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| "Enough with the mustache comments. Don't make me shoot you in the face." |
A decade before Scream and The Faculty
popularized the postmodern horror-comedy, there was Fred Dekker's Night of
the Creeps. A perfect blend of clever genre satire and well-crafted bloody
thrills, Creeps is one of the most fun and unique horror films of the
'80s, right alongside well-loved classics like A Nightmare on Elm Street and
Fright Night. It deserves, like those, to be a household name among
genre fans, but only in the last decade did it really surface on the mainstream
radar beyond its passionate cult following. Perhaps it was just too far ahead
of its time: it satirized the 1980s wave of horror films while that wave was
still in full force, and maybe viewers weren't ready to laugh at its tropes
yet. It certainly didn't help that the film spent about two decades out of
print after its initial VHS release, inaccessible to all but hardcore
collectors. Thirty years after that release, this is definitely its time to
regain the spotlight. If you liked the genre-skewering humor of Cabin in the
Woods or Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, you'll definitely dig Night of
the Creeps: it planted the seeds from which all those subsequent films
grew, and perhaps none of them would have been the same without it.
Strange things are going on at Corman University. Amid the
usual house parties, class struggles, and campus drama, alien parasites are
slithering around unnoticed, and the dead are starting to rise. Thus begins
Dekker's delicious cocktail of awkward college comedy, snarky dissection of
movie cliches, and honestly really awesome zombie flick. Naturally it's the
campus's misfit geeks (Jason Lively and Steve Marshall) to the rescue; they're
already used to fighting for survival against their pretentious and buffoonish
frat-boy tormentors, and zombies are only so different. Also investigating the
strange occurrences is a world-weary detective (John Carpenter regular Tom
Atkins) who is so self-consciously hard-boiled that he reads Raymond Chandler
novels to keep his banter sharp and witty.
With a plot and cast of characters that could easily be too
silly or too over-the-top, Dekker controls the reigns perfectly, and makes it
all work much better than it seems like it should. The horror-comedy is a very
tricky thing to pull off: many of the movies that attempt it lean too far one
way or the other, and end up feeling like a horror film with incongruously
silly bits of comedy (Elm Street 2) or a comedy with jarringly dark bits
of horror (Gremlins). Here we have a film that takes itself just
seriously enough to deliver some strong, well-developed characters and genuine
shock and horror, but also has enough self-aware humor to pull off an
astounding amount of genre in-jokes without it feeling like overkill. Horror
and sci-fi fans will find a lot to laugh at (the name of the college should tip
the film's hand to the type of “spot the reference” game that it plays), but
will still be impressed when the movie bares its teeth.
As sure a hand as Dekker brings to the material, the cast
plays a huge part in making this balance work. Lively and Marshall are awkward
but likable, funny but realistic, as out geek-heroes. Jill Whitlow gives an
equally strong performance as a Veronica Sawyer-type popular girl who is well
aware that her friends are terrible people and doesn't mind doing something
about it. But while they anchor the film in the real world, it's Atkins who
utterly steals the show as the wannabe-Philip-Marlowe detective. It's an
effortlessly cool and funny performance that lands just on the right side of
parody, but nonetheless has some depth to it. His character also gives the
movie its most quotable lines (“thrill me”).
Then there are the film's other major stars, the zombies.
They're awesome: ghoulishly fun villains that are quite gory, with plenty of
exploding heads and ripped-off faces, but in a charmingly comic-book-y rather
than realistic or gross-out way. Less Walking Dead or Dead-Alive
and more of an R-rated take on Thriller, if you will. Night of the
Creeps was famously a huge inspiration for the mid-2000s zombie
splatter-comedy Slither (see The Movie Sleuth's Spiritual Remakes
article for more on that comparison), but the style of the zombies is one of
the biggest indicators of these films' fundamental differences. Slither
loves pushing the gore envelope to comically disgusting heights, like Peter
Jackson's stomach-churning early movies, but Night of the Creeps feels
more like a film counterpart to the Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis classic Zombies
Ate My Neighbors. The team behind these excellent make-up effects includes
Robert Kurtzman and Howard Berger, who would soon form two-thirds of the K.N.B.
EFX group, of Evil Dead II, Tales from the Darkside, and Army
of Darkness fame. Even on their first project, their talents are
first-rate.
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| "Be careful. You'll burn their mullets." |
After spending all of the 1990s and most of the 2000s out of
print, available only as overpriced used tapes or dubious-quality bootlegs, Night
of the Creeps finally made its DVD and blu-ray debut in 2009, as a special
edition director's cut. As with Army of Darkness, the main difference
between the two versions is an alternate ending. But to be honest, just like Army
of Darkness, I think the studio was right to say that the director's
original ending just didn't work. I appreciate what Fred Dekker was going for
with his finale, but I think the ending for the theatrical cut finishes the
film on a far more appropriate note. Fortunately, the disc includes the
theatrical ending as well, although just as a special feature. Both endings
have their fervent fans, so perhaps it isn't fair to say that one is better
than the other, but I strongly encourage viewers to watch both, and see which
they prefer. Really, a bit of a choose-your-own-ending style fits with the
postmodern attitude of the film anyway.
If Night of the Creeps has eluded you like it has so
many horror fans, this is the Halloween to correct that glaring gap in your
genre education. Aside from Return of the Living Dead, I can't think of
another 1980s zombie flick this fun. As far as postmodern horror-comedies go,
it's every bit as enjoyable and smartly written as Scream and The Faculty,
and it balances its macabre and comedic elements just as well. This is one of a
few films that I watch most years to get pumped up for Halloween. From the
ghoulish zombies to the snarky humor to the distinctly-80s horror aesthetic, it
perfectly sets the mood for the season. Definitely check this one out.
“Thrill me!”
- Christopher S. Jordan
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