Tremors” (neither of which did much for me, either).

 

Rating: C+