|
Informed
by a love of B-movie monsters and brimming with
goopy gore, The Deadly Spawn
is a fun —
if decidedly amateurish —
horror romp that works despite some serious strikes
against it. Yes, it's a bad movie, with terrible
acting and a dumb, silly script, but this 'little
movie that could' also displays an infectious
can-do spirit belying its minuscule $20,000 budget.
Just about every penny poured into this thing
went to the special effects, which are surprisingly
good all things considered. Many bigger-budgeted
films from the same period (early '80s) aren't
as entertaining or enjoyable, even with the benefit
of professional actors and crews.
The basic
premise is ripped off straight from the original
The Blob (1958).
A meteor falls to earth outside a typical American
town, bringing with it a form of dangerous extraterrestrial
life. Two guys out camping in the woods witness
the impact and investigate. Within short order
they're both monster chow, killed and (noisily)
eaten by an as-yet-unseen alien. Then we're introduced
(piecemeal) to a family living in a large, nearby
house. These folks constitute the next items on
the menu; the alien creature —
revealed as a red, slug-like beast that's mostly
teeth and maw —
installs itself in their basement to reproduce.
As the monster ingests various family members
and visitors to the house one by one, it grows
in size and strength, spawning a host of smaller
critters that look like flesh-colored eels with
fangs. After much carnage (along with unintentional
humor and painfully clumsy padding), it's up to
an 11-year old boy —
who happens to love monster movies —
to devise a means of destroying the perpetually
peckish space-beast.
At 80 minutes Deadly
Spawn is a relatively short movie; its
lack of all but the most basic of plots means
the running time is divided up between monster
assaults, gore scenes and mostly pointless (even
annoying) character interaction. The entire story
takes place in only three locations: the woods
featured in the brief prologue, the domicile in
which the 'mama' creature sets up shop, and the
home of the ill-fated family's grandmother, which
is invaded by a hungry horde of the smaller 'baby'
monsters. (Truly an irritating scene —
the minutes drag by as we watch the old lady and
her daughter prepare a lunch buffet —
until it turns unintentionally funny when the
creatures attack.) A key sequence, in which Charles
(Charles Hildrebrandt) discovers the aliens in
the basement, is ruined by the kid's total lack
of any acting ability —
he sees mutilated corpses (one is a family member),
then the aliens, barely showing any emotion
whatsoever —
and the proposition that a young boy could be
exposed to such stomach-churning horrors and then
simply stand there for what must be 10
minutes, doing nothing, is, well, stupid.
It's eventually established that the monsters
are blind and react to sound; the kid is smart
enough to eventually figure this out but it's
simply unbelievable that he could watch the severed
head of his aunt being devoured by extraterrestrial
eels so impassively. (My wife walked through the
room during this scene and paused to watch, after
which she cracked, "Is that kid a Vulcan,
or what?")
Okay,
so maybe I'm being overly harsh here... To be
fair, most of the cast members —
young Hildrebrandt included —
were not professional, or even semiprofessional,
actors. Deadly Spawn
has deservedly achieved cult status solely due
to its imaginative creature designs and gore effects.
The film, haphazardly made in fits and starts
over a nearly two year period, for a mere pittance,
actually features better gore than some
of the squishier efforts of Italian splatter master
Lucio Fulci! (A facial skin-ripping scene and
aforementioned severed head-munching are especially
gross.) It's pretty amazing, too, how well the
super-low tech puppets used for the aliens work
on screen.
|
|
Synapse
put a lot of TLC into its new special edition
DVD of Deadly
Spawn. The original
negative was used for the transfer, which is presented
unmatted in its intended fullframe aspect ratio.
Since it was shot in 16mm you can expect a good
deal of grain; all things considered, the movie
looks pretty damn good and never better than it
has here. Similarly, the mono audio track gets
the job done in fine fashion when the ultra-low
budget nature of the production is factored in.
Loads of extras here
to compliment the film... You get the theatrical
trailer (yes, the flick actually ran in theaters),
taken from a VHS dupe that's seen better days;
an alternate opening prologue/titles sequence;
talent bios; audition tape footage from the initial
casting process; a blooper/outtake reel; a substantial
image gallery covering production and promotion
(lots of behind-the-scenes photos); a crude featurette,
A Visit With the Deadly Spawn (9
minutes), shot during filming, looks at
the special effects crew's designs (mostly ones
that aren't in the film); and an onscreen "comic
book" —
in essence a slideshow gallery accompanied by
music —
explaining the extraterrestrial origins of the
creatures and providing a bit of backstory. (In
the film itself, absolutely nothing about the
aliens is explained.) Two separate audio commentaries
constitute the real meat of the bonus features,
however. In the first track director Douglas McKeown,
co-writer Tim Sullivan, FX artist John Dods, executive
producer Tim Hildebrandt (owner of the house where
most of the film was shot), and actor Charles
Hildebrandt (all grown up now) reunite for a spirited
discussion. Their talk covers the often chaotic
"let's put on a show" nature of the production
and how many of the special effects were achieved.
The second track has producer/co-writer Ted A.
Bohus flying solo; he's able to go into more detail
about the origins of the film and the concepts
he and his colleagues tried (not always successfully)
to bring to the screen.
11/05/04
|
