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Creepozoids

Creepozoids


1987, Dir. David DeCouteau, John Schouweiler

Starring:
Linnea Quigley, Ken Abraham

RATING

From the back cover of the "Creepozoids" box:

World War III has begun. To avoid their own destruction, a band of desperate deserters has fled into the desert ... but when they stumble across an underground lab, they discover a horror even greater than the war itself. Deep beneath the steaming sands, a mysterious substance transforms one of the men into a deadly creature. Trapped below by a rock slide, the four suvivors must now destroy the blood thirsty beast ... or die in it's dripping jaws.

O.K. No one transformed into a creature. There was no rock slide, they were trapped inside by acid rain. And there were five of them.

Sometimes I come across a movie so bad I question my purpose. Why am I watching, no, enduring this crap?! Then a man fights a mutant baby and I remember, because I LIKE THE PAIN!!!!! "Creepozoids". Another one from the John Bruder collection. Thanks John. Thanks a whole fucking lot. Herein we find a typical story of five people trapped with a creature who kills them off one by one. But not before advertising! Advertising for films so bad they make a point of telling us that they were on MST3K!!! Films so bad that ... wait, Christopher Lee? How'd he sneak in there? Then ads for Puppet Master toys, for Chrissakes. Then, our Feature Presentation.

We are in 1998, 6 years after World War III began. How'd we miss that? A woman working in a lab hears mysterious noises outside the door. She opens it to find an enormous, back - lit monster. Cut to five miltary types wandering the bleak landscape. They stop to rest, and we are introduced to our stereotypical characters. Jake: leader, sensible guy. Butch: hothead, tough guy. Bianca: bit o' tail. Kate: tough girl. Jesse: nerd. They decide to take cover from the encroaching stock footage of a rain storm, and enter an underground lab. They explore. Bianca and Butch find a shower, which will provide us with our obligatory gratituous skin scene. The nerd goes off by himself. Does he die? No, he finds a computer. And a severed head. Back at the shower, Butch informs Bianca he's guarding her because "90% of household accidents happen in the bath". They find a fully stocked mess hall, and over dinner we learn that they are deserters. At night, Jesse wakes up and finds a computer disk. Being the resident nerd, he runs off to the computer. Alone. He's so gonna die. Investigating a noise (which "Isn't any rat."), Jesse crawls through a long vent into some kind of lair, where he finds a creature that looks like something H.R. Giger might have drawn when he was a 7 year old. Stock footage of a storm. Jesse dies, alright!!!

Next morning, wake up call. Jake goes to Jesse's bed and finds him under the sheets. Jesse wakes up, unharmed?! What a gyp!!! The thing had him in its jaws!!! Anyway, at breakfast, Jesse's eyes go all snakey, he spits up tar, his hand swells, and he dies. Woo hoo! So, off to the computer, where Kate tries to find what killed Jesse while everyone else acts stupid, particularly Butch, who utters the classic line uttered by every tough guy blockhead in these movies. "We're all gonna die!!" No, no silly, you're obviously too stupid to even know what kind of movie you're in. There's gotta be one person left to go mano a thingy with the creature and then limp away to tell the story! Jake and Butch crawl through the vent. Bianca runs off to look for weapons, and comes across a dangling corpse, and the creature. Butch and Kate find her, and then Butch finds Jake. Now that they've regrouped, they hunt the thing. Of course, the lights go out inexplicably and Butch runs off to find the generator. He is attacked and bitten by a large plastic rat covered in fake fur. Stock footage of a storm. They argue over what they're gonna do. They decide to try and communicate through the computer. Jake tries it, but the creature bursts though the wall, makes the computer explode, and drags Butch away. Back in the shower room, the girls are attacked by a fake rat. It gives Kate a serious chomp on the neck before Bianca stomps it to death. In the lair, the thing spits tar on Butch. He is found by Jake and Bianca, and they bring him to the lab just in time for his head to swell and start spitting out tar. The creature is in the room! Jake and Bianca retreat.

Bianca goes back to Kate, who has tuned into an athsmatic zombie. Bianca kills her. Jake ends up being dragged away into the lair. Bianca finds him, and is killed by the creature. Jake runs away and finds syringes and a serum. He resolves to use this on the creature. After getting his ass handed to him, he manages to inject it. The creature dies and Jake collapses, exhausted and injured. Is it over? No, kiddies. THIS IS WHERE IT GETS GOOD!!!! The thing births what can only be described as a Cabbage Patch Demon which crawls after Jake. I'd like to see it fight Baby Selwyn from "Dead Alive" . The ensuing scuffle is hilarious. I tell ya, there's nothing quite like a man dancing around with a doll held up to his face to simulate being attacked by a mutant baby. Jake finally gets the better of the baby, discovers Kate's corpse, and walks away. Then the baby wakes up, and that's the abrupt end.

IN CLOSING: As I stated before, this film is bad. Devoid of suspense, shock, or fright, this movie fails miserably at everything. I didn't care that the characters were dying one by one because there was no reason for them not to. There was nothing to them, no reason for us to feel bad. Special effects? The main creature would have made a nice Halloween costume and looked sort of like the Alien Queen's retarded little brother. The rats and mutant baby were obviously fake, but at least the baby was entertaining. Now, the music. Granted, it was 1987, but the music was completely inappropriate. Why do some filmmakers think that every moment without dialogue must be filled with music? The scenes would have maybe approached something resembling suspense if it didn't sound like the characters were walking through a Twix commercial. My final gripe is that some of the cuts were very random, giving the movie a disjointed, cut and paste feel. Other than the baby scene, I can't think of a single reason to watch this movie. Shun it.