"The good news is your dates are here. The bad news is... they're dead!"

Throw 1950s B-movies, alien slug invasions, John Hughes, 80s zombie mayhem, and a dash of the slasher flick into a cinematic pot, and I guarantee that you will get the 1986 cult classic Night of the Creeps, directed by Fred Dekker!



Synopsis from IMDB: "In 1959, an alien experiment crashes to earth and infects a fraternity member. They freeze the body, but in the modern day, two geeks pledging a fraternity accidentally thaw the corpse, which proceeds to infect the campus with parasites that transform their hosts into killer zombies."

Night of the Creeps is the kind of movie that any young horror movie fan would love to make. Fred Dekker is that fan. It's all homages to different sub-genres of horror and sci-fi, and it's all incredibly playful. The opening sequence sets things up perfectly by switching from a cheap 80s sci-fi movie in the first couple minutes, to a 1950s monster movie, that captures the "teens vs. space invader" genre perfectly. It goes so far as to making that sequence in black and white. It's really fun, and perfectly sets up the kind of movie-universe that the characters live in, where people in the 50s are characters from The Blob, and characters in the 80s are written by John Hughes.



BUT... the John Hughes style college comedy characters, dialogue, and the first few scenes that come after the great opening kind of fall flat. The film opens with such a bang (by smushing together a whole bunch of B-movies into one), that the following act, with all of the straight comedy, seems to stretch on for a lot longer than it should. The main character Chris, played by Jason Lively (European Vacation), is likable enough, but his best friend J.C. is incredibly annoying. A really bizarre aspect of the film, that I notice mostly in the dry spot, is that every character or place is very obviously named after horror movie directors. The lead girls name is Cynthia Cronenberg...


Named after Roger Corman...


"Get me Sgt. Raimi!!"

The movie begins to pick up again, once they introduce the hilarious Tom Atkins (Escape From New York, Halloween III: Season of the Witch) as Detective Cameron. He's the "cop who's seen some shit" stock character and SO MUCH MORE! He's troubled by his past, and constantly has ominous dreams. He's a smart ass who doesn't play by the rules, and he brings another pulpy element to the movie. Once he is introduced, Night of the Creeps continues with its fast-paced horror hijinks.



The monsters in the film are really fun. The films main creatures are slimy slugs that turn characters into Dead-Alive style zombies by jumping in your mouth. The special effects and the monsters look great! The slugs are done with animatronics and piles of stop motion, and they look creepier than what most CGI effects could create (although the recent and similar SLITHER did not do bad with the CGI slugs it did use). The living dead look great as well, especially when the effects team gives us the boney rotting corpses. The gore is inventive, especially by the climax, where we get some shotgun/flamethrower zombie/slug action! There's even a scene where Detective Cameron uses a cigarette and a hairspray bottle as a home-made flamethrower, thus blowing up many a ghoul!



The characters (even the annoying ones) grow on you over time, and there are some genuinely sad moments in the second half, involving characters I was excited to see killed off. It's very well shot, with an almost constant slow-pan, and a couple stylish film tricks. The horror-comedy onscreen, near the end, even begins to inch close to the Sam Raimi/Peter Jackson, holy grail of splat-stick, but it never reaches that level of dizzying camera-movements, breakneck pace and style, or that realm of ridiculous bodily dismemberment. Night of the Creeps never really aspires to, though. It's more interested in a slightly more innocent look at B-movies, 80s horror, and 50s sci-fi. The references become a lot more organic late in the film, with a fun Dick Miller cameo! It never feels like it's too good for the genre, or that its ironic. It's like a completely sincere and earnest B-movie, that is light in tone and is more interested in giving a good time than scaring you or ripping on the genre.



Fred Dekker directed this film, a fantastic "Goonies vs. universal monsters" movie called Monster Squad, and the disappointing Robocop 3. He is a very talented guy, and I think someone should give him some work, and get those gears ah-turnin. I thinks it's about time for Night of the Creeps II: The Quickening! C'mon Mr. Dekker! Thrill me!

William Castle, An Insecure Hitchcock

William Castle is this great (matter of opinion) showman of 1950s and 60s horror films. His thing was gimmicks.



In his film 13 Ghosts, the audience was given a pair of glasses. The happy-go-luck cinema-goers at the time were only able to see the ghosts in the movie with the glasses on, just like the characters in the film! In a pivotal moment in the House on Haunted Hill (starring Vincent Price!), when a skeleton rises out of a vat of acid, a plastic skeleton flies from behind the screen and over the audiences heads. In Mr. Sardonicus, the audience was able to choose whether the monster lived or died, but Mr Castle knew his fans well. Thinking no one would choose a happy ending he only shot the gruesome ending, including the cruel death. Many people felt bamboozled, the moment that Mr. Castle popped up onto the screen, before the ending, and counted up the ballots.



His masterpiece, The Tingler, is about a slug-like creature that grows on peoples spines. When they are in a state of terror, it tingles, and the only way to conquer the creepy-crawly is to scream. It escapes during an autopsy and roams around the room, at a point in which selected chairs in the audience were set to buzz. The audience members only choice was to scream, like the movie told them to, thus causing pandemonium in the theater.

He was denied the chance to direct Rosemary's Baby, mainly because the writer of the book said "You're not good enough." He stumbled back to the producer role, as Roman Polanski stepped up to the plate.

He had fans, movies that people loved to see, and a great approach to film making and the art of gimmickry... but he always wanted to make something that would stand the test of time, like the films of Alfred Hitchcock. He compensated for his lack of confidence in his own films by jam packing them with gimmicks and things to get butts in seats.



Can you see the pain and insecurity hidden in his eyes, and behind that kind smile?

Lifeforce: The Cinematic Sci-Fi Event of the 80s (That you Might Never Have Heard Of)!

Lifeforce (1985) is the cinematic sci-fi event of the 80s. This was how the film was billed. To say it was a letdown, financially and critically, is an understatement... but I disagree. I think that Life force is the fucking bomb. It's so crazy, and pure, and all over the place, and I love it!




Lifeforce is based on a book by Colin Wilson, called The Space Vampires.




I have not read this book.

Lifeforce is directed by Tobe Hooper, fresh off of Poltergeist and all of its mildly childish horror and success, along with Funhouse, a movie that is pointless and reminds me too much of The Goonies. Cannon Pictures confronted Mr. Hooper and offered him a whole shit load of money and a three-picture deal. Tobe Hooper accepted it, mainly to keep up his coke addiction. And coke he did. He made two of the most batshit insane movies of his career, or the 80s for that matter. The third film he made was his grand-guignol wacky Dennis Hopper sequel to the picture that made his career. That film is Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and it is almost as awesome as this film. The first film he made, however, is a very large budget (for the time, anyway) genre smash. This is that film.



Lifeforce is written by Dan O'Bannon, the same man who wrote another favorite of mine called Dark Star (a far-out, low-budget hippie version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by first time film maker John Carpenter). He wrote and directed Dead and Buried and, more famously, Return of the Living Dead, the ultimate in zombies vs. punks mayhem. Not many know this, but Return of the Living Dead is actually a story of how old people and the youth of the eighties work together like peanut butter and dishwasher detergent. Dan O'Bannon also wrote Total Recall (ultra-violent Arnie sci-fi directed by Paul Verhoeven), a segment of Heavy Metal (a Canadian-made animated mind-fuck), and a little film you might of heard of called Alien (something something groundbreaking). Alien, itself, is a rip-off of Roger Corman monster movie quickies and paranoia sci-fi from the 50s, along with being basically a horror remake of the entire second act of Dark Star. At this time, however, it was in the seemingly perpetual state of being ripped off, a bandwagon which Lifeforce sort of jumps on... sort of.



(Spoiler alert... sorta. I say this because part of the fun of the film is every single turn the film makes, and some of these are given away.)

Lifeforce is like a culminating project for O' Bannon. It basically collects themes from every one of his films, and jams them all into one orgy of sexy space vampire madness! The first bit deals with some of his most familiar themes, like the isolation of being in space, and the "alien causing anarchy on board" sci-fi trope. This is all in the realm of Dark Star and Alien. Then, after space bats attack, a crazy phallic shaped H.R. Giger-esque spaceship is discovered, and naked women in crystal pods are taken on board... we begin to move on. This is only the first ten or so minutes, but right off the bat it looks like the kind of Alien rip-off I would absorb in a flash, like the wicked Peter Weller vehicle Leviathan. But Lifeforce is not okay with being merely another Galaxy of Terror. It's too busy gearing up to BLOW YOUR FUCKING MIND!




Then we venture to Earth, where we witness the lady from the crystal wander around a science facility, naked, where she sucks the "lifeforce" out of many a person, by slipping them the tongue. She leaves them as cartoony-eyed, shriveled up zombies, begging for more energy to ease the pain of being dead. This already reminds me of some of the zombies from Return of the Living Dead. This is in no way a bad thing, though. I adore the fact that this is like a big collage of the rest of Mr. O' Bannon’s other movies, that are bursting with some of my favorite sci-fi plots and themes.



The flesh-and-bones, soul-sucking vampires/ zombies/ alien-infected are constantly using up their moisture or something, and if they don't replenish themselves quickly, they will explode into dust. There is a scene where one of them is locked up in a cell, and, at this point, he's in need of a tall glass of "lifeforce". He gets up the energy to stand, and then runs at the bars in a surge of hunger. He immediately explodes when he hits themetal poles. But still, even as walking time-bombs, these space vampires are able to keep on infecting, at a rapid pace... and the naked lady is still out there, roaming the streets.


Above: still frame from Return of the Living Dead.

Then the film becomes sort of a Hammer Movie Mystery film, as the girl begins to swap bodies. A detective is hot on her trail. Pre-ST:NG Patrick Stewart shows up. There is possession of some sort. This happens.


But I'm not doing this justice. I'm barely even touching on the madness that this film is. It takes place in England, and there are hilarious flashbacks from the astronaut that found the aliens. And then there is the climax! The film goes from being small, to larger with the dust vampires, then focuses on the detective body-swap plotline, and then everything meets back in the middle. The third act is a crazy zombie apocalypse, the kind thatReturn of the Living Dead never really dove into much. It's absolute madness. Those dusty vampires from before have spread the infection, except they have now become more like rotting zombies. The working class kind. Next thing you know, there's Ghostbusters style bright lights flying through the sky, and more space-bats than you can shake a stick at! Boobzilla comes back from the beginning, to suck up "lifeforce" from all the surrounding zombies, and you never really understand the aliens true motives. Then there is crazy soul consuming sex.



The film came out. It bombed. The 80s concluded. Turns out that audiences were way more into this Star Wars thing, rather than what Cannon promised to be the sci-fi event of the decade. Another decade passes. It remains undiscovered, but still a fantastic little B-movie gem from the masters of the genre. It's a film that is epic in scope. It's batshit insane. It's pure, unfiltered science fiction. It has many flaws, such as some of the very cornball dialogue, but it fits in with the atmosphere of the film. See it.

In loving memory of Dan O' Bannon. He only wrote movies for the best.



P.S. The DVD copy of Lifeforce is different then the much tighter theatrical cut. If you can find it on VHS, or go see it on the big screen, then do so before getting the DVD. It has recently played at a couple rep cinemas in Toronto. Definitely the kind of movie to see on the big screen, or at least with a group of people.