Night of the Creeps

Night of the Creeps
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Fred Dekker
Produced by	Charles Gordon
Written by	Fred Dekker
Starring	Jason Lively Steve Marshall Jill Whitlow Tom Atkins
Music by	Barry De Vorzon Stan Ridgway
Cinematography	Robert C. New
Edited by	Michael N. Knue
Distributed by	TriStar Pictures
Release date	August 22, 1986 (1986-08-22)
Running time	88 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$591,366 (US)

Night of the Creeps is a 1986 American science fiction horror comedy film written and directed by Fred Dekker, starring Tom Atkins, Jason Lively, Steve Marshall and Jill Whitlow. The film is an earnest attempt at a B movie and a homage to the genre. While the main plot of the film is related to zombies, the film also mixes in takes on slashers and alien invasion films. Night of the Creeps did not perform well at the box office, but it developed a cult following.

In 1959, on board a spacecraft, two aliens race to keep an experiment from being released by a third member of the crew. The seemingly possessed third alien shoots the canister into space where it crashes to Earth. Nearby, a college man takes his date to a parking spot when they see a falling star and investigate. It lands in the path of an escaped criminally insane mental patient. As his date is attacked by the axe-wielding maniac, the boy finds the canister, from which a small slug-like thing jumps out and into his mouth.

Twenty-seven years later, Chris Romero pines over a love lost, supported by his disabled friend J.C. During pledge week at Corman University, Chris spots a girl, Cynthia Cronenberg, and falls instantly in love. To get her attention, he decides to join a fraternity. Cynthia's boyfriend, who heads the Beta Epsilon fraternity, tasks them with stealing a cadaver from the university medical center and depositing it on the steps of a sorority house. Chris and J.C. find a frozen corpse in a secret room, but when it grabs them, they flee.

Meanwhile, Detective Ray Cameron, a haunted cop, is called in to the cryogenics lab break-in, where he discovers one of the bodies – the boy who discovered the alien experiment in 1959 – is now missing, set free by Chris and J.C. The corpse makes its way back to the sorority house where he picked up his date twenty-seven years ago. There, his head splits open and releases more of the slugs. Called to the scene, Det. Cameron finds the body, interpreting the condition of the head as the result of an axe wound in the face.