The Creeps (1997) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Full Moon Productions has turned out more than 40 features, and you've probably never heard of any of them. I suppose the total cost of the forty films is less than the cost of Kate Winslet's snack table in Titanic. They specialize in low budget horror, fantasy, and science fiction, and their tongues are usually buried deep in their cheeks.

To their credit, they produce bad movies that are fun to watch, and sometimes have some very good moments. They tend to get a pretty good bang out of their zero budgets. Think of them as Troma without the carnage.

1. His first slight problem is that his problems are slight. Because of the untimely interruption of his plan, he does manage to create his evil characters, but they are only three feet tall.

2. His second problem is that his evildoers, being - well, evil, aren't really into that whole thing of doing somebody else's bidding. They really prefer their own bidding, when push comes to shove, especially Dracula, who is an especially feisty little fellow.

The film isn't really scary. It doesn't really try to be. The scenes that aren't outright comedy go for a sense of high camp. I enjoyed some of the comedy in this, for example: (1) in the library where the mad scientist stole the first edition Frankenstein, the head lesbian librarian masturbates by rubbing herself with a first edition of Jane Eyre. (2) Mad Doctor to Dracula  - "are you ready to fix this experiment, or do you want to go through eternity carrying around a step-stool to bite people in the neck?"

It's basically a marginally watchable lowbrow horror comedy, kind of a grade C version of Bordello of Blood (assuming Bordello itself is already a B picture) . Unfortunately, the low-rent detective is many, many levels below Dennis Miller, and the woman who plays the lead is incredibly irritating and totally untalented. They really need to dump her from their Full Moon repertory company, but I'll tell ya what, the guy who plays Dracula is a good actor (he's been in several real movies, like Willow), and takes the part perfectly seriously. He really stole the show, and his deadpan performance was completely appropriate to this context. He's one of the few little people in show business who are excellent legitimate dramatic actors, as opposed to props.  

The DVD is an excellent package. There is no widescreen version, which is a disappointment, but there is an excellent film on "the making of The Creeps", and the flip side of the DVD contains nearly 90 minutes of trailers, from every film Full Moon has ever made. I watched that in fast forward, and was surprised to see that they made some films with genuinely chilling moments - involving such familiar horror staples as evil toys coming to life, to be sure, but kinda creepy.

I enjoyed this silly DVD enough that I'm going to catch a couple more of their films! It's only rated 3.3 at IMDb, and it is bad, to be sure, but it's one of those bad movies that can be entertaining.