Starring - Jason Lively; Steve Marshall; Jill Whitlow; Tom Atkins & Wally Taylor Director - Fred Dekker MPAA - R "What is this, a homicide or a bad b-movie?" That is the prophetic question asked by one of the leads in one of the early scenes of this movie. Let me clear things up for you cupcake, this isn't a bad b-movie, it's a really bad b-movie. So bad, it's almost good. Almost, but not quite. The movie starts off in the 1950's with space aliens sending a botched experiment down to Earth. It is a bunch of slug-like creatures that kill people and take over their bodies. The slugs' first and only victim in the fifties is cryogenically frozen where he is of no danger to anybody. That is, until two loser university students unfreeze him in 1986. He, and the slugs inside him, promptly begin wreaking havoc and turning more co-eds into slug zombies. A slightly crazed cop (Tom Atkins) and the requisite girl with the face of an angel (Jill Whitlow) join these two geeky university students (Jason Lively and Steve Marshall) to do battle with the slugs. It more or less falls on the four of them to make the world safe again from the evil slugs. The acting is bad with a capital B. The story is worse. And the special effects are somewhere between an old rerun of Star Trek and what you see in a home movie. The only saving grace was the requisite tit-shot courtesy of Jill Whitlow. It had absolutely nothing to do with the story -- but I liked it. Actually, it was the high point of the movie for me. Of course, that isn't really saying much. The story moves around in a haphazard fashion, which gives it a leg up on some other horror films. Unlike most movies of this genre, there actually is a story. Not a great one, but it is there. This is one in a long line of movies from the 1980's that were thrown together to capitalize off the success of the Friday The 13th, Halloween and Nightmare On Elm Street movies. You could randomly select a movie out of the horror section of you local video store and probably luck into something just as good if not better. But Night Of The Creeps might make a nice addition to a b-movie horror marathon. Just don't be too upset if you can't find it. You really won't be missing that much. UPDATE: I take great pride in this review because it elicited the first unpleasant email that I ever received from a disgruntled director; and I treasure it to this day. The email was also far more clever that the screenplay of this movie. I will say this for Night Of The Creeps writer / director Fred Dekker; he has gone on to write some pretty good episodes of Enterprise, the latest Star Trek series. So I guess there really is hope that maybe someday all those people in Hollywood who are currently churning out crappy horror movies may produce something watchable too. (February 16, 2004) 3/10 - 2 because it is so bad it's almost good, and 1 for the gratuitous tit shot.

¶ 7/27/1999 04:36:00 PM

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