Hideous! (1997)

Hideous! (1997)

Starring Michael Citriniti, Rhonda Griffin, Mel Johnson Jr., Jacqueline Lovell, Tracie May, Jerry O’Donnell, Andrew Johnston, Mircea Constantinescu, Alexandru Agarici

Directed by Charles Band

Expectations: High, the trailer on Video Zone was pretty awesome looking.

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Hideous! falls into that strange category of films that succeed in being entertaining, despite an overwhelming amount of stupid moves that would otherwise equal a film abomination. I suppose one could argue that Charles Band is a master of such feats. Apparently, it didn’t do as well as they would have liked though, as there was never a sequel when it’s obvious they could have gone on a tirade of these kinds of movies if the market supported it. It’s kind of a shame because I’d love to see what other types of fucked up, half-grown human fetuses the team at Full moon could have conjured up.

The plot of Hideous! is played completely for laughs. Right from the get-go the light tone is established with three hard-working dudes working at a sewage treatment plant, fishing out random things from the sludge. With all this talk of sewage I almost thought I was watching a Troma movie for a second! The guys pull out a grotesque blob of flesh and one of the men recognizes it as something special. He quickly whisks it away and puts it in the hands of Belinda Yost (Tracie May), a dealer in all things deformed. This begins a struggle between two of the biggest collectors of rare mutations that eventually lands everyone involved stuck inside a castle, hunted down by the little nasties. Yeah, pretty much the Full Moon go-to plot, but the film is designed strictly to entertain and it does just that, as long as you have your expectations set properly.

The Creeps (1997)

The Creeps (1997)

Starring Rhonda Griffin, Justin Lauer, Phil Fondacaro, Bill Moynihan, Kristin Norton, Jon Simanton, Joe Smith, Thomas Wellington, J.W. Perra, Andrea Squibb

Directed by Charles Band

Expectations: Low.

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What better to close out our month-long horror extravaganza than The Creeps, a film boasting not one, not two, but four classic monsters! Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, The Mummy and The Wolfman are back to raise hell, but this time there’s a catch. This being a Charles Band film, the man known for his obsession with little monsters, they’re all played by little people! And in true Full Moon style, The Creeps is also filled to the brim with other assorted weird shit that wouldn’t make it past the brainstorming phase at another studio. The Creeps succeeds in another, more surprisingly way as well. The film pulls directly at my heartstrings, not with its gripping story or its tortured characters, but with its depiction of a video store circa 1997.