This is another revisit from long ago but, instead of time having added to its luster a' la my recent screening of GORILLA AT LARGE (1954), it has only revealed it as the silly piece of junk it always has been. Sporting several of the same crew members who would later be reteamed for TROLL (1986; see my comments above), it deals with the Satanic goings-on in an abandoned Italian villa perpetrated by the long-lost son of a Cult leader (whose demise occurs at the film’s very start) to the eventual indifference of his goofy, pot-headed group of friends (including Mariska Hargitay, the daughter of Mickey Hargitay and Jayne Mansfield, who had escaped unscathed in the freak car accident which took the life of her actress mum).
Unfortunately, unlike the preceding Gremlins or the later Trolls, the titular creeps don’t have much of a personality; they are the handiwork of John Carl Buechler who later stepped behind the camera to inflict on an unsuspecting world such works of dubious artistry as TROLL (which, actually, wasn’t half-bad), Friday THE 13TH PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD (1988; which has already receded irretrievably into my subconscious) and even GHOULIES III: GHOULIES GO TO COLLEGE (1991)!!
Apart from a mercifully brief but equally embarrassing turn from David Lynch mascot Jack Nance at the start and end of the film, the cast is peopled by obnoxious characters – from the hero who turns green-eyed when in the throes of Satanic possession to the clumsy, lock-jawed Morrissey-lookalike hunk of the party. Not that it matters but, for some reason, the end of the film reverses most of the evil that had happened throughout, making this a singularly pointless venture in the annals of screen history (and its being followed by three sequels all the more baffling)!
Unfortunately, unlike the preceding Gremlins or the later Trolls, the titular creeps don’t have much of a personality; they are the handiwork of John Carl Buechler who later stepped behind the camera to inflict on an unsuspecting world such works of dubious artistry as TROLL (which, actually, wasn’t half-bad), Friday THE 13TH PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD (1988; which has already receded irretrievably into my subconscious) and even GHOULIES III: GHOULIES GO TO COLLEGE (1991)!!
Apart from a mercifully brief but equally embarrassing turn from David Lynch mascot Jack Nance at the start and end of the film, the cast is peopled by obnoxious characters – from the hero who turns green-eyed when in the throes of Satanic possession to the clumsy, lock-jawed Morrissey-lookalike hunk of the party. Not that it matters but, for some reason, the end of the film reverses most of the evil that had happened throughout, making this a singularly pointless venture in the annals of screen history (and its being followed by three sequels all the more baffling)!