Foreverisacastironmess I felt greatly let down by this pitiful excuse for a movie. I wasn't under the impression it would be Shakespeare but going by the cool cover art I did think it would at least be something of a monsterfest type film along the lines of "Spookies", which is one of my all-time favourite fun horror movies. But sadly it soon turned out to be nothing but a confused tiresome mess that I found downright insulting in its plain unapologetic stupidity. Like the number one thing that bugged me about it was the most obvious thing: Where, who, and what the f**k were the Neon Maniacs!? Oh they just magically sprung from the scary iron door beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.. Pathetic! I'm not five years old, give me something to go on! You don't know if they're mutants, demons, robots, nothing! So not cool! I hated the music that'd instantly start playing whenever they appeared, it really grated on me. And some of the actors were really awful, like the main guy Steve who played a cheesy rock number near the end, he couldn't have said his lines with less feeling if he'd tried. There was just way too much wrong with it and too many gaping plot holes for me to ignore and I just couldn't enjoy it enough as a result, there was no story! And it's a shame because I really thought there were some interesting themes and the potential for something special buried deep in this hopeless picture that could've been great if the plot had been adjusted and it had been directed better. I think it could have been a classic of 80s horror instead of what it is. I liked the character of the teenage girl who was a horror movie buff not unlike young Tommy Jarvis from Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. I wish they would've done the story so that the Maniacs had been monsters from horror comics that had somehow come to life and they were after the girl because it was her doing - if nothing else it would have offered a passable explanation as to their laughable fatal weakness to water! And the thing with the trading cards when the fisherman gets axed in the back made me wonder if at one point they had considered going for something of a Garbage Pail Kids idea. Yet another neat angle that is just lazily discarded.. Again, shame, there was potential! And I did like the gang of monsters, there was some good eerie moments with them. The scene where the mad doctor chloroforms the poor guy and cuts out his still beating heart is very macabre and scary, and the weird little cyclops alligator thing was so adorable! All of the makeup effects on the monsters was nice, and they each had a distinct look and personality, but you can't build a movie just on that alone, at least not without a little information for the audience to go on, and it just feels horrendously incomplete and unfinished to me, not good enough at all, they should have shelved it. Anyway that's all just my opinion, if you love it more power to ya, but I don't get you man, I don't get you at all! Utter trainwreck, in fact I'd say that if you wanna see how not to make a movie watch this monster!

Woodyanders A motley bunch of garishly made-up malevolent, misshapen, murderous subhuman mutant monsters (biker, surgeon, Native American, Green Beret and other such grotesque beasties) prey upon various hapless folks in sunny, rainy sweet old San Francisco. Naive, virginal teenager Natalie Lawrence (the comely, but extremely vapid Leilani Sarelle, who went on to portray Sharon Stone's mannish possessive lesbian lover in "Basic Instinct" and married character actor Miguel Ferror, who she co-starred with in the first-rate south-of-the-border film noir thriller "The Harvest") survives a socko sanguinary park slaughter in which six of her friends are brutally butchered. Natalie teams up with handsome, but insipid hunk Steven (the bland Allan Hayes) and spunky horror movie loving adolescent misfit Paula (the perky, likable Donna Locke) to kick some serious creature keister.This thoroughly stupid, but amusing and enjoyable five'n'ten cent "Gremlins" rip-off boasts a hefty corpse tally of 24 (!), plentiful outbursts of gory violence (a grisly gamut from disembowelment to an arrow through the neck to a throat slicing to a hanging to a decapitation to ... well, you get the basic wall-to-wall nonstop graphic bloodshed idea; this baby's anything but dull and uneventful), painfully crummy "blurt the lines and grimace" pseudo-acting from a non-star cast, many uproarious obvious lapses in logic (e.g., the horrible thingofabobbits can be killed with mere water, yet reside under the Golden Gate Bridge and live in 'Frisco, a city which isn't famous for its dry, arid weather!), righteously gruesome make-up f/x, and hopelessly inadequate direction by cinematographer Joseph ("Alligator," "Alone in the Dark") Mangine. Screenwriter Mark Patrick Carducci, who presumably wrote the senseless dead simple script in about two hours (probably with magic markers, no less), later penned the glorious "Pumpkinhead," which only goes to show that one can really get up from off the floor. Hell, this gut-bustingly asinine fright flick clinker even comes complete with plenty of cheesy rock songs and one of those oh-so-80's "it ain't over yet!" sequel set-up anti-climactic endings, but alas said follow-up never got made. Man, now isn't that just an honest shame?

m_jordan_jones This film is a ton of fun to watch. Though some lame characters that I hate make the film a little worse. It's still a pretty good movie. Pretty fast paced film with some kick ass monsters. Though after the first 20 minutes of the film the pace really slows down. Original stuff deserves a much higher rating. But still the film has some faults to it. Mainly over acting which really wasn't necessary for this type of film. And I noticed how a lot of people have a problem with the missing plot. I like how a lot of the stuff wasn't explained it makes it very unique and cool. Well I recommend this film to true b movie fans. If you need a movie with a good plot and good actors look else where.

roddmatsui As bad films go, this one's pretty enjoyable.Anchor Bay, not long ago, released a wonderful widescreen DVD of NEON MANIACS. But you can also enjoy this on tape, because VHS copies are still floating around at used video stores. And perhaps an old VHS tape might be better for generating that 80's feeling... This is the infamous low-budget horror flick from 1985 that boasts a gaggle of weird, oozing monsters--each with a different look and method of killing--who come out at night, ready for action. The movie takes place in San Francisco--and the monsters actually make their home under the Golden Gate Bridge (!). Sure, why not? It could happen. The title monsters are NEVER referred to as "Neon Maniacs" by any of the characters. A narrator has a brief speech early on in the film and says something like "The children's path shall be darkened...by the SHADOWS of the...NEON MANIACS." (Yeah. Whatever.) But that's the only time you hear the term, and as a justification for the title, it's flimsy at best. AND, as noted by many, the monsters are NEVER explained in any way. At all! Near the end of the film there is a climactic scene at a high school costume dance featuring an astounding "Battle of the 80's Bands" (one a Rick Springfield knockoff, the other a lame heavy metal group) that will have you squirming and your face contorting into various peculiar grimaces and scowls. Yow! This is a time capsule film. You watch it to see what things looked like, what was going on twenty-odd (very odd) years ago. But please take care: What you see, you may find upsetting.80's horror had its own very unique and pointless stamp, and this is one of the best examples of an endearingly BAD 80's horror film--just as THE BREAKFAST CLUB is one of the best examples of an endearingly good 80's teen film. That is to say, NEON MANIACS, despite how awful it is, is memorable. It gives you a strange warm happy feeling inside when you watch it. And when it's over, you think about it--chortle to yourself over it. You might even recommend it to your friends. And you know perfectly well that it's not a good movie at all! That it's one of the worst movies you've ever seen!! See it tonight! Yes, it's crap. Yes, it's fun.