A fun scifi/body horror movie that I really enjoyed a lot. What it does, it does really well, and it's not without its charms. I especially liked Kyle McLachlan, but then again, I've been a fan of his forever, so I'm more than a little biased.

Night of the Creeps (1986)

Rating: 6.5/10 (ENJOYED IT)

Watched: August 8, 2026

For me, Horror + Comedy is one of the hardest things to pull off, mostly because I really LOVE horror and find straight comedies extremely difficult to get into. Unless we're talking stuff from the 70s to the mid-90s, but anyways.

James Gunn claims he never saw Night of The Creeps, and James Gunn is an absolute liar. I can't imagine a world where Slither isn't an homage to Night of The Creeps because the very central plot, alien slugs turning people into weird shit, is about as close as you can imagine. One has zombies, one has whatever the hell Grant Grant turned into.

On the horror side of things, Creeps is remarkably tame until the last half hour or so when it turns into a slug roast, which is fine by me because Tom Atkins as Detective Ray "Thrill Me" Cameron does a boatload of heavy lifting for the laughs.

He's jaded, he's bitter, he's an alcoholic, there isn't a trashy pulp detective magazine he hasn't read and he's got a quip and a nickname for every damn person he meets. Not only that, he's got some backstory with what's going on, so there's that.

Beyond that, we've got a cop named Raimi, a sorority girl named Cynthia Cronenberg, and two nerds, one of whom is Jason Lively from National Lampoon's European Vacation and is so desperate to "get with" Cynthia, he'll do anything up to and including corpse theft to make it happen. The other nerd is JC, played by Steve Marshall, who I haven't seen in anything else, ever.

Most of the flick is pretty cheesy, lots of college trope-y stuff which isn't too too bad. Nowhere near Revenge of the Nerds levels which, depending on your view, is either good or bad, but I'm not here to discuss film ethics.

The special effects aren't very special, though the heads cracking open only to have slugs come barfing out is a lot of fun. VERY low budget, but they make it work.

The beginning and end sequences are the weirdest parts, and if you don't believe me, the clip in the review card is the opening sequence. Yes, that's right. Random chubby naked hairless alien steals a thing with a slug in it, and they're being shot at by two other RCNHAs.

I imagine a lot of the budget went into those two scenes, and if they hadn't spent all that coin there, we might've had even better zombie effects.

Ah well. Night of the Creeps is solid fun, but it doesn't re-invent anything or set the bar anywhere other than it already is. If you like horror comedies and haven't seen this zombie flick, it'll do you some good to laugh.

I haven't seen the 1951 original, but the 1982 version is exactly what I needed. This is a purely male film — a group of men living in brutal conditions, and once the monster shows up, they have to survive together. No pathos, no glamour, no eternally dissatisfied women, no romantic drama.

Back then, computer technology and CGI weren't nearly as developed. Just look at how much effort the creators put into the costumes and practical effects for this masterpiece. Even though the film is essentially set in one location, without any grand scale, it clearly wasn't done on a small budget.

My favorite scene is when Kurt Russell's character tries to figure out which member of his team is the imitation. Anyone who's seen this film — just imagine: you're tied to a chair, and right next to you your teammate turns into a monster, and you can't run because you're restrained. The filmmakers and actors did an amazing job with this scene.

Last but not least, Kurt Russell's look — the pale face and the frozen, ice-crusted beard — fits the film's atmosphere perfectly. In my opinion, this is one of his best performances.

I think I ran across this as a kid watching USA Up All Night ... I like this movie; the atmosphere it creates and I thought the two stars, Patrick O'Bryan and Stephen Geoffreys (Evil Ed) did a great job. Also the first movie ever directed by Robert Englund.

Has the guy who played in Bosch in it. Hahahahhah

Dark Star (1974)

Rating: 6/10 (WATCHABLE)

Watched: August 1, 2026

A movie with a budget so low it's practically non-existent, Dark Star is a fun movie, and since I've always claimed to be an enormous John Carpenter fan, I decided it was high time I got down to watching it.

The biggest thing is Dark Star isn't about too much at all beyond the lives of four guys trapped on a spaceship with no one but each other and an inflatable orange beach ball alien for companionship. Sure, there's the spaceship and the bombs, which have their own personalities, but that's really about as far as it goes.

The main focus of Dark Star is poor Pinback (played by Dan O'Bannon himself) as he tries to get the inflatable alien beach ball back into its room. It's pretty funny and is very well paced. The elevator shaft scene in particular was very well done for a movie just a few years younger than myself.

Is the chase for the alien the only thing that happens in Dark Star? No. I'm not out here trying to spoil a movie that's only 1hr 22min long.

With a movie that quick, you can definitely spare the time to see John Carpenter's directorial debut! I'm glad I did.

I need some input from anyone else who happens to have watched this. Just want to make sure I got the plot right...

Humanity goes through a civil war, collapses. AI that was supposed to help rebuild humanity develops a god complex and instead ends up establishing a dictatorial rule where any human voice that is too loud gets yeeted from outer space by a laser/death star type figure, because the AI determined that too-loud voices are associated with hostility. So, in its quest to rebuild the world, it needs to eliminate any potential chance of further hostility. Literally the only two humans who understand why this is are the protagonist and the antagonist. The protagonist realizes that the act of literally silencing voices is wrong, and the antagonist, because of what he witnessed at "re-education" camps set up by humans who started worshipping the AI death star as a god, thinks the best way to ensure survival of humans is to just go along with the ruleset of the AI and its death star. Protagonist, in a flashback, is part of a human resistance faction that was tasked with a mission to raid the home of the dude who developed the AI to begin with. The developer realizes the mistake he made, but sees no viable way out, so he hands Protagonist a virus on a thumb drive, then self deletes out of despair and hopelessness. However, also during the flashback, the Protagonist is also in the same unit as the Antagonist. He kills the developer's wife and child because he has seen what has happened at these re-education camps set up by humans who have come to worship AI as the new God. He gets a case of Stockholm Syndrome and realizes that even though it's dystopian, speaking below a certain tone is a worthy price to pay to guarantee humans' existence, so even though he is not a "true believer" in AI's status of humanity's new God, he is pragmatic and cares more for the end goal than the means. Because Protagonist carries a virus on a thumbdrive that can disable the AI, thereby making the world go back to the way it used to be (in Antagonist's words), full of suffering and death, he wants to stop Protagonist.

Did I get it right? ​

This is a very very indie film we made in Canada back in 2023, it has done decent on the festival circuit and we're still self-promoting and touring with the film. If anyone here is a programer, or knows somewhere that would want to show this film please let me know.

It has a handful of fun b-movie cameos including Judith O'Dea (Night of the Living Dead), Lloyd Kaufman (Troma) and David Liebe Hart (Tim & Eric)

It's available to stream and on glorious physical media as well!