The Creeps

Director - Charles Band (Prehysteria, The Gingerdead Man)
Starring - Rhonda Griffin (Hideous, Naked Fear), Justin Lauer (Hollywood 7, Untold Stories of the ER), and Billy Moynihan (Double Trouble, Jugular Wine: A Vampire Odyssey)
Release Date - 1997
Genre - Horror
Tagline - "Undersized, undead, and angry"
Format - Bluray (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

     Full Moon Entertainment and Empire Pictures are companies I grew up watching.  Movies like the Puppet Master series and Re-Animator are films I would often rent at the local video store.  Hell, I remember when the SyFy channel aired Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys and recording it onto VHS when I was in middle school or high school.  Their films may not be the best but they entertain for the most part.  When I was in high school I started actively collecting Full Moon films along with the releases of Troma.  I got a majority of their popular films but some of their off shoot films slipped through my grasp.  One film that I always wanted but never could find was The Creeps and finally a few years back my wife found a DVD copy of it at FYE.  She grabbed it and I tossed it on my shelf where it collected dust because I never could make the time to watch it.  That changed when Full Moon released the film on blu.  I was lucky enough to get a copy to review and was finally able to make time to check it out.  Thanks Full Moon!

     The film follows a young librarian who oversees and handles rare and expensive books.  A strange man comes in with credentials to see Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and that night she discovers he has stolen the original text.  For fear of losing her job she finds a private detective to help her track him down but comes to a dead end.  A few weeks pass and the man attempts to do the same with the Bram Stoker Dracula text but she confronts him.  He panics and cattle prods her  He takes him back to his lab to use a sacrifice with hopes of resurrecting literary monsters such as Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and Wolfman.  Something goes wrong and the monsters come out 3 feet tall.  Now the monsters must hunt her down in order to finish the experiment so they can be full size.

     No one has accused Full Moon of making thought provoking films but no one can deny their weirdness.  Movies like Doctor Mordrid, Subspecies, and Head of the Family has cemented them in horror history as risk takers and kinds or weirdness.  The Creeps is another film you can add to the list.  The film is cheesy and clichéd but I really enjoyed what it brought to the table.  The acting in this one is fun.  For one, I'm a big fan of Phil Fondacaro.  When I was in middle school I watched Bordello of Blood and his performance made me a fan.  He has been in some classic films over the year and his performance here is just as good as any other film of his.  He took on the role of Dracula and made it his own.  The rest of the cast does a solid job but no one holds a candle to Fondacaro's performance.  The story for this one is cheesy as fuck but fun.  A scientist turning myths and legends into flesh is cheeky to say the least but said creatures coming out 3 foot tall is fun.  The film does it in such a  way that its not making fun of the actors and their stature.  The film has a few jokes tossed it for some laughs but the overall tone of the film is very serious.  With that being said, it wouldn't be a Full Moon film if there wasn't scenes in there that wasted the viewers' time with little to no purpose to move the story along.  Finally, this isn't the ooey gooey gore flick we want.  The film does have great practical effects and monster effects but lacks the blood and gore most horror fans love.  Also, the visual effects we get are very dated and pretty bad even for a Full Moon movie.  Overall, The Creeps is a fun late night watch that is perfect pairing with any 90s Full Moon film or The Monster Squad.  Check it out.