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 b-movie alright, but a highly entertaining one. I wish they still made movies like this today. Wait a minute, SLITHER (2006) sounds like a remake of this film! They even got similar tag lines. Night of the Creeps tagline was ‘If you scream..you are dead’, and Slither’s tagline is ‘Whatever you do…don’t scream’.

The movie starts off with a 50’s flashback, where space aliens accidentally send a botched experiment down to Earth. The experiment in fact, is a bunch of slug-like creatures that kill people and take over their bodies. Not really sure what the aliens where trying to accomplish with that in their home planet, but there you have it. 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 mediocre. 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. The story itself seems to borrow themes from various genres. Let’s see. We got (midget) aliens (ALIEN), spaceships (STAR WARS), slugs (SHIVERS), zombies (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD), two college boys trying to get laid (LEMON POPSICLE), an Axe Murdere (FRIDAY THE 13th). However all those themes are mixed together masterfully. Hey, trust me. It’s not easy to get aliens and zombies in the same film. You have to give the director (Fred Dekker) some credit for that. And besides, any movie that has a frat-boy’s slug infested heads blowing up, is a winner in my book.

The story moves around in a hap hazard 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 your 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. It’s really rare these days, and a DVD edition is long overdue.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age