One down, thirty to go.

NIGHT OF THE CREEPS - 1986

The original choice for tonight was to be 'Fright Night' but due to unforeseen faulty video formats that'll have to wait for now. Instead I caught up with this little 80's gem (And still sadly not out to buy, unless you wish to purchase a dreary looking bootleg). I remember seeing this film when I was a lot younger but never really ‘watching’ it. It’s a shame it’s not on more people’s list too because all told, it’s not a bad little B-Movie.

The film opens as it means to go on, with two ugly looking Aliens chasing another ugly looking Alien through their spaceship. The escaping Alien loads up something into an escape pod and fires it out into space, whereon it predictably lands in…1956. We go from glorious Technicolour to Black and White, and if you’re in any doubt as to what era we’re in, a girl talking on the telephone manages to utter “He’s so DREAMY!” to her (sadly) unseen friend who’s somewhat unbelievably called ‘Muffy’. We learn there’s an escaped lunatic on the loose, as there always is, and we follow an unfortunate couple of lovers as one of them meets the business end of the lunatics Axe, and the other gets…well to be exact he gets a face full of Slug. So now we know what that Alien was ejecting during the opening. My father used to just drown them in cups of Alcohol hidden in the Garden, but everyone has a method that works for them.

We forward to 1986, 30 years later for those of you numerically challenged and we meet two best friends, with the all too familiar surnames of Romero and Carpenter (In a neat touch, the main characters share the surnames of famous horror/Sci Fi directors. Including Landis, Cameron, Raimi, Cronenberg and Hooper). There’s the dream girl, her asshole boyfriend, who by the way, happens to have the blondest hair I’ve ever seen on a man. It’s like it’s been kissed by the sun. Christopher Walken got the same look in ‘A View to a Kill’, but I can only imagine that came about after viewing this film one night and deciding that hair so glorious deserves to be seen by many. So Walken took it upon himself to spread the word. He’s like Jesus as sponsored by Vidal Sassoon.

I won’t spoil what happens next, but rest assured there’s slugs, animal death, an old lady getting an Axe to the face, more animal death, impossibly blonde hair, Tom Atkins, Flamethrowers, gore, multiple headshots and breasts.

On the above note, special mention should be made of Tom Atkins, who I believe appears in 3 of the films this month, and gets to sleep with Jamie Lee Curtis in one of them, a moment I still feel conflicted about. Like seeing a kindly old Uncle make out with the date you’ve just brought to meet your family for the first time. Anyway, his misanthropic detective lights up the screen whenever he’s on (And provides much needed excitement when contrasted with the boring leads). How can you not love a man who answers the phone “Thrill me” or actually uses it as a genuine greeting like you or I would say “Hello”? If there’s one thing I want to do in my life, it’s incorporate “Thrill me” into everyday conversation in the hope that it will bring me a little closer to Atkins.

A boy can but dream.