Night Of The Creeps (1986) ****

The 1980's were full of films from the horror genre that were usually cheap knock offs of films that were cheap and repetitious to begin with (I'm looking at you Friday the 13th). Relics such as The Final Terror and Mountaintop Motel Massacre were retreads of the standard horror/slasher genre throughout the '80's. Looking back on the decade now only three films that flew under the radar actually survived, not to be hails, but to be seen as gems that most of the people in the dark had long forgotten. Night of the Creeps is one of those films.

Fred Dekker's film deals with a college campus plagued by homicidal maniacs in the 1950's and alien induced zombies in the 1980's. After a crash landing in the Eisenhower era leaves a college student in cryogenic freeze, life goes on. Until the student is inadvertently thawed and releases a worm like creature that turns the victim into a zombie while gestating and creating baby zombie worms to continue a reign of terror. It's up to Chris (Jason Lively), J.C. (Steven Marshall), and Cynthia (Jill Whitlock) to stop the alien menace, with the burned out assistance of Detective Cameron (the legendary Tom Atkins).

Creeps is a homage, but not a rip off. It's traveling down a road you've been down before, yet you're seeing it from a different angle, kind of like driving down the street backwards. There's the '50's sci-fi kick. There's the Romeroesque zombies. There's the homicidal maniac traveling the streets with an axe. It's just presented in a way that doesn't take itself to seriously, yet isn't a camp parody of itself. It's like a perfect mix that doesn't fail the viewer. Atkins performance is the real stand out with him playing an over the top character that doesn't become a parody of himself.

Of course, Creeps failed at the box office and gained a slight cult audience from the home video and cable front (where I was introduced to it). As time has passed the film as grown into one of those films that act like a nice, reliable flick that no one has ever heard of, even with the great lines in the movie. Finally released to DVD this past year Night of the Creeps symbolizes that not all horror flicks from the 1980's were crap. Creeps is one of those films that didn't stand the test of time- it grew beyond it.