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Posted By: trickytreats at 2:15pm, November 16, 2009
I love this movie. It was filled with horror movie cliches but they worked perfectly. It's a shame that Fred Dekker didn't do more horror movies. Between this movie and Monster Squad he is one of my favorites.
For this weeks journey into the obscure, I'm bringing forward a movie that is very near and dear to my heart, Night of the Creeps. This movie haunted me for years. Not because it scared me but because I couldn't remember what the fuck it was called. All I remembered was seeing a trailer on HBO when i was a young whipper snapper, that had this army of undead zombies crawling toward a house & a man standing next to window (who for some wierd reason I thought was Donald Sutherland), saying the immortal line, " The good news is your dates are here. The bad news is there dead." For the longest time couldn't tell you what this film was called but I lusted for it. Hell I dreamed about the damn thing.
That was until one night i was hanging out with some friends, & we began the discussion of films that we liked as kids that hadn't made it to dvd yet. So I bring up my hidden passion, & someone non-chalantly says, "Oh you mean Night of the Creeps." WHAT!!! Thats it!! Thats the title of the film!! I figured something like Zombie College Massacre or Old Guy Near A Window, but the title Night of the Creeps just didn't seem crazy enough for the images of a movie I'd never seen in my head.
So after some searching I found a copy at a local horror convention about 2 hours from my home. I really had to restrain myself from buying a dvd player for my hotel room so I could watch this film. So i waited and drove the longest 2 hours of my life and literally ran in the door shut the door to my office & prepared for nirvana.
There are few things in life that I will always cherish, the birth of my children, the day I married my wife (my second wife not that dirty cunt that took my dog), & the day I got to watch Night of the Creeps. Its not that the movie was that good or even scary it was just awesome. A horror comedy that was way ahead of its time.
Night of the Creeps follows two college students trying to fit in with the cool kids, pledge a fraternity, get the girl, and not get pocessed by alien worms that turn you into flesh eating zombies. There are many intertwining storylines in this film but it all comes together to make one hell of a movie.
The movie stars Jason Lively (Rusty from European Vacation), Allan Kayser (Bubba from Mama's Family) & one of my favorite actors of all time Tom Atkins (Creepshow & Halloween III). The film is directed by Fred Dekker who went on to make another of my favorite films Monster Squad (don't worry we'll get to that one later). Now I've received word that a proper special edition dvd will be coming out by the end of the summer. FINALLY!!!!
Night of the Creeps proves that saying that the longer the journey the greater the reward.
I'll second that!!!
This movie is one of my favorites in the genre/sub genre of zombie horror, it has everything you want in one. Definitely recommend this if you like Romero's stuff and the "Return Of" movies, (the good ones).
This movie is probably, in my view, one of the best zombie/alien movie that I have ever seen and Tom Atkins would agree with me. This movie tells of an alien slug species the invade a small town back in the 50's, and a pair of geeky college friends accidentally release the original host of the life-forms after a fraternity prank went bad. What I enjoyed so much about his movie are three things: the acting, the excellent editing and the creature features, all of which made this move so memorable.
EDITING: Like the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, this movie effectively transitions from the 1950s to the present day 1980's using a careful edit. The killer is about to kill the young woman when as soon as he brings the axe down it's the year 1986. It's this kind of technique that I love to see in horror movies, the concept of contrasting images that horror movie lack. If you pay attention to some of the action sequences, the two different shots match up perfectly so it doesn't look like they are two different shots, they are practically seamless. It was an overall great use of juxtaposition.
ACTING: What I want to point out is that this movie, character wise, is a huge tribute to all the great horror directors just like Evil Ed is to Evil Dead. The character list is as follows: Christopher Romero, James Carpenter Hooper, Cynthia Cronenberg, Det. Ray Cameron, Det. Landis and Sgt. Raimi. There were great performances by Jason Lively (Romero), Jill Witlow (Cronenberg), Tom Atkins (Cameron) and Steve Marshall (Hooper). There were even great performances by supporting actors like Vic Polizos and Dave Alan Johnson. It's these kinds of formulas that I love to see in horror movies, a great character tribute with great performances by the cast.
CREATURE FEATURES: As far as the special effects go in this movie, they were not all that bad, and for that time they were pretty decent. You can tell that the zombies that are about to be decapitated are pre-cut heads and the blood looks pretty fake, and the zombie cats and slugs look too much like puppets, but it's these things that make the creature features all the more recognizable. The gore was pretty good and some of the decapitations and head blowings were pretty cool and there was a reasonable amount of blood and flaming zombie drones.
It's easy to see where James Gunn got his idea for Slither; only in this movie it jumps from the 1950s to present day. It can even be inferred that the 50s portion of the movie is a tribute to the cheesy 50s b-grade horror movies the probably inspired the director. I would recommend this movie to anybody who loves horror movies, especially those who love either zombie flicks or alien farces. As for me, it would probably be one of my favorite horror / sci-fi's that I have seen.
Ahhh!!! What is it with you guys?! This is a treasured cult classic, loved by many people, including myself! Hell, I even own a laserdisc of it so I clearly love this film. It has an outrageous sense of humor driven by the performance that made Tom Atkins a B-movie legend.
ALSO, and this really gets on my nerves guys--a lot of you guys are getting the Skull Ratings mixed up, a "1" is the worst, a "10" is "the best"! I've seen many people give "1's" to movies they said they liked, and it hurts the film's user rating terribly, which REALLY hurts the film, too--a lot of fans new to horror who frequent this site probably won't buy a dvd of a movie if the user reviews are low.
Night of the Creeps is probably my favorite B-Movie of all time. Thrill me!
I caught this on the tube late one night. It's cheesy as hell, but it's good cheese. I enjoyed it enough to add it to my collection. I have it listed on Ryan's little survey that has gotten tons of responses. It's worth a viewin' though. Don't expect too much. It's just good cheesy fun!!!
With about 70% of older horror films, it’s honestly hard for me to tell what “horror” films were meant to be comedy, and which were meant to scare me. Because the 70s were loaded with laugh-out-loud unintentional cheese films like Phantasm and The Omen, it’s certainly not hard to see the natural evolution of horror films in the 80s. The 80s shifted from horror films intending to scare to horror films intending to make people laugh. Instead of trying to scare people with clichés, 80s horror took clichés and made people laugh at their predictability. Sadly, after you’ve seen this laugh-at-the-thing-that-would-have-scared-you-in-the-70s formula repeated over and over again, it stopped being funny really quickly, not to mention became as predictable as the movies it parodied. I’ve literally seen hundreds of 80s horror-comedies, and of them all, I can only pick out one or two that was genuinely funny or entertaining. The Evil Dead, for example, understood how to be genuinely comedic and still retain the horror elements. Night of the Creeps, however, is just . . . the same thing.
If you’ve seen any 80s horror comedy, you’ve seen Night of the Creeps. Yes, it has a few comedic moments that set it apart from the crowd for a few seconds, but they’re few and far between. The Star Wars parody in the opening was pretty clever, but after that Night of the Creeps just becomes like all the other 80s horror-comedies. It repeats the same lines, same pseudo-scares, same jokes, same clichés, same plot, same EVERYTHING.
The main character is romantically challenged—really, who would have guessed? Have you ever seen an 80s horror-comedy where the main character is anything BUT a romantically/sexually challenged male? Over 90% of the movie is absolutely nothing but this cliché kid trying to figure out his pathetic relationship problems. It isn’t funny, it’s boring. I’ve seen the plot before in everything from 60s sitcoms to Dear Abby columns in the local newspaper. I can really care less.
When the action starts, it’s just a bunch of generic head-shots, then the movie goes right back to the boring, cliché dork drama. The “gore” is all done in PG-style cut-off scenes, so don’t even expect any on-screen blood to make the movie more enjoyable. It starts out as a painfully forgettable movie, then quickly turns into a movie that I literally could not force myself to watch again.
What else is there to say?
If you grew up in the 80s, I can understand how this film may be nostalgic to you. I won’t rain on your parade. If you watched this with youthful innocence as a kid, I’m not going to rain on your starry-eyed nostalgic parade. However, if you didn’t grown up in the 80s, you’ll have seen this material literally thousands of times in other 80s films and in the countless return-to-fun-horror films of the 2000s. By today’s standards, Night of the Creeps is little more than a TV-PG-rated Disney Channel movie.
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