It's hard not to love a good '80s
creature-feature. For that matter, it's hard not to love a
not-that-good '80s creature-feature, if the creatures are cool
enough. Case and point, Neon Maniacs: an
ambitious-beyond-its-budget monster-fest which is great in concept
but very, shall we say, idiosyncratic in execution, because the
filmmakers just didn't have the resources to pull off their vision,
but decided to swing for the fences anyway. It stumbles under the
weight of its own ambitions, but does it ever have monsters! A dozen
of them, to be precise (one of whom is Andrew Divoff in his screen
debut), all with different looks, abilities, and favorite ways of
killing people. Sure, the plot makes little-to-no sense and can't be
bothered to explain just what the Neon Maniacs actually are. Sure,
you can sense the gaps where scenes don't exist or actors disappear
for a while because the budget-difficulty-plagued production would
shut down for months at a time. But you know what? You've got a fun
cast of John Huges-era '80s teen movie archetypes fighting an
eclectic army of crazy-looking monsters, with a showdown brawl at a
battle of the bands; this movie can get away with pretty much any
shortcomings and still be an absolute riot.
This all comes down
to the film's very troubled production: the low-budget movie was
constantly plagued by financial difficulties, leading to long gaps
between periods of shooting when actors' availabilities would change
or go away. This means that side-characters tend to come and go from
the narrative (the gruff cop who doesn't believe Natalie, for
instance, suddenly delegates his entire role to another cop for most
of act two before reappearing later, presumably for scheduling
reasons), and holes are left in the story where scenes were written,
but never shot because they ran out of money. For instance there
clearly is meant to be a (probably significant) sequence where our
trio of protagonists travel into the Maniacs' catacombs, learn more
about them, and bond as a team, which is instead replaced with a
single shot of them standing outside the catacombs' door before the
plot jumps abruptly forward, and Natalie and Steven start treating
Paula like an old friend, and not some kid they just met one scene
ago.
However,
with a couple exceptions like that, most of what has to be here is
here (at least in broad strokes) and all in all the film works better
and feels more coherent than it probably should, under the
circumstances. It is all tied together by the cast's only real
constants, our three fun and likable (if shallowly characterized)
leads. They're very archetypal, but they play the roles well: the
straight-laced A-student whose worldview is suddenly turned
upside-down, the awkward but good-hearted nerd who dreams of making
himself over into a rock star, and the even more awkward youngster
with grand dreams of being the next great horror director, but who is
clearly on track to be more of an Ed Wood than a John Carpenter. The
parts are written as well as they need to be, and are acted
effectively with warmth and humor, and that goes a long way to create
good will with the audience that glosses over the holes left in the
script by the production. The film also makes very strong use of its
mostly-nighttime San Francisco locations, employing lots of neon
lights to create a great atmosphere. And for a very-80s movie with a
neon-lit color palette, the climactic showdown against the monsters
happening at a battle of the bands, under brightly-colored stage
lights, could not be more perfect. That it's a battle of the bands
that doubles as a Halloween costume party makes it even better. All
in all it's a pretty well-shot, good-looking movie, despite being
clearly rough around the edges. It's one of those movies that at face
value feels a bit clumsy, but that's easier to cut some slack once
you know what a troubled production it had, and you can appreciate
how relatively well the filmmakers pulled it off using what they had
to work with. It may have big problems, but it's a lovable underdog.
But of
course the main draw of this movie is the Neon Maniacs themselves: a
fantastically off-the-wall bunch of creatures who are just really
cool to see in action, even if they frequently make us ask, “why?”
Some of them look like they were once human: a samurai, an archer, an
executioner, a brutality-prone cop, and a malpracticing doctor, among
others, all of whom have recognizably human clothes, but faces and
bodies twisted into comic-book monstrosities. But then some of them
look like they were never human, like a one-eyed, big-headed
lizard-person, or a neanderthal who looks like he just walked off the
set of War of the Gargantuas.
Just what are they, where do they come from, and are they people
turned into monsters or monsters dressed like people? We don't know,
and it's unclear whether the movie knows. Questions like what they
are and why they're here, why they have oddly specific themed
outfits, or even why they're called Neon Maniacs are left completely
unanswered. In the opening scene, they are apparently summoned when
an old man finds a stack of trading cards with their pictures on them
(and an occult symbol on the back) hidden inside a skull under the
Golden Gate Bridge. That makes about as much sense as anything else
in the movie, and is the most explanation we ever get. Either the
movie doesn't know and doesn't care, or exposition scenes about their
backstory were among the material that was written but never shot; I
lean towards the latter, since there is that scene when it feels like
our heroes were originally supposed to venture into their world.
But
it's possible that it just doesn't matter; at the end of the day,
might it be enough just that they're a weird, comic-book-ish band of
outlandish monsters? Sure, nothing about them makes sense, but that
wacky off-the-wall attitude is part of the movie's strange, scrappy
charm. You don't come to Neon Maniacs
looking for logic; you come to Neon Maniacs
looking for scenes of Neon Maniacs wrecking stuff. The movie may not
have narrative cohesion, but it certainly has that, by the bucketful.
The creature effects are (mostly) great; the Maniacs look awesome
(the coolest ones, anyway), the eclectic nature of their appearance
makes for a wild funhouse of a movie, and some of the kills are
equally well-designed. The movie probably had the financial troubles
that it did specifically because it decided, rather overambitiously,
to create a dozen distinct, very different-looking monsters on a very
small budget, but they pulled it off, and their ambition is rewarded
with one cool menagerie of villains. The film's main makeup designer,
Allan Apone, had previously worked on Friday the 13th
Part 3 and Return of
the Living Dead, and would go on
to work on many of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies as well as
HBO's Westworld; he is
an accomplished artist to say the least, and he works low-budget
wonders here, and is likely the person most responsible for this
movie being as memorable as it is. His creatures definitely resemble
a rougher-around-the-edges related family to Clive Barker's
Nightbreed (though
four years earlier). At least visually; while the Nightbreed were the
misunderstood heroes of their story, the Neon Maniacs are 100%
outright villains. Since they probably get at least a few scenes
fewer than they were supposed to because of the budget difficulties,
the pack of Maniacs proves large enough that none of them really rise
to the top to become the primary monster; they are very much ensemble
villains, and it would have been nice to see them each get more
moments to shine. But still, it is very cool to know that the
mad-doctor Maniac, under heavy prosthetics, is none other than future
Wishmaster Andrew
Divoff, beginning his career as he would forever continue it, under
ghoulish makeup as a horror villain.
- Christopher S. Jordan
Share this review, you maniacs!