Night of the Creeps

Thanks to the proliferation of genre-oriented festivals in the new millennium, a trend has arisen involving films whose main strength consists in imaginatively combining various formulas and genre templates. Though these films and their makers often appear to be innovative and progressive, they are essentially just repeating history. The creators of genre B-movies came up with the same principle in the 1980s, when they threw red meat to the insatiable video market (which at the time was the equivalent of today's genre festivals). Only films that offered the most distinctive and complex plots (as well as attractive packaging) could find success in the deluge of titles in video rental shops. Night of the Creeps is an exemplary product of that time, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the fact that it was made by the trash-oriented company Delphi V Productions, which was contractually bound to TriStar Pictures (now Columbia). The film is an absurd mix of a nerdy college flick and a 1950s horror B-movie. The awkwardness of a love story set on college campuses and revolving around nerds, jocks, fraternities and a dance is mixed with rubber aliens and invasive worms, as well as elements that were fashionable in 1980s horror movies: serial killers and the living dead. Just like contemporary hyper-sophisticated genre flicks, Night of the Creeps openly references the films that inspired it, particularly Plan 9 from Outer Space and Night of the Living Dead. Only it’s less dramaturgically polished and more sincerely trashy. (09/21/2013)

This film is the exact reason why I don’t agree with those that constantly repeat the “axiom” that modern horror is worthless and that things were better in the 80s… Bullshit on top of bullshit; time and the memories of the old days are very powerful. If someone made something like this today (in every aspect with regards to quality), everybody would ignore it. (06/27/2012)

In this mishmash of 50s monster horror and 80s teen comedies, Fred Dekker makes it very clear from start to finish how big a fan of B-grade sci-fi horror he is. But rather than playing more with genre conventions, he just piles one film reference on top of another, and sometimes it's too much (every other character here is named after a horror director, etc.). For fans of horror films of the time, though, it's a nice throwback. (07/19/2018)

Incarnated by Tom Atkins, the witty Detective Cameron enlivens the whole movie! There’s plenty of humour, especially at the end with the staggering finale. With so much fun in store, one is willing to forgive the horror’s obvious negatives, namely the stiff actors and the striking ‘B-ness’. For B movies fans, however, this might be a little gem even when it comes to the bad sides. (05/29/2018)