Night Of The Creeps
More often than not, horror comedies can be a very risky proposition. Do you really want your film to be funny at all times or do you want it to be scary and / or serious at certain key moments? The balancing act to be what you want your movie to be can be precarious and in many ways the best route to go in is with a shameless spoof / homage of the genre, knowingly utilizing several known clichĂ©s to more often than not evoke laughter over the recognition of such clichĂ©s once again rearing their ugly head (and even going so far as to have CHARACTERS in the movie acknowledge these moments as being clichĂ©s is always a good idea). This 1986 release written and directed by Fred Dekker (with additional uncredited work on the script being done by Shane Black just prior to his historic breakthrough with Lethal Weapon) comes on as being a straight up zombie movie with certain science fiction elements as well, namely the opening scene on a spaceship that resembles one of the action shootouts from Aliens, only this time itâs a laser shootout between goofy looking space aliens who resemble a cross between mummified babies and Cabbage Patch Kid dolls. One of them is apparently bound and determined to jettison a canister containing an âexperimentâ into the nearby plant Earth while the other aliens are trying to stop him from doing so. They fail, so the canister heads towards Earth and crashes in the year 1959, filmed entirely in black and white during this prologue and mostly involving the unlucky bobby soxer couple who first encounter it along with (for some reason) an escaped maniac from a mental institution who is carrying an axe. This in turn makes the prologue a double homage to both 1950s creature features and 1980s slasher flicks but for a film that piles on so much backstory, the one glaring detail that is never explained is in how did the first victim of the canister wind up in a cryogenic chamber on a college campus 25 years later? With that question left hanging like a puss dripping scab, the film scoots forward 25 years to that very same college campus where we meet the two stars, both of them considered to be outcast geeks who are desperate to fit in and more importantly, get laid. As played by Jason Lively (forever best remembered as the second incarnation of Rusty Griswold from European Vacation and who had next to no career after that unlike the other Rustys) and Steve Marshall (who had even less of a career after this than Lively did), the duo give off the vibe of having found themselves being cast in an anarchy laden college fraternity comedy, with the gimmick being that Marshall is so severely handicapped that he is on crutches and not only carries himself with a donât give a shit, nothing to lose attitude, but he also encourages his best friend and roommate Lively to get out there and get himself into every hot girl that they can find so that his crippled self can live vicariously through his best friend even though the punchline is that Lively is so scared of his own shadow that he canât even TALK to girls much less meet them. Such is the case when he sees a super hot sorority girl (Jill Whitlow) and is already babbling to Marshall about wanting to marry her when he hasnât even said âhiâ to her yet. Since Marshall obviously doesnât care what people think (and figures that nobody would be enough of a dick to beat up on a cripple), he hobbles right up to the girl in the middle of a frat party in front of all the jocks and gleefully starts trying to sell her on the idea of meeting his friend who is so nervous about the proposition that he immediately begins looking for a place to hide. Eventually the two of them get called out for their actions, forcing them to bluff by claiming to have a desire to join the fraternity. The bleach blonde fraternity president known as âThe Bradsterâ (Allan Kayser in a performance that resembles what it would be like if Biff Tannen came from a wealthy background and was attending a prestigious college solely for that very reason) decrees that in order to be considered for the opportunity to pledge, they must steal a cadaver from the schoolâs medical center and deposit it on a rival fraternityâs front lawn. And this is what sets off the science fiction / horror portion of the film as thanks to a bumbling grad student (future Oscar Nominee David Paymer), they find their way instead to the cryogenics lab where the first victim from the beginning of the movie is now located, releasing it and then running for their lives when they realize that itâs still alive. When Paymer is killed, thatâs when itâs time to call in the local police led by Tom Atkins (first shown having a dream where heâs surrounded by beautiful women) going WAY over the top in what is such a straight up comedic performance you would almost think that Frank Drebin was his partner. Answering all phone calls with a sarcastic, deadpan âthrill meâ rather than identifying himself as most movie cops do, Atkins chews up scenery as if it were steak with an almost non stop barrage of zingers and one liners much of which is directed at his fellow officers if they screw up on the job and when our heroes Lively and Marshall are brought in for questioning he constantly refers to the twosome as Spanky and Alfalfa. As for the threat itself (as designed by the aliens 30 years earlier), they appear to be these slug like creatures who enter through the mouth and incubate themselves in the victimâs brain (something which can be done to any human living or dead) thus giving the victim the appearance of being a genuine zombie when really itâs just a matter of time before their head cracks open and more of these slugs slither away looking for more fresh victims for their apparently collective objective (shades of Body Snatchers as well?) and itâs also important to note that when infected, the victim no longer has any will of their own and is technically already dead with no thoughts of their own (with one notable exception). In order to achieve the gruesome effects of these creatures (complete with exploding heads), some fairly gory FX are used but the vast majority of character deaths are played for laughs (again with one notably touching exception) and when a bus full of drunken frat boys gets invaded leading to the newly zombified guys invading a sorority house (with the heroes coming in to intercept armed with a flamethrower and several firearms), the film seems to be knowingly zooming into Ed Wood territory (no surprise since Plan 9 is referenced during the prologue and also seen being shown on TV during one scene) with the double entendre joke consisting of these guys wanting a little bit more from their pretty dates than just the usual sexual hijinx. And all of this is going on while Atkins is stomping around like a man possessed, at times making smartass remarks over recently dead bodies (at one point after arriving at a fresh crime scene he actually quips âWhat is this? A bad B movie?!â) and at others taking on a deadly serious demeanor over what amounts to him as being his personal stake in the case. Lively mostly gets swallowed up in the mayhem, barely registering onscreen most of the time while Marshall as the crippled best friend not only giving the more likable performance, he is also by far the funnier of the two of them with the comedic concept of the crippled friend who constantly eggs on his best buddy to stop being such a chickenshit in life being one that could have possibly worked in an actual comedy / drama environment provided that the casting and chemistry was just right. However, both of them do get overshadowed by Atkins (easily the most popular character or element in the movie over 30 years since its release) and itâs easy to see why simply because the performance is so purely nuts and unpredictable one wonders how he hasnât been thrown off the force yet and committed to a looney bin years ago (the fact that Atkins was freely allowed to improvise probably explains why he has always considered this to be his favorite role). While the creatures themselves are no different than other 50s cheese monsters like The Blob and the makeup, gore and attitude are incredibly prevalent of the 1980s decade from whence it came, this imperfect little concoction that runs on spare parts from other classic genre films at times draws original sparks of its own thanks to the antics of Atkins and most of the little regarded yet nonetheless still on their game here supporting cast assembled for thisâŠ
8/10