MY CALL: This isn’t for mainstream horror fans. But if you enjoy campy, cheap, hokey, B-horror, then this is right up your alley. The diverse monster make-up for the homicidal ensemble of mutant is likely worth the price of admission. MORE MOVIES LIKE Neon Maniacs: If you want more communal-living monstrosities, try Nightbreed (1990), Basket Case 2-3 (1990, 1991) or Digging Up the Marrow (2014)—all of which are much better movies.
If you’re anything like me, a movie poster covered with a variety of monsters is going to stoke interest. These mutant goons look a lot of bad guys from a Toxic Avenger sequel, or reject rubber masked monsters that never made the cut for Nightbreed (1990). Each monster has its own motif and weapon—e.g., a noose, a tomahawk, electrical powers, a meat hook, a katana and full samurai regalia (Solly Marx; Silent Madness). One of them looks like a yet uglier Chatterbox (Hellraiser), an undead surgeon (Andrew Divoff; Wishmaster 1-2, Graveyard Shift, Faust: Love of the Damned), a Star Trek-ish race, a medieval soldier, a native American, a reptilian cyclops, and another like a pre-human hominid.
This movie is really cheap, really dumb, and really awfully awesome(ly horrible). There’s clumsy action, a haphazard limb-break, way over-acted monster skulking, some severed limb antics, and idiotic stunts (like a teenager leaping at a Neon Maniac head first through the noose loop he was holding). Needless to say, the acting isn’t great.
The story and exposition scenes between monster scenes are painfully boring. Even some of the death scenes feel completely empty—e.g., a cop has a noose thrown over his neck, then cut to his dangling feet twitching. That’s a crap throwaway death scene with zero value added to such extent that I was just annoyed. I’m saddened to report that some other death scenes are equally empty. But again, this movie is, well, really bad and really cheap.
For a very conspicuous mutant clan, these troglodytes sure are brazen about going out in public. Not that this script merits a literary deconstruction, but I find it beyond implausible that their existence has remained a secret. They take no care (in the events of this movie) to avoid being seen. Not only that, but opening sequence of this movie reveals that the Neon Maniac monsters have trading cards! Not sure what to make of this. Who made these cards!?!
Like Gremlins (1984), their weakness is water. One of the mutants trips into a puddle and nearly melts to death, and they are all afraid of rain. The first truly satisfying effects scene is when a girl kills a mangled-faced mutant with a squirt gun, then a bucket of water, then the shower, and we watch pus-like goop ooze from its wounds as it melts down to some shriveled skeletal remains. Our final act pits our fire-hose-armed protagonists against the mutants at a costume party concert. Just silly nonsense.
This movie is not good. And while it may scratch a “so bad it’s good” itch, I’d say there’s better out there for that. Still, the very novelty of the array of monsters in this completely unexplained, historically diverse, homicidal ensemble may very well be worth it for the curious horror fanatic. I may never care to see this again. But I’m actually glad I finally saw it.
