Night of the Creeps (1986) review

10. Night of the Creeps (1986)

Directed by: Fred Dekker

Produced by: Charles Gordon

Screenplay by: Fred Dekker

Starring: Jason Lively, Steve Marshall, Jill Whitlow, Tom Atkins

A while back, I reviewed the 1980s cult classic “The Monster Squad,” director and writer Fred Dekker’s loving send-up to the Universal Monsters. Well, the movie he made before that was today’s film, “Night of the Creeps,” a send-up to the cheesy B movies of the ‘50s. It’s about a pair of college students who release a cadaver from a cryogenics lab, not knowing that it’s actually an undead body carrying extraterrestrial organisms which turn their victims into zombies, and it just so happens that the formal dance is just around the corner. It’s about as silly and over-the-top as a plot like this calls for, and that’s basically the appeal, even though there are sporadic moments of melodrama and pathos.

The opening, taking place in 1959, shows a group of funny-looking aliens on a spaceship, with one of them launching a cannister into space, where it crashes to Earth and eventually spits out a slug into a Corman University student named Johnny (Ken Heron) while out with his girlfriend Pam (Alice Cadogan). Cut to 27 years later in the present day, where freshmen Chris (Jason Lively) and J.C. (Steve Marshall) attend the same school during pledge week. Chris falls in love with the beautiful Cynthia (Jill Whitlow) but decides that joining a fraternity is the best way to meet her; the snobby Beta Epsilon brothers task them with stealing a cadaver from the medical center, which happens to be Johnny, now a possessed corpse who releases more slugs that infect others. Chris and J.C. flee the scene prior to this but draw the attention of Detective Ray Cameron (Tom Atkins), a mentally unbalanced cop with his own personal ties to the victims of yesteryear, now leading the investigation.

Since the invention of celluloid, every cinematic generation has tried to pay tribute to the old days; we’re seeing it now with every other successful franchise from the ‘80s and ‘90s being rebooted or paid homage, and this was Dekker’s attempt at doing the same thing with ‘50s tropes. Alien invasion films were the popular thing at the time—there’s even a scene where characters are watching “Plan 9 from Outer Space”—and there are nods to older pop culture figures like Bozo the Clown. Even the characters all have some sort of reference; I mentioned Corman University, but other characters are named after big horror people, old and new, like George Romero, John Carpenter, Sam Raimi, John Landis, David Cronenberg, and more. But much like “The Monster Squad,” it still feels contemporarily updated, using suspenseful editing and special effects you’d see in slasher films, now the new genre craze, even though it’s restricted to make-up and prosthetics and not necessarily gore.

Chris and J.C. are decent enough protagonists, slightly annoying at times, but you’re with them and their camaraderie. One thing relatively new at the time is that J.C. is handicapped, and it doesn’t define the character, which Dekker was very deliberate about; he’s just a guy that happens to walk with crutches. This is something that I think a lot of modern films could learn from and not just make it feel like they’re checking off boxes. Anyway, most of the characters are passable, except for Tom Atkins as Cameron, who absolutely steals the show. He mainly spouts a lot of one-liners and scowls at the boys and his colleagues, but there’s a joyous degree of boisterousness there too. However, there’s a subtle nod to a softer side; in one scene, he stops on his way to a crime scene and smells a rose. You could’ve cut that and not missed anything, but it’s one of those charming little character moments.

Cameron’s most memorable scene is when he goes on a long monologue to Chris about finding Pam—his ex-girlfriend, coincidentally—murdered, and he talks as though he’s just pretending to hear what Chris is saying in response, sounding like he’s about to go berserk. It’s such an awkward and uncomfortable sequence that it only adds to the off-beat humor. Quite a bit of the movie is like that; most of the action is goofy and odd, but then it will just go super serious out of nowhere. After a zany chase through the lab, Chris blows up at J.C. for joking too much, and J.C. gives him a hell of a speech about his tentativeness towards life, and the value of not taking everything so seriously. In a later scene, we’ve just seen J.C. get attacked by the slugs, and he leaves Chris a tape recording, indicating that he knows he’s possessed and essentially resigned to his fate. I don’t know what mood Dekker was going for with this script, but the way the tone so often clashes sort of makes it more unique and interesting.

I’m mostly glad about that, because all things considered, the pacing is a little slow, the fraternity scenes are kind of boring, the production design is somewhat noisy, and the story doesn’t make much sense; for instance, why is there an escaped mental patient with an axe in the opening as well as the slugs? The creature effects are neat, and I do like J.C.’s tactic of lighting a book of matches as a way of combatting the slugs while hiding in a bathroom stall, but it’s really in the third act when “Night of the Creeps” gets the most fun, just watching the characters go to war against the zombified frat brothers; Cynthia gets to take them on with a flamethrower, which is cool. The best way to describe this move is that it’s just all over the place; it’s funny, angsty, silly, morbid, but overall entertaining, maybe not as much as “The Monster Squad” yet also a cult hit in its own right.

My rating: 7.5/10