Original Release Date: August 22, 1986
Run Time: 88 minutes

There’s a lot of shady stuff that goes on at night.

At least, that’s if you believe everything the movies tell you. Night is where “Fright” happens, when a “Comet” will come crashing down on you, and now it’s when “the Creeps” come out. And there’s that whole issue with the “Living Dead,” of course.

“Night of the Creeps” was the feature-film debut for director Fred Dekker, who went on to write the story for the creature-flick “House” and helm another highly-regarded horror film favorite, “The Monster Squad,” before his choice to direct “Robocop 3” in 1993 seemingly killed his big-screen career. After taking a lengthy break, Dekker re-surfaced in the early 2000s, writing and directing multiple episodes of the television show “Star Trek: Enterprise,” but nothing he has done since the late ‘80s has even come close to holding a candle to the wonderful viewing experience that is his first film.

“NotC” is notable for not only being a willing and knowing entrant into the B-movie genre, it’s also an earnest and light-hearted homage to the classic low-budget, campy sci-fi/horror films that came before it. The movie tells the familiar tale of “alien slugs visit Earth, infest people’s brains, and turn them into zombies,” and it does so with an odd sense of pride that the viewer can somehow actually feel permeate the film.