As Long as They Can Think, We'll Have Our Problems

Night of the Creeps (1986)
directed by Fred Dekker
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

Night of the Creeps is a story about a really great girl surrounded by assholes, although no one except for the aging, haunted cop played by Tom Atkins seems to see it that way. Casting Jill Whitlow as Cynthia more than makes up for the decidedly 1986 idea that the guy with muscular dystrophy (portrayed, of course, by the actor without it) can't do anything but play matchmaker for his "normal" friend. Fred Dekker tries too hard - to reference other horror films, to give Atkins a catch phrase, to mix comedy and suspense - and although a bus full of frat guy zombies is my kind of party, the movie is too self-conscious to mesh. Today, the eighties look like seventh heaven for horror films, but part of that, I think, is nostalgia for the last era before technology became central to every criminal investigation. Slither, in turn, is an homage to this, but like Slither, Night of the Creeps isn't the classic it wanted very much to be.