A strange beast to be certain, ‘The Creeps’ is a ‘Full Moon’ feature that bucks the trend of the time. While the company was in a bit of a decline period around this time turning out half baked scripts and flat out stealing from other movies to save a buck making their own. ‘The Creeps’ stands out as a bit of a novel idea that…While not executed particularly well, is at least somewhat entertaining in places.
The plot is…prety odd, I think it’s fair to say. Mainly centered around a young woman who works as a receptionist for a private library and archive holding some of the oldest copies of classic literature known to exist. Enter our ‘Mad Scientist™’ for the film, who enquires about the oldest known copies of ‘Dracula’ amongst other works.
After clearing security he’s shown the texts and a short time after leaving the facility it becomes quite clear that the scientist has stolen the texts. Turning to a private detective who…operates out of and works in a VHS rental store. the pair discover that the scientist is performing one HELL of a bizarre experiement, using these original unaltered texts, he’s able to perfectly recreate the characters from the books in real life!
Naturally as you can imagine, our protagonists go snooping at his lab, get captured, and inevitably during the first attempt at running the experiment something goes quite wrong, rendering our great literary monsters to a fraction of their former selves.
And…probably the main thing that drew me to this film is also one of its more problematic aspects. in essence this film only really exists for it’s gimmick, which is that all of our classic monsters (Dracula, The Mumm, Wolfman and Frankensteins Monster) are played by an all dwarf cast.
They do a remarkable job and are genuinely endearing. Unfortunately the script does make a habit of making a lot of the humour about the fact they’re short…I’ve seen way too much exploitation in my time to be able to know for sure if this was made with sincerity or not, and the fact the alternate title for this is ‘Deformed Monsters’ only makes me more conflicted in what this thing is trying to do. But even if I did think I knew, I wouldnt be the person to make a call on that. Thats down to the Little people community ultimately. I can only go on what I see and I felt uneasy around this thing truthfully.
Outside of that though we have a reletively tight script that runs to a nippy 74 minutes, has decently spread out act structuring, an unusual and decent enough plot and despite the fact it is a bit bloated in the 2nd act and a bit one note across the whole runtime, I think theres enough here to enjoy that I didnt end up clock watching or *too* bored.
The dialogues a little flat, it’s not the sharpest or most charismatic script in the world. But you do get the feeling that it IS at least trying to make an engaging and interesting work. It may not fully succeed on that front, but I appreciate the attempt.
The direction is really rather nice given this was the start of ‘Full Moons’ lower budgeted/lower caring era. I caught the (fairly) recent HD remaster of this film and it looks very filmic, has a clear style and mode of execution in mind, its vivid, colourful and clean planned. I actually really kind of liked how this thing felt. It reminded me of the old 90’s Goosebumps TV series…and in essence if it wasnt for the liberal nudity and occasional swear it COULD realistically be a Goosebumps episode!
direciton of the cast too is clear, concise and animated. they utilise their set spaces well, they animate as best they can. While the performances are a little on the wobbly side (more on that shortly) it’s clear they’re actually trying to do something decent here. Which I really respect.
As for the cine? Well, for the most part it’s clean, well composed shot wise and sequences just about have the balance right of key shots and B-roll usage. this has a pretty tight edit behind it, that gives the film room to breath, but doesnt feel like it’s struggling to hit feature run time. It gets in, revs up, gives you what you paid to see, and gets out. Nothing more. nothing less.
The performances are, for the most part okay, our monsters really are the stars of the show, and while they dont really get to do all that much (which is a real shame given how decent their costumes are given the scope and budget) they absolutely bring a presence with them and they seem to be really having a ball with their roles.
Our protagonists for the film however, arnt quite so lucky. they’re a little bit on the dry and awkward side. they’re nowhere NEAR as bad as the majority of ‘Full Moons’ output from this time or later. In fact; by ‘Full Moon’ standards they’re some of the best performances the studios produced. But in terms of the medium of film? they’re a bit dry, a bit flat. they move around, but could move more and whereas I was hoping that getting them to animate more might curb their more stilted deliveries…if anything it made them worse because now they were vibrant and stilted. eesh.
The score was done by Carl Dante, and I for one am DELIGHTED that they finally gave Richard Band a holiday after his work in scoring literally everything full moon did from 1989 to the present day. Dantes work isnt THAT different from Richards. But it was diffent ENOUGH that I actually really appreciate the varience. Dante’s work suits the tone of the film, is synthy but not *too* cheap sounding and punctutes the scenes wonderfully. its solid.
The first time I caught this film I thought it was garbage, on a rewatch? it’s still not perfect, but it is a lot better than I remembered it being and I could actually see myself checking this one out again in future. its a tad problematic and a bit awkward in places. But I really think this is probably one of Bands best directed films…and given the quality of some of the stuff he’s put his name to, I think thats something to be appreciated. In either case, i’d absolutely recommend checking this thing out at LEAST once.
TYTD Reviews 