Night of the Creeps Blu-ray Review

Remastered, the ’80s cult classic comes alive on Blu-ray.

STORYTELLING:  
Night of the Creeps has a pretty unconventional opening. We’re immediately greeted by semi-nude, pint sized aliens involved in some kind cosmic altercation. One of them ejects something from the ship into Earth’s atmosphere, and well, there goes the neighborhood.

The beginning of the film is set in the ’50s and sports a cool, retro black-and-white look that paints the film as a clever homage to B-Movies of that particular era.

After the all-too-brief opening, we are thrust into the saturated and neon world of 1980s America, in the midst of pledge week – just in time for two social outcasts to attempt to join a fraternity in the hopes that one of them can land the cutest girl in all the land (or that particular town) played by the ostensibly adorable Jill Whitlow.

Their task is a simple one: steal a corpse from the morgue and drop it in front of a rival frat house. Mistakenly, as is typical in this genre, they manage to unearth and defrost a frozen cadaver from the film’s opening sequence instead.

Whoops.

Unlike most cadavers, this one lumbers around and spews sentient slugs that jump into people’s mouths, devouring their brains and hatching more slugs inside. Not exactly boyfriend material.

Tom Atkins, playing an old, washed up detective who is one stereotype away from a bad cliche, knows the score. He was a simple beat cop during the opening sequence, and saw what these slug zombies are capable of doing firsthand.

Atkins pairs up with the lead (portrayed by Jason Lively) to investigate and stop the creepy crawlers before they destroy the whole town – and hopefully help our valiant hero land the girl.

Atkins is the primary force behind the film, because it’s his delivery (reading off a laundry list quotable one-liners) and general attitude that propels the film past its silliest moments. The rest of the cast does an admirable job, but Atkins steals every scene he’s in – so much so that the Lively and Whitlow should consider filing a civil suit for larceny.

The film itself wouldn’t be possible without a solid script courtesy of writer-director Dekker, who carefully skirts the line between comedy and horror. Even when the film is just a playful homage, it never feels like a pointless retread. Dekker goes with what he knows, and the film just “clicks” as a result.

It helps that Dekker moves the film along at a brisk pace and never burdens his audience with needless exposition. The aim is to make a fun, entertaining film, and Dekker succeeds on all fronts.

It’s tough to truly categorize the film as science-fiction or horror, so I’ll award it the easiest label that I can think of – unadulterated fun.

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