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Neon Maniacs
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| Year: |
1986
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Director: |
Joseph Mangine
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| Stars: |
Clyde Hayes, Leilani Sarelle, Donna Locke, Victor Brandt, David Muir, Marta Kober, P.R. Paul, Jeff Tyler, Amber Denyse Austin, James Acheson, Chuck Hemingway, Bo Sabato, Jesse Lawrence Ferguson, John Lafayette, Andrew Divoff
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| Genre: |
Horror |
| Rating: |
  6 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
It's nighttime in San Francisco and a solitary man is walking home when he notices an animal skull secreted next to the road which contains something. On closer examination he sees it to be a set of cards, possibly for some kind of game, possibly for collectors, which depict a selection of monsters. Just as the man is pondering this, someone creeps up behind him and pounces... Meanwhile, nearby a van full of teens drives around town looking for a way to celebrate the birthday of Natalie (Leilani Sarelle). But what happens next is no celebration.
Unless you like eighties schlock, in which case you might have found much to appreciate in Neon Maniacs, getting its title from the monsters who emerge from under the Golden Gate Bridge to bump off Natalie's pals in quick succession, just when we thought we should be settling down with them for the rest of the movie. Natalie survives, however, and begins to think that while she was lucky to get away, that luck might run out should the baddies be after her, which to all appearances they are. But life is full of ups and downs, and she soon finds an ally in the classmate who has admired her from afar, Steven (Clyde Hayes).
Steven is hoping to make it big as a singer in a pop band, which sounds like an incidental detail but is actually VERY IMPORTANT, as you will see when the story reaches its final act. Before that, there's a third member of this Scooby-Doo gang to contend with and she is Paula (Donna Locke in her only film), a tomboy horror movie obsessive who dreams of becoming a film director. It is she who investigates Natalie's claims that there were a bunch of ghastlies who made her friends disappear after the police scoffed at her version of events - though seeing as they don't have any of their own suggestions you wonder what exactly they think happened and indeed what they're getting up to by way of solving the case.
Not much, is the answer to that, which leaves it up to our trio of heroes to divine a method of tackling the creatures before they cause any more mayhem. The villains appeared to be in most need of a tie-in line of action figures more than anything else, as they each had their own individual look, be it doctor, samurai, caveman or whatever else screenwriter Mark Patrick Carducci could conjure up. This certainly made the visuals interesting, if mightily cheesy, but failed to obscure the fact that they had no backstory whatsoever: seriously, there's absolutely no reason for them to be around, and if you want to know where they're from then you pretty much had to make it up yourself, because no one here had any ideas. Again, perhaps narrative bravery, perhaps ineptitude.
Or simply a premise without much thought gone into it, so by the stage that Steven has decided on how to get rid of the maniacs ("neon" because they leak glowing goo as blood - except it doesn't really glow) he thinks the best method is to fall back on the soundtrack album. Meaning, lure them to the battle of the bands he just happens to be singing in with his new wave-esque group, the other band being a hair metal act (who was that combination supposed to cater for?). Once there, they can fire water pistols at the murderers. Huh? That's right, the maniacs are allergic to water over fifteen years before M. Night Shyamalan pulled the same trick in Signs, and it wasn't any more convincing there. In this case, it's more an example of the project's endearing eccentricity as while nobody was going to mistake it for a top notch chiller, it was ridiculous enough and brightly performed enough to keep you watching. Not good, then, but oddly memorable, complete with such nonsense as the hero and heroine having a shag as all hell broke loose. Tinny synth music by Kendall Schmidt.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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