In a secret lair beneath the Golden Gate Bridge lurks a group of humanoids—territorial mutants not unlike The Hills Have Eyes, each with a distinctive “look” not unlike the Village People, and possibly also robots? They emerge with one goal: to terrify the teens of San Francisco. The title stars of Neon Maniacs have a lot of potential, which unfortunately goes unexplored. But the cult movie, released in 1986, still manages to entertain.
Despite a few establishing shots of the famous bridge, complete with some strategic fog horn sound effects, Neon Maniacs appears to have been shot almost entirely in Los Angeles—forgivable, since you have to assume most of the film’s modest budget went to its special effects. Directed by Joseph Mangine and written by Mark Patrick Carducci, Neon Maniacs has one recognizable cast member: Leilani Sarelle, who a few years later played Sharon Stone’s jealous girlfriend in Basic Instinct. Here, she’s Natalie, who’s the only survivor after her friends decide to have an outdoor party for her in a park adjacent to Neon Maniacs turf. Worst birthday ever! Then the Maniacs start stalking her, intent on mopping up their unfinished business.
Swiftly looped into this drama are Steven (Alan Hayes), who’s been crushing on Natalie from afar and finally makes his move once all her other friends are dead, and Paula (Donna Locke), a younger teen obsessed with monster movies (a tomboy, she wears an Alien baseball cap throughout the movie), who draws the Maniacs’ ire when she tries to catch them on videotape outside their hideout.
As with many horror movies of this era, the parents are all checked out (Natalie’s folks are on a European vacation), and the cops don’t take the kids’ admittedly wild-sounding stories seriously, despite a lot of evidence that suggests something isn’t right. Like, for instance, a lot of missing teens, and a crime scene that’s completely clean except for scattered puddles of an unidentifiable slime.
Things come to a head at a high school battle of the bands—one is a Steven-fronted group that sounds like a Rick Springfield tribute act; the other looks like a Motley Crue video come to life—when in crash the Neon Maniacs, who easily blend in because it’s “Freak Frolic Night” and everyone is dressed like a freak. Fortunately, um, the Neon Maniacs melt when they come into contact with water, and Paula’s able to find a hose in the nick of time.
It’s a pretty silly plot that doesn’t hit many curveballs, but there’s a very distinct sense that Neon Maniacs had aspirations of being a much more detailed and epic movie. It opens with a very solemn voice over—”When the world is ruled by violence and the soul of mankind fades, the children’s path shall be darkened by the shadows of the Neon Maniacs”—that teases some great mythology to come. Then, in the opening scene, a guy trying his luck fishing near the Golden Gate Bridge stumbles across what look like trading cards showing off the Neon Maniacs in menacing poses, clad in their signature outfits: the Samurai! The sadistic doctor! The guy with the axe! The other guy with the rope! The half man/half ape! The alligator-skinned cyclops!
Who took these photographs, and what purpose these trading cards might serve, is never explained, but that’s a small matter compared to the fact that we never learn anything about the Neon Maniacs. For instance, where did they come from? Were they created by some unseen mad scientist? Why do they live in a secret compartment under a bridge? Why are they so kill-crazy? Why, when one of them loses an arm, does it appear to be a robotic arm? What’s the sludgy slime they leave behind? Why do they go all Wicked Witch of the West when they get wet?
These are questions that only the late screenwriter Carducci—who went on to co-script and receive a co-story credit on Stan Winston’s 1988 creature feature Pumpkinhead; he also wrote a 1987 episode of Tales From the Darkside—may have known the answers to. No doubt original intentions for Neon Maniacs involved going much deeper with the monsters, but you can sense this wasn’t a smooth production. One big sign: if you watch the credits, you’ll see nearly all of the individual Maniacs were portrayed by multiple actors, which suggests a stop-and-start shooting schedule.
However, if you don’t mind not knowing exactly what’s up with the Neon Maniacs—or suffering through Steven’s excruciating flavor of rock n’ roll (we never find out who wins the Battle of the Bands, come to think of it!)—Neon Maniacs is a surprisingly agreeable oddity well worthy of its cult status. The Paula character elevates it into that meta category of “monster movies featuring characters who love monster movies,” and there’s a certain goofiness that goes along with hideous creatures who can’t withstand water being chased by a bunch of teens with squirt guns.
Neon Maniacs arrives on Shudder December 9.
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