Night of the Creeps (1986)

A clever debut movie from horror fan Fred Dekker, Night of the Creeps opens in 1959 with a young Corman University student couple parked in Lover’s Lane spotting a canister plunging to Earth like a meteorite.

The curious boy, Johnny (Ken Heron) opens the canister and a slimy slug jumps into his mouth, while his girlfriend Pam (Alice Cadogan) is attacked with an axe by an escaped maniac from the Crestridge Institution for the Criminally Insane. Talk about timing!

Moving forward to Pledge Week 1986 at Corman University, we meet nerdy freshmen Chris Romero (Jason Lively) and JC Hooper (Steve Marshall) who agree to steal a cadaver from the campus cryogenics lab as part of a frat initiation.

The pair sneak into the building and uncover the frozen body of Johnny who swallowed the space slug in 1959. They start to thaw the corpse but are disturbed and chicken out, leaving the body to defrost naturally and return to life as an alien zombie.

The creature’s head splits open to let loose dozens of slimy space-slugs moving as fast as cockroaches.

They enter humans through their mouth and lay eggs in their brain, transforming their hosts into zombies, which soon overrun the campus

For once this is a sci-fi horror spoof that works, and there are loads of gross special effects including a gory but funny death by lawnmower rampage.

Chris Romero
Jason Lively
JC (James Carpenter) Hooper
Steve Marshall
Cynthia
Jill Whitlow
Detective Ray Cameron
Tom Atkins
Detective Landis
Wally Taylor
Sgt. Raimi
Bruce Solomon
Coroner
Vic Polizos
Brad
Allan Kayser
Johnny
Ken Heron
Pam
Alice Cadogan
Karen
June Harris
Steve
David Oliver
House Mother
Evelyne Smith
Psycho Zombie
Ivan E. Roth
Alien Zombie
Daniel Frishman
Young Ray Cameron
Dave Alan Johnson
Lisa
Suzanne Snyder
Judy
Jay Wakeman
Kathy
Elizabeth Cox
Jennifer
Emily Fiola
Biff
Russell Moss
Dick
Richard DeHaven
Todd
John J. York
Chet
Jim Townsend
Mr Miner
Robert Kino
Walt
Dick Miller

Director
Fred Dekker