Neon Maniacs (1985)
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I can't believe I missed renting this film sooner. I saw the cover for the film so many times at my local Blockbuster a long time ago and for some reason I never got the urge to rent it. I'm just glad I finally got to catch this fun flick. It has a nice mix of Clive Barker's Nightbreed and a small mix of The Monster Squad. It basically starts off with a group of monsters that discover a bunch of teens having a small party at a nearby park. They decide to crash the party and kill every one of the teens except for one, who happens to get saved in the last minute. The monsters then set out to hunt down the young survivor and not let anything get in their way.
I thought this film had a lot of cool stuff in it and found myself actually enjoying every bit of it. The monsters themselves were very cool. Each one had their own special skill or talent. One would use an axe while the other would use a rope to hang people. The only problem I had with the monsters was the fact that they could be easily killed by water. I thought that was rather lame, but I guess you gotta kill them somehow. Usually when there are some freak monsters running around in a horror film there is only a small few, but in this movie there was a small army of monsters. I was also surprised that this film actually had decent acting, considering it was from the 80s. The directing wasn't bad either, and for a low-budget movie it had some good effects.
What I didn't like about the film was the fact that there was no explanation as to how the monsters came about or why they kill people. It was just never explained. I'm assuming that by the way it ended and being that there was was no explanation that there were probably plans for a sequel, but that apparently never came about. I'm pretty sure it's because their distributor, Lightning Video, went out of business. I would have happily given this film a higher rating, but I didn't like how it ended. It left you hanging and thinking to yourself, what the hell? Other than that it was pretty damn good.
A very underated 80s monster flick. If you liked Clive Barker's Nightbreed I suggest you check this film out.