THE DEADLY SPAWN (1983)Directed by Douglas McKeown
My second selection from the Rue Morgue Top 50, The Deadly Spawn, gets right down to business, so quickly that I thought I started the movie in the middle by mistake. Before the intro credits even roll a meteor crashes in a field, letting loose deadly alien parasites that claim 2 victims within 10 minutes.
We're then taken into the early morning hours in a suburban home, where a couple awakes for the day in a terrible rainstorm. The husband goes down into the basement to find out why there is no hot water and waiting for him downstairs is - you guessed it - the deadly spawn! With very little build-up we are introduced to the monster, which looks like a gorier version of Audrey 2 from Little Shop of Horrors (basically a huge mouth with teeth and lots of smaller sperm-like creatures surrounding it). The monster quickly consumes the husband with blood splattering all over the basement which is now flooded with water. The wife of course goes downstairs to investigate and becomes breakfast for the spawn.
Another couple awakes, presumably in another house, and goes next door to visit the now deceased couple. We never really find out how the spawn got there, and why these people are connected. But the next couple proceeds to have breakfast in the house, the electrician shows up to fix a power outage, and a young boy obsessed with monsters decides to take a peek in the cellar and meets the spawn face to face, who is eating his dead mother's decapitated head (notice the boy's Famous Monsters magazine product placement at the breakfast table). Total chaos ensues as old women at brunch are attacked by the mini-spawns who crawl into the salad bowl and then latch onto their legs.
I kind of lost interest towards the end, probably because the monsters were shown so many times that it just became comical, but there were definitely some cool gore effects when people got eaten. Eventually the survivors destroy the evil and good prevails - blah blah blah. Some cool sci-fi and horror elements here, but overall a very weak plot with few climaxes. I give it 2 toes, but apparently it's a classic, now available in special edition DVD. It really is like watching the Little Shop of Horrors as an R-rated feature.
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