“What is it with the basement this morning?”

Justin’s rating: That’s one nasty tadpole indeed!

Justin’s review: There’s something to admire in the no-nonsense start of this movie that immediately has a nasty alien crash-land on Earth and promptly gobble up two campers. Soon after that, we see the Tremors-looking beast slither through some poor couple’s basement and chow down on both of them. The alien invasion is on!

Hold your horses, Mr. or Mrs. Movie-goer. It’s not going to be quite as fun as that.

For whatever reason, The Deadly Spawn then downshifts hard for the next 40 minutes to give us agonizingly long scenes with potluck preppers, geeks asking girls to the movies, a nerd dressing up in monster outfits, and far too many people going through their morning routine. My patience was put to an even greater test by the awful audio mixing that makes most of the dialogue in this movie sound like it was being broadcast through a paper towel roll.

All the while I’m like… get back to the aliens! Let’s see the aliens! What are them aliens up to? But no, we’ve got to play coy while pointless scenes eat up a good third of the movie’s runtime. Fortunately, it does return to nonstop alien mayhem in the final act.

So let’s back up with the plot a bit, because this is an extremely odd creature feature. I really liked how most of it is set during a lengthy downpour that’s been going on for a couple of days now, making everything feel waterlogged and claustrophobic. This also has the effect of providing convenient subterranean waterways for the alien worms to slither.

Houses in this non-descript neighborhood find their basements stealthily invaded by the sound-attracted creatures who lurk in the darkness until it’s time to feed — and grow. And grow they do, almost to obscene amounts, gaining additional heads and teeth and the ability to swallow Buicks. Also they eat veggies, which I wasn’t expecting.

I wasn’t really attached to these weird locals who seem like they were transported from a ’70s knitting circle, which is probably for the best because they’re not destined to have a good time once the aliens decide to stop playing hide-and-go seek and simply go for the jugular.

Our only hope comes in the form of a monster movie-obsessed kid who dares to stand between the creatures and their clear plans of eating out every night after this one. A kid, I might add, who wears a cape through most of his action scenes.

Plot, characters, and clever retorts aren’t really the forté of The Deadly Spawn. This right here was a situation where some special effects geeks wanted to have a lot of fun making the grossest, slimiest interstellar worms and then squirting the fakest red blood everywhere to underscore their rampage. Almost no effort is taken to hide the creatures, which tells you the pride of the effects artists in showing them off. And, to be honest, they are pretty cool. Maybe a few more teeth than is plausible for a carnivore, but I’ll let it slide.

The Deadly Spawn is an attempt to have fun recreating the old creature feature movies of the ’50s, albeit with a splatterfest angle. None of the goopy bits were that off-putting, though, as it’s so clearly fake as to defy believability.

The sheer enthusiasm of the filmmakers is infectious, reminding me a lot of the rough, low-budget cheek of The Evil Dead, made just two years earlier. I was rolling my eyes a lot through this one… but smiling against my will too.

Intermission!

• This movie believes strongly in the concept of making sound effects to cover the more expensive effort of showing attacks
• Well that’s the most annoying alarm clock of all time
• When you see a light bulb coated in blood in a dark basement, perhaps it’s time to beat a hasty retreat
• What psychotic kid watches horror movies first thing in the morning?
• Wait, houseflies originated on Jupiter? What is this phone conversation?
• Yay, impromptu dissection!
• This kid stares at the monster for so very long without doing anything
• Alien vs. mouse trap
• Something coming from outer space is “scientifically impossible”
• Aliens sound like someone badly slurping soup
• “Monsters from outer space is pure ignorance!” Well he’s getting his brain et.
• This is the longest “guy asks a girl out to the movies while an electric piano plays” scene ever recorded
• Talk about a garbage disposal!
• Great apes never left the Garden of Eden
• The alien critter who was accidentally blended made me laugh
• Alien worms in the eye sockets, argh
• The alien eats her head and then, what, chucks her body right through a window for dramatic effect?
• How funny is it that the kid hero wears a cape through most of this movie
• The final mega-monster!