Consider this an appetizer for some of horror trash serving this month, something to set the mood, an hors d’ouvre if you will.
One pure in 80s trash, given the title its was either gonna be that or a modern throwback to 80s horror filth of the lower alphabet ranks.
Immediatly this feels like a tie-in film made to promote some 80s style horror themed trading cards series that would now cost fortunes in the second hand collector market, giving off a very cheap knock-off Garbage Pail Kids vibe, i mean, the titular “Neon Maniacs” are presented with a random fisherman finding some staged photo of someone in very cheap costumes in a book with the symbol/crest of a…. gecko eatings its tail, not like the uroborus symbol is trademarked, but whatever.
The plot sees these demonic maniacs (which including a biker, a crocodile man, a Hills Have Eyes looking motherfucker and even an undead samurai, move over Yoroi) terrorize and slaughter random horny teens at night, more specifically crashing the birthday party of a girl, Natalie, whom ends up surviving (as she is a virgin, since its the rule, as it was harassing people for that back in the era) but with no one believing her accounts, aside from a guy with a crush for her and someone that witnessed the “neon maniacs” in action before.
Despite this, she has to find a way to prepare for when they strike again… after they leave their home base below the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
There’s also a… girl obsessed with horror movies, that has horror props, masks, posters, and shoots films. Yeah a girl this time around, a tomboy, which is rare for the time, but still serving the usual role of the “nerdy kid lore keeper” that knows about the monsters.
That’s it, but “it” barely makes sense, this is clearly a movie where they thought of having multiple monster slasher villains…. and tried to reverse engineer a plot from that, but weren’t able to
Literally, because learning that this was a botched production they still pushed out and tried to salvage in editing…. yeah, that makes perfect sense, as there’s tons of plot holes, there’s no explanation for the “when, how and why” of the undead killer stereotypes, as the expository scenes that might have explained that were either cut or never shot for budgeting issues.
While most of this you could chuck to plain ol’ incompetence, it becomes obvious as it builds up to a grand battle against the undead Village People murder gangarooni and the teens…. but it abruptly ends on an anticlimatic pile of nothing, because the funding or time run out and they chucked the thing at the editor in order to try give it an ending, shitty as it is.
This feels like a Spookies situation but is not, it’s worse because at least there a lot of the issues stem from the producers stapling scenes with a completely different tone to an unfinished movie, you could tell it was two different movies.
Neon Maniacs is worse as it has lots of brutal gore done by characters way too cartoonish to be scary while mostly sporting a “for family/kids film” feel to it that its just baffling and clashes with the teen slasher vibes, there’s no juxtaposition or tongue-in-cheek deliberate zanyness, it’s just all over the place and not necessarily in a good way.
It’s also telling how almost 20 minutes are spent on a “battle of the bands” school contest putting a Rick Springfield knockoff band against “hair metal band n°96”, happening because the characters that know about the undead killer monsters decide the battle of the band taking place at school is a place like another to fight them off. It also reminds me of Zombie Nightmare, minus having John Mikl Thor and music by actual, known heavy metal bands like Motorhead.
Despite the cheap effects for the monsters, the “demon dozen” (despite looking like mocap actors for of a rejected horror themed Mortal Kombat clone) are the best part of the film, and you’d wish they were in a far funnier and gorier flick, or in a film that decided if it wanted to be a Troma style exploitation-fest or a more family friendly “kids solve the day while adults do bugger all” horror scented Goonies, because you can’t be both, as this movies proves.
The worse part is the reveal of how to defeat the “neon maniacs” (which i feel i should shout like it’s a heavy metal chorus) is also made surprisingly early on, but not explicitly stated until later because it’s initially too stupid to be the actual explanation, you’d think it’s a fake-out as it would sound like you made it up, BUT it is that dumb that i’m gonna spoil it.
They’re weak to water.
Just any water, not necessarily holy or blessed or laced with something, even regular rain has them fuck off…. why we’ll never know since the expository dumps were cut out, as we said before, but i also spoiled it because the movie makes it obvious very early in the ghouls have eaten a Devil Fruit or something.
I mean, might as well, since there’s random dream sequences of raining blood, the entire massacre of Natalie friends is never followed up because they find no bodies at the scene, again, maybe it was explained in those fabled expository scenes that might have never existed anywhere outside of the screenplay, but we’re going full into “if my grandma had wheels she’d be a bike” territory now.
Again, i’ll cut this some slack since its so obviously unfinished, i will both blame and thank the distributor, Bedford Entertaiment, for still pushing out a movie that wasn’t finished, and yet is 90 minutes long, somehow, i was honestly surprised by that.
it feels like someone wanted to make a more modern of The Monster Squad but felt it was too kiddy and wouldn’t appeal to the teen demographic… but failed, it’s still feels way too cartoony for its own good (the villains literally being damaged by mild rain doesn’t help), and it feels stuck in the middle (to be generous) tonally, so it’s just kinda perplexing to witness.
Yet, it’s still somewhat fun thanks to some likeable lead protagonists, the very 80s music and the cheesy “filler” like the battle of the band segment is still fun, at least for cinema archeologist interested in oddball 80s artefact, this definitely fits the bill, even more as there’s very little “neon” in “Neon Maniacs” (the alternate title of Evil Dead Warriors is arguably more apt), but the monsters do leave some green ooze behind and i’m being overly petty for a film that has far bigger problems.
While the cast is mostly made up of first time actors or people you’ve never heard before or after, the sometimes amateurish acting could still be so much worse, same goes for the cinematography.
I mean, it’s still Neon Maniacs, meaning utter Z-grade trash that is funny but not by design, which makes for a good cult film, the cheese factor is definitely there, as is the sloppy direction wasting much of the premise potential for a more deliberately fun flick, not too surprising that Joseph Mangine was mostly a cinematographer, here in the directorial chair for the second and last time, having directed also 1968’s drugxploitation-nudie flick Smoke And Flesh.
You can do worse, honestly.
Actually, i’m surprised this isn’t a cult film yet, i guess that’s kinda the basic state of being for such old and forgotten movies that not even most trash digging z-movie aficionados cover or mention online, ironically because they didn’t stumble upon them yet, like i did.
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