I first read about The Deadly Spawn in a Magazine called Cinemagic that used to be published by Starlog press inc in the 80's, this magazine was for amateur and low budget filmmakers. Filmed in 1983 for around $25,000 the plot is a fairly straight forward affair about a pair of unfortunate campers stumble across a crashed meteorite and discover that some monstrous worm-like creatures have hitched a ride to Earth.The alien spawn take refuge in the basement of an isolated farmhouse and prepare themselves for the main course! Soon, the unsuspecting family become the entrees of an intergalactic monster buffet. A group of teenagers, led by an ingenious special FX-loving young boy, now have to stop the aliens from reproducing and taking over the entire world.The main creatures themselves start as little slithering slug like things and then grow bigger and bigger until they infest the house where the film takes place. There's a main mother creature too which has 3 heads and a shed load of teeth. The creature FX are surprisingly good for such a low budget film and were provided by John Dods and Arnold Gargiulo. For one neat effect John Dods attached the smaller creatures to a track with an S shaped wiggle and dragged them with the track just below the murky water in the basement making the little Spawns slither very realistically indeed. Artist Tim Hilderbrandt helped provide the Visual FX and his son Charles plays the lead role in the film very originally called Charles.
At 80 mins running time The Deadly Spawn is a little short by todays standards for a feature but this was a very low budget film shot on 16mm.The acting is pretty wooden at times and the films pacing and Direction aren't brilliant, but it's a fun film with some great moments.
4 comments:
I love the Deadly Spawn! Do you have the R1 DVD? It's got a lot of great extras.
Yeah that's the version I got,I did have a Region 2 version but that was a bit crap, just the film on the UK version so I passed it onto a mate and bought the US version.
Andrew, that movie was filmed in my hometown in New Jersey. I remember sitting on the schoolbus and as it passed by the Hildebrandt house there would be bloody mattresses out on the street lying with their garbage.
If i remember correctly, "The Alien's Deadly Spawn" had its premier opening at the Morris County Mall in Morristown NJ. I was too young to go see it because of its R rating, but my older brother went and he said Charles was there greeting everyone who came to see it. Which was funny because we would see him at school every day anyway...
It actually got a pretty big release for a shostring budget indie gore flick. i remember it being reviewed on the NYC major network news stations.
That's a cool story Dano !!
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