Heading to Halloween Night 12: “Night Of The Creeps” and “The Deadly Spawn”

Well, I certainly hope everyone enjoyed the little taste of B-movie flavor from last night’s finale. Because in today’s line-up there are two huge hits, and all without Chaser to cool down the cheesy brand! We’re back to alien creatures attacking our world. One that takes over your body and another that just eats it. Get ready, people! Because that’s classic spanky.

Night of Horrors (1986)

This first ’80s throwback is an excellent throwback to the creature features from the 1950s. When studios reworked films from this decade with modern effects, director Fred Dekker (The monster squadand…don’t ask) took a different approach with his 1986 sci-fi horror comedy. Night of horrors. Rather than a remake, this is a homage to the long-forgotten B-romps, but also with the more modern effects. It’s a ’50s cover with an ’80s kick behind it and some pretty classic lines to go with it.

The “Creeps” are a race of parasitic slugs that take possession of a body by entering their host through their mouth and reproducing until the host has full control. This failed alien experiment breaks out of captivity by possessing one of the crew members and blasting him into space. The aliens’ appearance might seem humorously ridiculous to any newbie, and they would be right, but that’s exactly the point.

Their next stop is Earth, and the year is 1959. A young college couple, Pam and Johnny (Alice Cadogan and Ken Heron), see a shooting star land nearby. Pam’s newly minted cop ex-boyfriend Ray Cameron (Dave Alan Johnson) stops by and tells them that a madman in the area is killing people with an axe. Instead of heeding this warning, Johnny goes looking for the shooting star, leaving Pam alone in the car. While she’s being “rejected” by a surprising newcomer with a few questions, the frat boy takes a bullet right in the mouth (point-blank!).

The year is 1987 and Chris Romero (Jason Lively) is attending Pledge Week at Corman University with his disabled best friend James Carpenter “JC” Hooper (Steve Marshall). While going through this ordeal, he meets Cynthia Cronenberg (Jill Whitlow) and immediately falls head over heels in love, but there’s still her shitty boyfriend Brad (Allan Kayser) to find his way around. In a bold move, they commit to Brad’s brotherhood.

You are tasked with stealing a corpse from the medical school lab and leaving it at the door of another fraternity. The two accept this extremely illegal mission and find the frozen corpse of our old stargazing friend Johnny in a cryogenic chamber. They drag the body out of the chamber, but then the dummies jump back and drop it on the floor before running out of the room. Johnny thaws out, gets up on his own and shows himself to the door without any further help.

A revived Johnny comes to town, ready to spread some “snail love” and turn everyone he meets into a scary zombie. As expected, this quickly attracts the attention of the local authorities and the eerily haunted Detective Ray Cameron (the great Tom Atkins) is put in charge of the case. He ends up overhearing Chris talking to Cynthia about what happened in the med school lab as he accompanies her back to the fraternity and waits for him to drop her off before dragging Chris back to his house to tell stories .

Let’s just say it refers to that night in 1959, but it’s better to hear it from the detective himself. The two team up to stop the Creeps before they take over the entire student body and eventually the entire world.

This film is a must-see for any horror fan who has a whimsical streak in their dark soul. It’s silly and cheesy as hell, but it’s still hilarious. The dated effects have a charm that CGI will never achieve, and despite the absurd premise, the actors play their roles so blandly that you’d think it was a David Lynch film. It’s hard to ignore that many characters’ last names are an homage to a film director.

Then there’s good old Tom Atkins (The Ninth Configuration, The Mist, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Maniac Cop), who delivers the best lines in the film and ends up reaching the level of an action hero, catchphrases and all. Before Bruce Campbell grooved with the Deadites Devilish Dead In all the films, Tom was horror film’s biggest badass. A film together with the two men would have been epic in every way, but now that time has passed. Although it probably would have ended with Atkins beating up Ash for drinking the last of his beer.

“Inspire me!” and stop by Night from The Creepy over on TUBI. Or just watch the trailer instead.

The Deadly Brood (1983)

It’s harder to find great horror films than terrible ones, but it’s much easier to find ones that fall right in the middle of both. Douglas McKeown’s labor of love, The deadly broodis an example of perfectly walking the line between the great and the terrible.

Shot on a 16mm camera and a budget of $25,000, this overlooked gem has been scattered around the horror sections of random video stores for decades, and it’s always been a testament to the fact that the people who run the store really care deserve to be there (not all heroes wear clothes). capes). This doesn’t require much explanation, and anything less would spoil all the good parts.

A meteor crashes to Earth in an unknown location somewhere in the United States (hopefully you’re not tired of that premise), and nearby campers rush to investigate. When they reach the crash site, alien worms crawl out of the rock and eat both campers before making their way to civilization.

These worms crawl to Sam and Barb’s (James L. Brewster and Elissa Neil) house and sneak into their basement. When the couple sets off on a journey, their two sons are left at home to defend the position. These are student Pete (Tom DeFranco) and his horror-loving younger brother Charles (Charles George Hildebrant).

Heavy rain delays their departure and Sam checks for flooding in the basement. She gets there and is greeted by giant worm teeth that send her on permanent vacation. They devour them and start looting the family members one by one before visiting the neighbors. It’s up to the two boys to stop these creatures from spreading.

Can Pete and Charles stop this flesh-eating rampage, or will they become another meal for…THE DEATH BREAK?!?!?

This backyard production has such a likeable charm that’s hard to deny, and the effects are cheap – but still great. The creatures themselves look like they came straight from the symbiote planet, but this movie came out before Marvel Comics introduced Venom and long before they invented this world.

The Deadly Spawn is an underground classic that lives forever in the hearts of horror nerds who were lucky enough to track down a high quality VHS version of it back in the day, and it’s still hard to get financed, but a good version is currently on Shudder available.

Here is the trailer.

READ MORE: Heading into Halloween Night 11: “The Fly” and “The Blob”

This article was mentioned: 1980s B-Movies Heading into Halloween Fred Dekker Horror Night of the Creeps The Deadly Spawn Tom Atkins

More about: Movie Reviews Films