Last Updated on July 22, 2021
PLOT: It's the 1950s and one night some derpy looking Martians shoot a canister harnessing a nasty alien parasite into space where it crashes to Earth. 27 years later shit hits the fan when these parasites start turning humans into brain dead zombies.
REVIEW: Although Fred Dekker's NIGHT OF THE CREEPS fell flat at the box office during its initial release, the film has since gone on to develop quite the cult following, and for good reason. If you like over-the-top B-movies, then you'll find a lot to love about Dekker's genre mash-up.
Right at the start of the film we learn two very important things about the otherworldly beings that exist in the world of NIGHT OF THE CREEPS. They don't wear any pants and they've got an unexplained canister holding some sort of space slugs. In an attempt to keep the slugs from escaping, the pantless aliens shoot the canister into space where it crashes to Earth. Really, there's no explanation about this at all. It's cool, though, just roll with it. After hitting Earth, some bro'd out dude from the 1950s, who's totally rad, goes to investigate the mysterious object with his girlfriend after it lands in the woods. While he's being a dumbass and poking around the ruins of a strange object that literally just fell from space, his girlfriend is out in the car getting hacked to pieces by an axe-wielding madman that just happened to have escaped from an insane asylum. Like I said, just roll with it. So, while she's too busy getting cut up into tiny pieces in her sweet little dress, the boyfriend gets a mouthful of space slugs. Boom. Fast forward 27 years later and you've got the start of a classic B-movie that hits you with plenty of gore and terrible one-liners. It's NIGHT OF THE CREEPS!
The film never takes itself too seriously, which is why I think it works so well. Yes, it's cheesy as hell, but it's the kind of cheesy that was running rampant during the 80s—aka, the good kind! It's oozing with B-movie charm as we see a handful of college kids find themselves at the center of a zombie shit storm when two best friends accidentally wake up a frozen corpse after trying to impress a girl. You remember that bro'd out dude from the 50s that I was talking about? It turns out that after he took a mouthful of those space worms, the government found his body and kept it frozen to use as some sort of experiment. Well, those two dipshit kids woke his frozen corpse up and unknowingly release it into the wild.
After all of that goes down, I feel like the story and its characters kind of take a back seat. Who really needs any of that shit when you've got a town full of college kids to dismember? Never missing a step along the B-movie path, NIGHT OF THE CREEPS is way more interested in killing things than digging too deeply into a story. And you know what? I'm totally fine with that. It's not as good as RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD or RE-ANIMATOR, but it's certainly cut from the same cloth as it delivers a solid dose of laughs and scares; especially during its final moments when we see Cynthia roast a town full of dead people with a flamethrower.
Fred Dekker's debut absolutely deserves its spot under the cult horror banner with its hilarious tale of a few kids and a take-no-shit detective trying to save the world from a horde of the undead, all thanks to some pantless aliens. Swarming with practical effects and characters you'd love to punch in the face, NIGHT OF THE CREEPS is the reason why this genre is the best. Thrill me!
BEST TNA SCENE: We get a quick shot of some boobage early on, but that's nothing compared to the scene with all the girls getting ready for the dance, showing off their wonderful assets.
BEST GORE BIT: While the film is littered with some fantastically gory scenes, its shining moment comes during the final act where a flamethrower-wielding Cynthia lights up the town with scores of zombies!
HALLOWEEN DRINKING GAME: Every time one of the characters says a witty one-liner or Detective Cameron says "Thrill me".
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