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Post by stefancrosscoe on Sept 23, 2017 15:32:39 GMT
"Let Me Ruin Your Evening"What was supposed to be just another great night out with friends, takes a gruesome turn the moment a group of party loving teenagers find themselves being brutally attacked by an uninvited gang of maniacs, and where the only survivor ends up having some big trouble convincing the police of what really happened. However, she do finds some kind of support as there are other teenagers at her school who ends up backing up the crazy story, and they all decide to arm themselves with whatever they can find and go out and finish off what the police didn't.I have not seen it since summer of 2013, but I remember being postive about it. It was a classic piece of 80s cheese, and worked better than I had expected it to. We have a bunch of weirdos living under the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco, who shows up, and well, ruins some unlucky bastard or bastards evening, and then go back into hiding. I thought it was fun that it tried to combine the slasher and monster genre, maybe not ending up as a great example, but it sure was entertaining and one where there is enough 80s charm and b-movie silliness to cover up many of its flaws. The score/soundtrack is awesomely "bad" and the names of all the neon maniacs are a riot, Samurai, Punk biker, Doc, Soldier and I think I read somehwere that the producers wanted to cash in on the success of the Garbage Pail Kids (not the movie) and wanted each of the Maniacs to have their own cards so the kids could buy and collect each of the Neon Maniacs. And, I only saw it once, but remember the ending to be, somewhat "open", maybe they planned a sequel? I also enjoyed the moody/80s score:
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Post by lostinlimbo on Sept 25, 2017 14:18:42 GMT
It's completely daft and gimmicky (like those collector cards that appear from nowhere), but so much fun. I don't know if they knew just who they were targeting this film towards? The striking poster artwork on the video case (the one pictured) had me suckered.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2017 14:59:05 GMT
It's definitely fun 80s cheese. Cheerfully ridiculous stuff. Imagine the merchandising that could be done with it.
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Post by stefancrosscoe on Sept 26, 2017 11:06:47 GMT
It's definitely fun 80s cheese. Cheerfully ridiculous stuff. Imagine the merchandising that could be done with it.Not sure if these are "official" but I decided to just search them up, and well, if I were a kid back then, and found a trading/collecters card packaged filled with these cards, I would have gone out and tried to collect em' all, as you just know that your mom would not approve, and that means every kid would have loved to owned them, just to piss off their parents.
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Post by stefancrosscoe on Sept 26, 2017 11:30:55 GMT
It's completely daft and gimmicky (like those collector cards that appear from nowhere), but so much fun. I don't know if they knew just who they were targeting this film towards? The striking poster artwork on the video case (the one pictured) had me suckered. Maybe that is one of the reasons to why films such as Neon Maniacs somehow ended up working as they seem to try to combine and mix genres within each other, and still ended up finding an audience. I agree, not just the artwork of that VHS tape, but the title and trailer almost made me pay up for an incredibly (out of production) pricy DVD (used) version a few years ago, well untill I stumbled upon a much more reasonable priced german (special uncut) DVD which also included two different DVD artwork covers. Still the VHS version was something else. I love how they somehow decided to leave in the N.Y. Twin Towers at the poster, while the film takes place in San Francisco and since these creatures live under the Golden Gate bridge, I find it funny how that one is not even included on the artwork, but the World Trade Center is. Maybe they were on the move to bigger things in the "sequel", but since that one never was to be made, they somehow just decided to let the artwork be. Anyway, I have somehow gotten the ridiculous but strangely addictive theme song Baby Lied (by the great talent that is Rick Bowles) stuck on my mind for the past few days:
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Post by lostinlimbo on Sept 27, 2017 13:07:19 GMT
The location choice didn't really make much sense due to the Neon Maniacs' weakness to water. But anyhow that's part of its charm. Maybe it was originally meant to be shot in New York, which could explain the Two Towers image on the poster artwork. I can imagine them actually pitching this poster artwork for "Neon Maniacs", before anything else was even set in stone.
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Post by petrolino on Oct 1, 2017 11:55:56 GMT
Not seen this. Thanks for the review.
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Post by stefancrosscoe on Oct 2, 2017 9:24:33 GMT
This fine piece of 80s cheese is on Youtube. Well, not anymore.
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