Night of the Creeps

"Detective, other than confessing to murder, is there a point to this conversation?"

Fred Dekker fans are split basically into two camps; those who love The Monster Squad, and those who love Night of the Creeps. I belong to the latter group.

Here's
the deal; a rogue alien jettisons an "experiment" to Earth in the
Fifties, thus causing some headaches for people in the Eighties.
Alein worm havoc ensues.

Dig this, okay; This flick starts
out on an alien ship as a crazed little person in a rubber suit rolls
down the passenger side window and tosses out a Tupperware coantainer
full of worms which land on Earth in the Fifties, which leads to an axe
murder, and then we're in the Eighties. No, I'm not making that
up. That's really the first twenty minutes of the movie.
Now, I don't know about you, but if somebody just described that to me,
I'd want to see it just for the fucking genre-gymnastics. The
fact that it has tits and blood is just a bonus, a helluva bonus, but a
bonus nonetheless.

When I was a kid, this flick was a staple of USA Up All Night,
and I liked to flip back and forth between this and the '70's skin
flicks on Showtime, so it is entirely possible that my fondness for
this movie could be closely tied to discovering that my hard-on (such
as it is) actually had a purpose. Having rediscovered it recently
in bootleg (I know, I know, but Ill be the first one to buy it when
Columbia Tristar gets off its ass), I can say it's exactly as I
remember it. Only better.

Dekker managed to get Tom Atkins
to play the sardonic Det. Cameron, and if you've not seen his
performance in this flick, well you haven't seen Shakespeare the way it
was fucking meant. He's worth the price of admission, trust me on
that one. His interrogation of the boys is just about perfect.
And the scene where his attempted suicide is interrupted makes me laugh
out loud even now.

Now, the F/X in the movie come and go.
Some pretty good ones get followed up by some pretty bad ones, but the
script more than makes up for it. The only real complaint I have
about the flick is that I couldn't care less what happened to the
leads. They more or less sucked as human beings and I wanted to
see them get their fucking heads split open. Of course, I have
that same feeling anytime I have to walk through the local Wal-Mart, so
maybe it's just me.

As a footnote, apparently there
are two endings to the film; one that played in theaters and one for
T.V. I like the theatrical ending because it's a litte more
downbeat, but if you can find this flick on E-Bay, the DVD comes with
both endings. Go and do likewise.

Get it and love it.

Save Yourselves.

'Nuff Sugar