Theatre of the Dead #7 - Night of the Creeps (1986)

Director: Fred Dekker Stars: Jason Lively, Steve Marshall, Jill Whitlow

Review:

In the late 80s and 90s there was not a whole lot of significant zombie movies. I checked with the Wikipedia list, and though a lot of zombie movies exist at that time, but none of them having IMDB score higher than 5. IMDB score does not represent an absolute rating, but if a movie have IMDB score less than 5, it's probably trash and I am yet to find a counter-example. However I found this little forgotten piece, Night of the Creeps.

The first half of the movie is a cliche teenage love story: young shy boy, dream girl, bullying boy friend, you know the deal. It is so typical and predictable that it bored out my tears. Besides the love plot, there is also a lot of nudity scene too, like they know this is boring and have to rely on some sexual appeal.

Love sub-plot. Bad omen. Very bad omen.

I generally do not appreciate horror comedies, besides I like pure horror genre better, I believe comedy is a very regional thing, and the jokes do not transcent well to foreign audiences. In a scene a hero and his crippled friend was questioned by the police since they were seen running out from a lab that has a dead body missing, "screaming like a banshee". In the next 10 minutes "screaming like a banshee" becomes a running gag.  All the characters add this phase as a supplement, but I dont get it. It is supposed to be funny? What is so funny about "screaming like a banshee"? If you saw a real cadaver in a dark laboratory that gripped your neck, you would scream like a banshee too.

That joke about loved one turned into zombies but too distracted to notice, again. Havnt laughed I'm sorry.

It is not until some people actually show up as zombies that this movie turns better. So some aliens that looked like naked midgets and have a face like Krang from TMNT, had an experimental creature escaped from their spaceship to earth. They look like slugs and jump into people's mouth. Once they were inside, they laid eggs in your brain and burst your head to come out. The plot is very similar to Slither (2006), and judging from the release date, Slither ripped this off. Though the director of Slither claimed to be influenced by Cronenburg's Shivers (1975) and The Brood (1979), I found that story seems to come from Night of the Creeps, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Fly (1986). I am not going to talk about Slither in the future, since except for the gross but well-made special effects, it does not have something really original.

Back to Night of the Creeps. The zombies in this movie does not really attack people, but just walk around till their head burst and spread the slug-like creatures. Our hero's crippled friend was trapped in the toilet while taking a dump, and a zombie just dead right outside. At first I could not understand why he did not pick up his cane and get out, maybe scream like a banshee if he wanted to. He was desperately try to reach a match that was lying on the floor. Oh so now I know he wanted to light the match box, activate the smoking alarm and wait for rescue. Clever move, but no. He lighted the match box, put it on the floor, a slug-like creature bumped into it and got killed. Ok so now I know he have read the script, or else why would one think a brief contact with fire, since the creature is moving in high speed, could instantly kill them?

Your head bursts to give birth to all those slug-like creatures.

Despite all the love subplot, un-necessary nudity, bad writing and unexplainable character reaction, there is some scenes that I do like. I do feel sad when the crippled friend died, and left his dead words as recording to his best friend. Their friendship is also interesting to me, and it was well established and effective when we see him die. And the scene when our hero stands off the zombies with his dreamgirl holding a flamethrower in her is also memorable. But I do not get why the shrieff have to kill himself in order to destroy all those creatures with an explosion. Couldnt he use some ways more clever? Grenades or fuses maybe?

Duck tapes to prevent the slugs getting into the mouth. Good thinking. But he took it off in the next scenes. Ah...why?

Night of the Creeps is a homage movie, that it pays homage all the time. The first encounter with the creature from outer space throws back to the 50s sci-fi movies, especially reminiscient of The Blob (1958). People watch Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) on TV and the character's first name are tributes to horror movie directors: Romero, Cronenburg, Carpenter, Hooper. But as Roger Ebert said in U-Turn (1996), I feel quizzed and distracted to found all these homages. So do I like this movie? Well it may not be a significant zombie movie, but still worth a watch just for good scenes in the second half.