Movies

The Avocado Movie Club #33: Night of the Creeps (1986)

Welcome to the Movie Club! Today’s movie is Fred Dekker’s Night of the Creeps!

Italian DVD cover

Night of the Creeps is an homage to b-movies and horror films that follows two college students who try to steal a corpse from their school’s cadaver lab as a prank, but end up releasing alien slugs that turn people into zombies instead. They eventually cross paths with a grizzled old detective, played by genre legend Tom Atkins, who is investigating the fallout of their failed prank and is unknowingly connected to the slug’s origin on our planet.

There’s a documentary from the DVD release that you can find on YouTube called “Thrill Me: Making Night Of The Creeps” but I didn’t have time to watch it. Otherwise, information about its making of and release is pretty scarce. It seems to have had a very small release in 70 theatres across the US on August 22, 1986, and made only $591,366 in the box office.1 Despite this, the film’s reception over time has been quite positive and it has earned a cult following for being a loving homage to so many different genres.2 

Trivia:34 

  • There are two endings: the first was used for its theatrical release and is rather abrupt and ends with a bit of a cheap scare, while there is a longer one added to home video releases and some TV versions that is preferred by Dekker and provides a bit more closure.
  • Numerous characters in the film share last names with iconic horror directors, such as George Romero, John Carpenter and David Cronenberg.
  • The script was written and one week, and Dekker originally wanted to shoot it in black and white with a jazz soundtrack.

What did you think? Share your thoughts below! 

Up Next: Spooky season will continue with Henry Selick’s Coraline! ! We will meet to discuss it on October 17th at 12PM EST. Check out the trailer and where it’s playing below: 

USA

  • Stream:  The Roku Channel, Tubi 
  • Rent or Buy: Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango At Home, Google Play, YouTube, Spectrum

Canada

  • Stream: Crave, Starz (via Prime Video), Tubi
  • Rent or Buy: Apple TV, Google Play, YouTube, Amazon

UK

  • Stream: itvX
  • Rent or Buy: Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, YouTube, Sky Store
  1. https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl308774401/weekend ↩︎
  2. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/night_of_the_creeps ↩︎
  3. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091630/alternateversions/ ↩︎
  4. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1356&dat=19870904&id=m48xAAAAIBAJ&sjid=zgYEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5437,1893919  ↩︎