CREEPOZOIDS (1987) Review
So, a little something about myself; I love schlock. I grew up in the 90s when the video store was king and trips to the now extinct rental place were the highlight of my week. I used to adore browsing through the seemingly never-ending collection of bulky VHS tapes, picking up any that caught my eyes and excitedly showing whoever happened to be the adult in charge at that moment in time, likely screaming, “PLEASE can we rent The Video Dead!? The cover art looks sooo awesome!!! There’s no way the film won’t be good!” or variations thereof. Of course, the film itself almost never lived up to expectations, but that didn’t mean I ever learned the lesson. Week in, week out, it was the same story every time. And this little ritual was how I saw a whole bunch of movies I would rank among my favorites, at least in terms of that warm, gooey (apt!) nostalgic way that kinda feels like a great big hug while someone’s having their head hacked off.
For anyone who experienced similar, I’m sure they can relate, and they will likely understand completely, but for anyone who didn’t have this particular experience with cover art and the like, I hope this goes some way to explaining why and how I can say, without a hint of irony, that a movie like Creepozoids is both one of the most ridiculous, terrible, poorly acted, badly made, silly, absurd movies I’ve ever seen, and yet is also an absolutely joyous blast, and I genuinely loved every single second of it.
To review such a film requires such an element of contradiction because Creepozoids — directed by David DeCoteau, whose filmography boasts the equally terrible (and therefore equally brilliant) piece of B-Movie schlock, The Imp (or Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, for our American friends) — isn’t good. Not by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it quite literally spends most of its runtime making decisions that are bafflingly counterproductive to its own success. It’s inconsistent and nonsensical, and things just kinda, like… happen, with absolutely no rhyme or reason to it. It’s bad filmmaking of the kind you recognize on a subconscious level, and yet, there is such a wonderful sense of fun to everything that it’s impossible not to enjoy on some level.
See, that’s the thing about these kinds of films. They may not be good, and they’re most definitely not breaking new ground or reinventing the wheel, but despite their exploitative, cash-grab origins, and their obvious ‘lowest-common-denominator’ output, you can just feel the passion oozing off the screen. Wildly inventive practical effects almost always take center stage, and they most certainly do in Creepozoids, acting as the real star of the show. And so fantastically, mesmerizingly wonderful are these practical creations, that it isn’t hard to forgive the film for its other missteps. They may not reach the heights of, say, An American Werewolf in London or The Thing, but then they never could. These are budget effects, and when that’s taken into account you have to watch on in awe at the level of creativity on display! Sure, that baby looks fake as fuck, but c’mon! It’s moving around, a real, tangible thing, and in the moment I am more than happy to go down this road with the movie.
This is what is missing from modern low-budget schlock. Practical effects are an art form in and of themselves, gorgeous to look at even when they’re a bit naff. Puppetry, prosthetics, latex masks, complex rigs… you name it, they got it. It’s all on display, and they’re gonna make every penny count! That’s why I get such pleasure from films like Creepozoids. They’re not good, not by a long shot! But they are worth my attention, and there is a sense of love and passion in them. Objectively, its a piece of crap — the acting is wooden, the script paper thin, the plot utter nonsense, and it's filled to the brim with pointless exploitative nudity and silly story contrivances — but subjectively, its a joyfully silly piece of B-Movie fun that never fails to put a smile on my face! 3/5.
