June 6, 2018
I recently watched The 50 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen and true to its title, many of the films I have never seen. This horror movies spotlight is responsible for some of the previous movies that I have watched (Food of the Gods and Silent Night, Deadly Night are two in particular). One of the films they mentioned was Night of the Creeps which the critics raved on what an overall fun film it was. And you know what? They weren't lying. This movie is great! I have no idea how I spent 35 years of my life without seeing this gem. It's got brain infecting slug parasites! It's got zombies! It's got head collapses! But, it's also a great eighties comedy that could've been directed by John Hughes or whoever directed the Revenge of the Nerds movies. A horror comedy film that only the 1980s could deliver.
The film opens with an alien experiment landing on Earth and infecting a fraternity member in the 1950s. The alien costumes are ridiculous and look like they have come right out of a Disney movie (not as bad as Mac and Me... but close). The infected body is cryogenically frozen at a college and we smash cut to 1986 where two loveable dorks names Chris and JC are looking to have a good time and maybe meet some girls. Chris is played by Jason Lively who played Rusty in European Vacation (the worst Vacation film... no fault of his). Chris and JC decide to pledge a fraternity to get closer to college hottie Cynthia. As part of a pledge prank, the boys release the cryogenically frozen guy from the 1950s thereby releasing the virus that moves the plot forward.
The virus manifests itself as a bunch of fist sized slugs they crawl around and jump into people's mouths. Afterwards, the person is zombified as the virus incubates until eventually the zombies head splits open and a bunch more virus slugs jump out to infect the next person. The head splitting scenes are pretty great and have a creepy effect as giant slugs pop out.
While the slugs and zombies are pretty great in this film, what really makes this film great is the characters in the film. The two main characters remind me of the two characters from Weird Science (featuring Anthony Michael Hall, another Rusty from the original Vacation). JC has some great lines that he delivers: "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! Do you think it's taking the Lord's name in vain to say "oh my God" a whole bunch of times really fast like that?" and "Why don't you go practice Goose Stepping?" and "Cynthia... my time is limited.... my like the intellect of Steve..."
While JC has some great lines, it is Detective Cameron that really steals the entire movie. His character is so over the top that for some reason, it just works. Ever line out of his mouth is a sarcastic rant: "What is this a homicide? Or a bad B-movie?" "No I'm Bozo the clown." He also has this great moment where he has been drinking and staring at murder pictures from the 1950s and confesses to Chris to murdering a murder suspect in 1958. The conversation is mainly for us the viewers to understand the blackplot but it makes no sense that the exchange would happen between the characters so Chris asks, "Is there a point to this or did you just want to confess to murdering someone?"
It's a 1980s horror flick so, of course, there is a fair amount of topless girls in the film. Overall, it's funny, got some gross horror moments, a bit of nudity, and a highly original plot. Many later films owe much to this film, Slither being an obvious one.
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