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When I did one of these for Evil Spawn, someone said what I should have rented was The Deadly Spawn. So I did. We start off with a cheesy puppet worm monster bursting through the DVD menu, which is always good, then jump right into things with a meteor plummeting to earth near where these two dudes are hanging around in a tent in the middle of the night. These two are killed pretty quick, in poorly lit fashion. Then there's some opening credits, and someone's alarm clock makes a buzzing sound similar to what my TV is already making due to having to watch this on my backup option DVD player. It belongs to this guy who looks entirely too slovenly to be a real character, who gets out of bed followed by his wife, wearing only a nightgown which is so transparent that I really don't see the point to it. So yeah, boobs by paragraph 3. 1 even. And belonging to a frumpy middle-aged housewife, for that extra skeevy goodness. And yeah, dumpy dude is indeed just here to be eaten by space worms just off camera. That''s twice now where all we've had is a silhouette of a puppet killing someone, while stage hands really just violently fling blood around. Seriously, how does having your ankle ripped out from under you throw blood with enough force to send a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling flailing back and forth? Wife goes down to die too. Ever notice the bad horror movie habit people have, where they slowly make their way into the dimly lit corners where they heard people's death screams coming from, vaguely confused by all the blood, never getting frantic about where the person is, or calling for help or anything? Nice death though, we actually get to see our worm puppet in its full, squint-and-it-almost-looks-like-an-off-model-Audrey-2 glory, and it rips her face off.
Horrible screams wake their neighbors, ANOTHER too-frumpy-not-to-be-cannon-fodder couple, but it turns out not to be from the dying, just their kid watching horror movies at the crack of dawn. I love how we still haven't introduced a clear protagonist. What if that never happened? We just had a parade of people showing up and immediately being killed by the monster(s), then rinse and repeat for the whole 90 minutes or so? Sadly, we now seem to actually have a protagonist. This douchey guy over here. He looks vaguely actor like, and is talking to a friend on the phone about cheesy sci-fi stuff. Horror watching kid is probably an actual character too. And.. oh wow. These people all actually are living together. Frumpy couple #2 are an aunt and uncle visiting, and Sci-Fi Douche and Horror Kid are orphans who don't even know it. Apparently Mom and Dad left a note saying they'd be out of town for a while just before wandering down to the basement to die, so the only one with any clue that they're dead is a cat making an attempt to do the whole Lassie thing which doesn't seem to be working. Aunt's going out for the day, while Uncle is apparently a child psychologist and is grilling Horror Kid about being a horribly emotionally disturbed horror fan to see how disconnected he is from reality. Kid seems fine, but Uncle's really kinda giving me a crazy weirdo vibe.
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Now here comes an electrician who kinda looks like my father to go die in the basement. He doesn't need to be let in or anything though, Aunt left a note to just let himself in through the back when nobody's looking. So uh... now the power is out, and since Uncle wanted a visual aid, Horror Kid is roving around in the basement with a flashlight, high colored red cape, and ridiculous monkey man mask. Thanks for bringing it all together like that movie. Pointing the flashlight at his chin, he notices that gee, there sure is a lot of blood on the ceiling. Also a cute little baby worm monster slithering about which... wow. That actually looks really good. Like, I think they just used actual leaches, or leftover props from a movie with a decent budget or something. And... now he's spending entirely too much time just looking over the scene of gore. We've got our primary monster in the corner munching on the electrician, coughing up half of Mom's head for the dozens of little ones to snack on, they're squirming all over the place, and he's just standing there watching. For like, a couple minutes here.
Meanwhile, upstairs, Sci-Fi Douche and two friends of his have a presumably dead baby monster sitting around in the sink, standing around in a circle, probing its fangy maw with a toothbrush, and discussing theories on what the heck it is. They're all pretty mumbly though. Female type friend decides she 's going to disect it with a razor. And now back to Horror Kid in the basement, rather calmy watching monsters chew all the flesh off his mother's head. He's taking it pretty well. Eventually, even he decides it's pretty weird that they haven't eaten him, so experimentally, he snaps his fingers. Yup, they hunt based only on sound apparently, so he flings his flashlight up against the far wall. Now back upstairs, we're doing that monster dissection. Pretty methodically really. Pinning down flaps of skin, and using various tools. Oh and hey, we have a grandmother in the house too it seems. We're up to 5 people who didn't notice the double death a couple rooms away now.
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By the way, between the baby monsters, Mom's head being eaten, and the dissection bit? This movie actually has WAY better special effects than everything else lead me to expect. Now Sci-Fi Douche and Girl are having an argument about whether it's scientific or not to speculate on whether the space monster might, in fact, be a space monster. Sci-Fi Douche proves true to the name I have given him by claiming that alien life is "scientifically impossible" and that nothing new can ever be discovered, while Girl is, you know, not completely wrong about everything coming out of her mouth. He then proceeds to otherwise be an annoying loser whose death I am now rooting for. A fair amount of time has now passed, and people still are generally unaware of horrible death, because Horror Kid has apparently just been standing around very calmly in the basement for like... an hour or so?
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Gramma is washing parsley, but a baby monster has climbed u the drain of the sink and is eating it. Oh no! And... that ceramic giraffe is FRELLING CREEPY. Seriously, that thing could give me nightmares. Anyway, a bunch more old ladies have now shown up with food, presumably it' thanksgiving or something, and sink monster, having crawled into the food processor when nobody was looking,is now mulched, and accidentally being eaten by everyone. We kinda seem to have time-skipped a little there. And... now it's finally properly monster time. Loot leechy monster babies are all over the living room (literally, they're like, climbing around on the walls and such) biding people's ankles and eating potted plants. Naturally, everyone gets the heck out and heads for the car... totally abandoning everyone under the age of 30 to be mobbed by them apparently. Also Uncle, who's pretty much worm food by the time the teens wander down to find him. They're also getting menaced by the big one, which means Horror Kid can finally make his way out of the basement to just barely miss his chance to point out the hunt by sound bit. He's going to be the big hero I guess, plugging in a cranked up radio which the adult monster attacked, causing it to become slightly on fire what with the teeth in electronic device bit. Now here's a 4th teen just wandering in to almost be eaten.
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So exactly how huge is this house that nobody notices what's going on in any room other than the one they're in anyway? It's downright bizarre. Anyway, chaos ensues a bit, Girl gets her head bitten clean off and her body tossed out a window. Sci-Fi Douche scampers out onto the roof and gets a chance to see this. I'm... really not sure how he got separated from the other teens. The other two teens now seem to be barricaded up in the attic, see some baby monsters scurrying around outside, and New Girl sees Girl's decapitated corpse and freaks out. Now here's Sci-Fi Douche coming in through the window to join them. He's kinda checking out mentally about now, between his sorta-girlfriend being dead and noticing his parents' car is still in the garage. He's also babbling on about how he doesn't believe in space monsters and basically going to get everyone killed by unblocking the door. Horror Kid meanwhile is MacGuyvering up a bomb out of his special effects kit and a lamp. I kinda miss that 80's horror trope of the 12 year old horror junky being the only competent character in the movie.
His big heroic plan is pretty nifty in action too. Making noises, stuffing his horror mask full of explosives down its throat on a pole, then using an extension cord that doesn't quite reach to plug it in and set it off, and having to make more noise to lure it closer. Which would work great if there weren't a fairly large baby left in the area. Fortunately, while it does almost kill him, the big one eats it off him, what with them having lousy senses and all, and biggie goes boom. Then we've got this real oldschool scene of various authorities searching around for surviving monster babies and killing them. And oh yeah, eventually Aunt comes back to check on the kids. So nice of you to join us, several hours later. And interestingly enough, the kids, all pretty much in shock, are taken off to the hospital after all this, rather than being all celebratory like you'd figure. This epilogue here is going on pretty long here really. We planning any sort of Or Was It moment anytime soon? Ah, there it is. That's actually a pretty good one too. Cops are doing a final sweep, comparing the sizes of the biggest survivors they've seen, then we jump out to the So Obviously A Matte Painting view of the area, and the hill in the background rises up as a ridiculously huge worm monster burrows up out of the ground and roars at the house it's dwarfing. So... yeah. While I REALLY could have done without Mom's boobs at the start there, that was otherwise a really solid middling generic 80's horror movie. Wouldn't recommend going out of your way to see it since it's basically the same deal as like 50 other movies, but it's quite watchable.
