Today on the 5: Over the weekend I watched a delightful little horror film from 1983 titled The Deadly Spawn. It combines great practical effects with some surprisingly well written characters to deliver a fun little slice of early 80s horror.
Ozone Nightmare
The Deadly Spawn Retro Review
Welcome to your daily five for Monday, July 8th, 2024. I was tipped off by an article over on, I think it was bloodydisgusting.com about 80s gore movies that were worth checking out. And one of the movies on the list looked interesting called the deadly spawn. I've seen it labeled as both being from 1982, 1983. But if you just search for the deadly spawn, you'll find it right away. It's on shutter. That's where I watched it. I think it may be in a couple of other places to rent or maybe watch for free. But I have a shutter subscription, so I watched it there. And I went in and I knew it was a low budget film. You watch the trailer for it. You know, you can tell that this is obviously not a $50 million film, but I went into it really just hoping for good practical effects. And to be honest, I got not only that, but it's also a better than you would expect made movie for one days. It's a very limited scope film. It really takes place more or less in two houses. And apparently one of the houses is the very well known artist, Tim Hildebrandt. That's where they shot one. I don't know which house it was, but one of them was his house or was his house, which is very, very interesting. But I mean, not there's any indication of that, but it's just kind of a fun fact. And the movie itself is a relatively simple story. It's kind of a mix of the blob and little, a little shop of horrors were somewhat in terms of what the monster looks like, where a meteorite crashes to Earth and alien creatures emerge and begin to terrorize people in a small town, really in two houses for the most part. And in that limited and simple scope, I think that benefits the movie because it doesn't have to spend a lot of money. It's basically in two locations, except for some outside scenes, but very, very few. And the real showcase, at least in my opinion, there's two of them. One is the monster itself, which there were actually effects in there that were really impressive that I had to read because I couldn't figure out how they did it. The, the main monster itself is a, you know, it's a, it's a built probably, I think it's foam and latex monster. That one is easier to figure out. You can kind of work out the mechanics of it, but there's some early scenes with these small tadpole-like creatures. And I didn't know how they were doing the movement because they looked alive. They looked really, really good. I'm not going to spoil what it is. I'll talk about it on Friday, but I'm not going to spoil it here. But watch the movie and see if you can figure it out. There is, there is information on it. You can find it, but I would say go in not knowing and see if it looks like something you can figure out. Now, maybe if you do effects or anything, you've made your own movies or anything like that, you can probably work out a way. I couldn't at first. I couldn't work it out. I couldn't figure out how these, these people did it. It looks really good. And the main monster looks great. The acting though, the actual writing of the character is more than even the acting is also impressive for a movie of this time and of this type. Don't forget, this is within a few years of Friday, the 13th coming out and scoring big, which led to multiple variations on the, you know, dumb characters getting naked and then getting murdered trope that went on for quite a while. And this movie really doesn't indulge in that for, for what I was sure that's where it was going more or less, but it really doesn't. The characters, in many cases, speak with a really organic, natural sounding way of dealing with each other. They're not stupid. In fact, the main characters, the main kids, unlike a lot of films, are very, very cunning and clever and are trying to work out what's going on and applying the scientific method, the scientific method is almost a character in this movie, which by itself is remarkable. And so it's not just that you get these really, you get these really, really fun monster effects and some really interesting, I mean, it's shot very well on top of everything else. It does have good direction. There's really interesting use of shadows. The way the cameras position, there's some really nice use of reflections off of water at one point in the basement that has this creepy effect on the character's face. There's just lots of pieces to this that as you get further into it, you realize this is far better than you would expect looking at the trailer, looking at the poster. This is actually a well made for what it is, little horror film. And so there's a sequel to it called Metamorphosis. Metamorphosis, the alien factor, I think, which I know I'd seen the poster for. It's a really nice poster for the actual film. Never had any interest, but based on this, I not want to watch that movie. I want to see it because apparently that one has more money behind it. And I'd be interested in what was done when there was more of a budget. But for what this is, even if the sequel is no good, which it might not be, I don't know, I haven't read any real reviews or anything on it. I just know that it's a direct sequelist and that had more resources. But for what this movie is and what it's doing, I think it's a lot better than you would expect based on looking at, like I said, some snapshots from it. Maybe the trailer. I would absolutely encourage people to seek this one out, especially if you're into practical effects. You just want to see a small, well-made film, then 1982 or threes, depending on where you're finding it, the deadly spawn is absolutely worth seeing. Short, but well-made, interesting characters, great effects. Really, I would recommend it to any horror fans interested in this type of movie later.