Night of the Creeps (1986)
August 28, 2014 6:42 AM - Subscribe

Alien brain parasites, entering humans through the mouth, turn their host into a killing zombie. Some teenagers start to fight against them.

This '80s horror comedy, loaded with references to other horror films, is a snarky delight from Fred Dekker, who also directed the much-loved The Monster Squad.

This is the 11th selection of the MeFi Horror Club.
posted by DirtyOldTown (19 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Thrill me.
posted by Etrigan at 7:07 AM on August 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


I think I saw this a couple of years ago and it was way better and more amusing than I expected.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:20 AM on August 28, 2014


Thrill me! remains the best way to answer a telephone (closely followed by growling "this is not even my desk" and hanging up).
posted by troika at 7:28 AM on August 28, 2014 [5 favorites]


Love this movie. I love the comedic tone, and I think it's very well written and fairly well acted with a few exceptions (Jill Whitlow is kind of a non-presence, and Steve Marshall pushes right up to the edge of losing me with some of his goofball schtick), but then there's Tom Frickin' Atkins and all is right with the world.

The scene with J.C.'s tape recording is really affecting...I wouldn't have expected that in such an otherwise light movie.
posted by doctornecessiter at 7:32 AM on August 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


My introduction to Tom Atkins was that my boyfriend owns this tshirt and wore it on one of our first dates, so maybe I was predisposed to liking him, but he's one of my favorite all-time character actors. The man was born to play a cop! The only person who comes close to that, I think, is Dennis Franz.
posted by troika at 7:40 AM on August 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


Thrill me! remains the best way to answer a telephone

"Thrill me" is so cool that I can't even pretend to be cool enough to answer a phone that way, and I've been known to respond with "Cthulhu fhtagn" when saluted.
posted by Etrigan at 7:43 AM on August 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


I always felt like Slither should have admitted it was a remake of Night of the Creeps.
posted by maxsparber at 10:53 AM on August 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


Night of the Creeps should have admitted it was a comic sequel to David Cronenberg's They Came from Within.

But how could one not love the line, "The good news is your dates are here. The bad news is... they're dead."?
posted by Doktor Zed at 2:54 PM on August 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


Any director who credits Dick Miller as "Special Appearance by Dick Miller" is A-OK in my book.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:33 AM on August 29, 2014


I know I'm in the minority here but I don't particularly care for this movie. I first saw it several years ago and it was so forgettable that just a couple months ago I started watching it again thinking I'd never seen it and it was about 30 minutes in to the movie before I realized I had already watched it before. Also the main character is an unlikeable douchebag who thinks that women owe him sex and treats his best friend like shit.

That said, I love the creepy zombie puppet of the escaped serial killer guy. That thing is legitimately freaky. It rivals the tar man/barrel zombie from Return of the Living Dead in creepiness.
posted by Librarypt at 12:16 PM on August 29, 2014


Librarypt: "Also the main character is an unlikeable douchebag who thinks that women owe him sex and treats his best friend like shit."

There's an obvious explanation for that behaviour.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 11:01 PM on August 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


I love this movie so much I own it on DVD. One thing no one has mentioned yet: one of the Night of the Creeps cast is an Academy Award nominee. David Paymer, who plays "the young scientist" in the beginning of the movie was nominated for an Oscar about 8 years later for best supporting actor in Mr. Saturday Night (starring Billy Crystal). At the time of Night of the Creeps, Paymer was mainly doing TV appearances on popular shows like Moonlighting and Cagney and Lacey so he wasn't a complete unknown. Actually, if you check out his IMDB he was on every popular show in the late 80s.
posted by miss-lapin at 9:02 AM on August 31, 2014


(Incidentally it's because my brain is filled with this kind of information my friends in college nicknamed me "The Patron Saint of Character Actors." I went to college before the days of IMDb.)
posted by miss-lapin at 9:03 AM on August 31, 2014


There's an obvious explanation for that behaviour.

Ok, yeah, that's actually a pretty good explanation.
posted by Librarypt at 5:34 PM on August 31, 2014 [1 favorite]


I finally got around to watching this (yeah, late, I know). It's cheesy fun, and that's what it's intended to be, but it's kind of hard to look past the inept filmmaking. The editing in particular is really, really slack, and some of the acting is... rough.

I feel like I'd enjoy this a lot more if it was just a little bit better, as it is, it kind of teeters on the edge of cheesy and just plain bad.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:47 AM on September 1, 2014


My introduction to Tom Atkins was that my boyfriend owns this tshirt

I own not only that shirt, but this one as well. I love this movie (and Tom Atkins) so damn much. "What I'm going to need is your standard flamethrower."
posted by Timmoy Daen at 2:03 PM on September 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


THis is one of those movies where the limited filmmaking and acting talent is *charming* rather than grating. There is this "hey kids! let's put on a show!" vibe I find utterly endearing.
posted by The Whelk at 3:26 PM on October 22, 2014 [2 favorites]




This film has it all.
posted by iamkimiam at 1:42 PM on October 17, 2020


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