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NIGHT OF THE CREEPS • THE HIDDEN |
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| In Fred Dekker’s Night of the Creeps (1986), the nasty slug-like aliens arrive in meteoric fashion via an escape pod jettisoned by a fleeing spaceship. It’s the late ’50s and the critters are hungry for brains. Not knowing any better, the first victim they come across is some meathead college jock, and right there the movie might have ended with the slimey little critters dying from starvation. Luckily, a plot device puts the guy (and his parasite) into a cryogenic freeze, and for the time being the world is safe. A quarter of a century later, two loser students at the school accidentally unfreeze him, and the thawing body releases hundreds of parasites to wreak havoc on the campus (apparently the cold inspired the original alien to procreate). Coed after coed are turned into brain-eating slug-controlled zombies, and the two losers join forces with the prettiest girl on campus and a crazed cop to battle the alien infestation. At least the heroes have the good sense not to kill ‘em all until a busload of worthless frat boys are infected. |
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| Night of the Creeps is a B-horror film that respects its own genre. Director Dekker cast several B-movie veterans including Dick Miller and Tom Atkins (as the maniacal cop). The school and several main characters are named after horror directors--Corman University, Sergeant Raimi, Cynthia Cronenberg, Detective Landis, and Roy Cameron. Dekker’s script is loaded with witty one liners (and a few lame ones) and there is plenty of gore to keep things interesting. What’s more, Dekker attacks every gratuitous scene with gleeful energy, much like Troma Film’s Lloyd Kaufman might. |
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| Director Jock Sholder’s The Hidden (1987) also features an parasitic alien creature (or two) that invade a human body and take control, turning them into fast-driving, gun-loving killers with a passion for loud metal music. They are also horny as hell. But, as entertaining as all that sounds, the best gimmick in this sci-fi/action flick is that once inside a human, these aliens sprout tentacles that form sort of a second skeleton, allowing the body to remain animated long after it has been shot to shit by high-powered police firearms. |
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| The Hidden opens with a violent bank robbery and chase that ends with the perpetrator crashing his car before being hit by a hail of police bullets (quite graphically). The thing is, the guy won’t go down and is laughing his ass off. When he does succumb, he is taken to the hospital and the alien forces his way out of the robber’s horribly distended throat and mouth. Without any foreplay at all, the creature forces himself into the patient in the adjoining bed who then becomes the next psycho. Of course, this poor guy is not the last to be turned into a homicidal maniac, so a hard-boiled detective (Michael Nouri) teams up with a laid-back FBI agent (Kyle MacLachlan) to track down the cause of the killer crime spree. The most entertaining host/victim is a stripper, whose body allows the alien to explore the differences between men and women. On the surface, all this may sound a lot like the 1997 Denzel Washington vehicle, Fallen, where a fallen angel moved from killer to killer--and it is, just a lot more fun. |
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Send Jim an E-mail |
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