Night of the Creeps
(1986) 88 Min.
Rated: R (nudity, gore)
Country: USA
Director: Fred Dekker
Starring: Tom Atkins (Dick Miller cameo)
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Synopsis:
The movie opens on a space ship. Aliens are chasing another of their kind as it releases a canister into space. The canister contains an alien experiment. The canister falls to Earth in 1959.
Meanwhile a college-aged couple is sitting in a car on lover’s lane. A police man tells them to get away from the area because a murderer has escaped from a mental hospital. The police man recognizes the girl in the car as his old high school sweetheart.
The couple drives off to find where the meteor that flew overhead landed. While the boy goes out to look in the woods, the girl stays in the car. On the radio of the car there is an announcement that the mental patient was last seen going down the very same road that the car is currently parked. The girl is frantic and calls for the boy to return. However, the boy is preoccupied as he finds the canister with movement inside. It bursts open and a slimy black slug-like creature flies into his mouth. Back at the car, the mental patient is wielding a bloody axe and is just about to strike the girl in the car as the scene changes.
In present day 1986 college friends Chris Romero and J.C.Hooper walk by the fraternity houses as Chris spots a beautiful girl. J.C. becomes a wingman and helps to learn that the girl’s name is Cynthia. In order to impress Cynthia, Chris convinces J.C. that they should join a fraternity.
They try to join the fraternity, frat house leader Brad decides to give them an impossible task of putting a corpse in front of one of the houses. Brad, who also happens to be dating Cynthia, has no intention of ever allowing Chris and J.C. to join the fraternity.
J.C. and Chris manage to sneak into a lab where the cryogenically frozen body of the boy from 1959 is held. J.C. releases the boy and as they try to move the frozen body, it moves. This scares them and they run out of the building.
A scientist happens upon the frozen body and a slug shoots out of the body’s mouth and into the scientist’s. Police arrive and find that only one body (the scientist’s) can be found.
Cynthia is in her room changing when suddenly at her window the face of the frozen boy appears. His head splits open and many black slugs wriggle out. She screams and soon the police arrive to the house and find the corpse in front of the house, its head split in half.
Detective Ray Cameron arrives on the scene and chalks the situation up to a gruesome prank. He pulls J.C. and Chris into his office for interrogation, but they claim that they did not put the body there and that they fled from the scene. Even the janitor who saw them in the science building agrees to this.
Cynthia decides to talk to Chris and J.C. in the hopes that they’ll believe her story of what she was witness to. J.C. decides to leaves the two alone and goes to a bathroom.
Inside the bathroom a zombified janitor falls over and his head splits open, spilling slugs. While inside a stall J.C. discovers that the slugs can be burned to death, however he falls onto the floor and a slug enters him.
Cynthia decides to ask Chris to take her to an upcoming dance. Each gets ready for the dance and Chris discovers a tape that J.C. recorded. He says that he discovered the slugs can be killed by fire. He also tells Chris that he feels that he is dead, but still can move, so he decided to kill himself in the incinerator.
Chris finds Detective Cameron and tells him they die by fire. Det. Cameron also tells Chris how he was a police officer who was assigned to check out a car parked on the road and inside he found his high school sweetheart chopped to bits. He eventually killed the ax murderer and buried the body behind the sorority house. The duo get a flame thrower and decide to fight the zombie mass.
At the sorority house Chris finds Cynthia and a zombie-Brad. She moves away from Brad and Chris shoots him and burns his head. Meanwhile, Detective Cameron shoots more zombies as they enter the house. Cynthia and Brad manage to kill all the zombies outside the house, however under the house more slugs are gathering as one of the girls has a science experiment involving brains.
Detective Cameron pours gasoline in the basement, and warning Chris and Cynthia to leave, blows up the sorority house, frying all of the slugs.
A burned body of Det. Cameron walks out of the house and falls over. His head splits open and a few slugs slide out and under a nearby gate. A nearby plaque reads cemetery. A large spaceship looms overhead searching for the slugs.
Review:
An amusing film and cult classic of the 80’s that probably influenced movies like Slither and Slugs. The movie definitely uses humor and has funny moments. Though some parts are cheesy it really plays into the B-movie mentality and can seen as homage to them as well. This film has everything from alien invasion, an ax murderer, zombies, a troubled cop with a dark past and it even has a bit of college frat humor.
The slugs themselves are convincing. The animation is pretty well done. There is the theme of comeuppance for the lunk-headed frat brothers versus the dweebish Chris and J.C..
Though the film is amusing because of its 80’s-ness it’s just plain overall fun, too. The pace is quick and there’s not much of any dull moments during this film.