A movie like Night of the Creeps was probably never intended to be a big success. First time director Fred Dekker had been an up-and-coming writer in Hollywood when he got the chance to direct the movie.
It’s a zombie movie that’s actually about zombies not flesh eating ghouls. Yet going into the movie, people might have thought it was the wrong flick as it’s starts in space as a zombie humanoid dwarf is being chased by two regular humanoid dwarves. They’re trying to stop it from releasing an “experiment” into outer space but are unsuccessful.
Then flash to 1959 Corman University, fictional college somewhere along Route 66. A young co-ed, Pam (Alice Cadogen), is out on a date with her new beau, Johnny (Ken Herron), a preppy young man with a buzzcut you can set your watch to. But they sound find out there’s a maniac on the loose from the nearby mental hospital for the criminally insane whose wielding a fire are. They are told by a young cop (Dave Alan Johnson) who is Pam’s ex-boyfriend who tells them just to go home after the awkward interaction.
But Johnny becomes more interested when he sees the cylinder containing the “experiment” burst through the night sky like a ball of fire. He drives out to a wooded area along the highway to take a quick look. Yet, a huge slug bursts out and goes in his mouth, down his throat. Pam, growing nervous in Johnny’s convertible doesn’t notice the maniac creeping up behind her to attack her as the movie switches to 1986.
I remember watching this late one Saturday night on USA’s Up All Night where host Gilbert Gottfried criticized the total shifts from alien sci-fi to black and white sequence with Johnny and Pam to the current time frame which is where most of the movie is set. Chris Romero (Jason Lively) and James Carpenter “J.C.” Hooper (Steve Marshall), who uses crutches to help him walk, are at a frat party during Pledge Week at Corman.
Chris is lovelorn as it’s his first year in college and he’s getting over the breakup of a high school sweetheart. He spots a young co-ed, Cynthia Cronenberg (Jill Whitlow), at a party at the Beta Epsilon house and is smitten with her. Thinking the only way she’d be interested in him is if he’d become a Beta himself, Chris and J.C. arrange a meeting with members who obviously won’t pledge them. The cocky, arrogant Brad (Allan Kayser), who’s a Beta leader, sends them to the medical building to steal a cadaver corpse and leave it on a rival frat house’s front door as a prank.
They go to the medical building but find themselves in a lab where Johnny has been cryogenically frozen. Realizing it’s all they can find, they release him from suspended animation but Johnny comes alive. Chris and J.C. rush out passing by a med student (David Paymer) who becomes infected with a slug.
This leads to Det. Ray Cameron (Tom Atkins) called to investigate the report of two bodies found. But Johnny’s is gone as his zombified body lunches toward Cynthia’s sorority house where his head splits open and more slugs come out of his head. It turns out the slugs use brains (human and animals) to reproduce
What makes the movie so enjoyable is it doesn’t take itself too seriously. In 1986, horror movies had been given the run-around by the slasher craze. While many had comedic elements, they seemed to be straight horror. Dekker sends up the tropes of horror flicks.
Cameron is a hardened cop alone as a middlea-aged man living in a small apartment drinking booze and cigarettes as a daily diet. He was the young cop that dated Pam years earlier. He later reveals to Chris that he and his partner found Johnny’s body in the woods and Pam’s body parts were found everywhere. He later tracked down the maniac and killed him burying him in a spot behind the sorority house where Pam was a member and Cynthia currently is. There’s a house mother’s cottage built over it now even though burying the water lines and laying the foundation would’ve resulted in the body’s discovery. (Yet this is a movie so why worry much?)
Other tropes include a coroner (Vic Polizos) who is always seen holding a sandwich he’s eating or some other food item. This is a tired cliche that is in movies and TVs of cops and coroners eating nonchalantly at gruesome crime scenes. At the time, mixing a lot of comedy with horror was unheard of in movies. When the med student’s zombified naked bloody body in the middle of an autopsy walks past a cop, the cop is so interested reading a report he just thinks it’s a co-worker telling him he’ll see him tomorrow. This was before Evil Dead 2 and Beetlejuice. (One of the cops is named Raimi as a nod to Sam Raimi.)
Most of the characters’ have surnames as a nod to horror filmmakers of the era. A janitor (Robert Kino) is named Mr. Miner, for Steve Miner who had hired Dekker in the early 1980s to write a Godzilla script that was never produced. Yet despite the movie’s love and appreciation for sci-fi/horror, it wasn’t a huge success make over $591,000 at the box office. Dekker already had The Monster Squad greenlit and there’s bathroom graffiti “Go Monster Squad!” seen.
But Dekker’s career as a director ended almost as soon as it began. Monster Squad, while loved by horror fans, wasn’t as successful either. Dekker was later tapped to direct RoboCop 3 rewriting a script by Frank Miller. Production began in Atlanta in the winter of 1991 but the bankruptcy of Orion Pictures pushed the movie’s released to November 1993. The movie underperformed in America but was successful on a worldwide level. But critics panned it and Dekker would work as a script doctor here and there.
As the Internet was still in its public use infancy, Creeps became a cult classic popular for its TV version which included Dekker’s intended ending which was longer. This ending would also be used on the 2009 DVD release. SPOILERS AHEAD!!! The theatrical ending had Chris and Cynthia having a romantic moment after Cameron sacrifices himself blowing up the sorority house where human brains were stored in the basement. The slugs were reproducing there and seem to be all there. However, a zombified dog comes up to Cynthia who crouches down to pet it only for a jump scare as a slug come out of its mouth toward the screen. Then the credits roll.
The longer ending has Cameron’s corpse burnt to a crisp walking away from the sororite house as he was infected before the explosion. His body drops to the ground and his head burst open revealing slugs who go into a nearby cemetery. Then as it seems the credits are going to roll, the alien ship at the beginning is shown searching the cemetery by spotlight as it moves across the sky.
Dekker explains when he showed this to the producers and studio execs, the special effects were being finalized and they didn’t like it, making him reshoot the ending with a jump scare. I also think the ending hints as a possible sequel which the bigwigs might not have liked. But still, seeing alternative endings during this time was unheard of.
Despite the college setting, it’s mostly Atkins who steals the show. During the movie’s climax as the Betas have become gruesome zombies (and the “Creeps” in the title) are lurching toward the sorority, he delivers the dialogue with great deadpan delivery. He tells the sorority sisters he has good news and bad news for them. The good news is their dates are here. But as one asks what is the bad news, he bluntly says with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, “They’re dead!”
You just got to love movies with scenes like this.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 