I’ve been recently playing the amazingly bad, but awesome video game, Deadly Premonition and during one of the random, but utterly awesome parts of the game, your main character starts talking about an old 80s movie called The Deadly Spawn, about an alien creature that attacks based on sound. Immediately, I knew I had to seek this movie out and after sitting down and giving it a watch, I gotta say, it ain’t bad, it ain’t great, but it certainly has enough charm, that makes it worthy of sitting on the pile of a movies I deem cult classics. Read to see if you agree with me and if you don’t, well, I’m hurt…
Release: April 22nd, 1983
Short nitty-gritty plot description from IMDb is as follows: Alien creatures invade a small town and a group of four teenagers, plus one little boy, try to escape from them.
Tatlock’s Quick ‘n Dirty Recap: It seems like every other creature movie from the 80s started with a mysterious meteor hitting Earth, unleashing a deadly alien, and The Deadly Spawn is no different. After the alien leaves its comfortable home inside the meteor, it isn’t long before the alien finds a new home in the basement of a nearby house and starts to multiply, by eating the residents. The only people left to fight the monster are: a couple science majors and a kid, who I swear was based on my childhood, with his love of horror movies and scaring people. So the only question is, will the science geeks and a kid who is weirdly calm in the face of a giant human eating monster save the day? Or will mankind fall victim to the ever growing and reproducing monster? Tune in to find out!
Tatlock’s Opinion: I had a great time with The Deadly Spawn, also known as Return of the Alien’s Deadly Spawn, a name that was meant to capitalize on a potential Alien sequel. The movie has some pretty awful acting, laughably bad hand drawn backdrops and gore that is surprisingly kickass for the budget. As for the story itself, it’s pretty slow moving, with not a lot happening. The creature mainly hangs out in the basement, while we watch some people go about their day, but when the horror starts and the gore hits the fan, the fun is cranked up and you’ll find yourself smiling and possibly even laughing. (I’ll admit, I did laugh out loud at one beheading scene. I know, I’m weird like that.)
The greatest compliment I can give The Deadly Spawn, is that when the movie ended, an ending that rocks by the way, I immediately looked to see if any sequels were released. Sadly, none were done, which surprised me, as this movie has the perfect recipe for some quirky, low budget sequel fun, much like the Critters series.
Tatlock’s Verdict: Fans of low budget, substandard acting and wonderful gore, will be in creature heaven with this flick. It certainly isn’t a masterpiece, but when a movie has a creature that looks like three giant sized fanged penises dwelling in the basement, what are you expecting? Shakespeare?
Rating:
