When I was a kid, I had a weird dream that Frankenstein's Monster lived at a dump just along the road from our house... My brother and I used to go to the dump a lot, as staying in farm cottages, there wasn't many other places to go when looking for play areas, and there was quite often some new odd thing that would appear at the dump to take a look at (like for instance, some weird wooden car frame that our local aging ex-military eccentric had decided to build, and then just randomly discard when he got bored of that project). And we had a 'gang hut' nearby too, which was basically just the side of large tree that we had added extra foliage to to bulk it up a bit.
But after I had that Frankenstein dream, I became a bit wary of going near the dump alone for a while. The dream had freaked me out. Something about the way the monster lurched out of the bushes in the dream had really unsettled me, and it had be quite a lucid experience that made me question the reality of it for a good few weeks!
So why am I telling you about this dream? Because not long after having it, we watched Neon Maniacs on VHS. And the first thing that struck me about the film was that the way the maniacs stumbled around in the dark totally reminded me of the lurching Boris-brute from my dream...and has done every time I've watched it since!
Now, Neon Maniacs is not a good film. In fact it's pretty bad. But the weird, surreal ideas of the film are amazing! For some reason, a whole group of crazy-assed mutants, all with their own personality and preferred tools of torture, randomly live under the Golden Gate bridge and after a random fisherman finds some giant-sized trading card style snaps of them outside the bridge, the kill him and then go on a rampage, slaying whoever else they come across for seemingly no other reason than it's just what they do!
And watching this as a ten-year-old in 1987ish, I reckon I was just the right age for weird trading-card troll beasts to make an impact, even if it meant having to endure the terrible battle-of-the-bands sequence....
I'm probably getting way ahead of myself though, as a lot of you won't have seen this and will have no idea what I'm talking about....so lets just watch the film and then I'll get back to you!
* The Main Feature! *
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So there you have it. the weirdness that is Neon Maniacs! Apparently the film was stopped halfway through filming when the original makers ran out of cash, and so another company picked it up to finish it off, which might explain some of the rubbishness. For instance, there was going to be 27 maniacs, but they were reduced to 12... and supposedly all of the maniacs were going to have more background story, and there was going to be a bigger end battle, but it all had to be cut due to the cost of special effects.
But I've always felt that this was a film that would have benifitted greatly from a sequel or two...where they could build on the odd lore.......
Why was there weird trading cards of the Neon Maniacs just lying around? What age is Laura actually supposed to be? How long have they been under the bridge? Why is water so deadly to them? How did such a rag-tag bunch get together? Were they hiding in another dimension in the back of the ambulance??
I've come up with my own ideas for a sequel, which I won't get into too much here other than to say....think how well trading card ink and water go together......
Oh, and also, on a side note, do you think that the reason the kids in Zombies Ate My Neighbors use water pistols is totally because of this movie? I can't think of any other horror films which use water pistols to defeat the enemies!!
So yeah, it's a shame that Neon Maniacs was essentially an unfinished film, but it's even more of a shame that it didn't get the sequels it deserved! I hope that in watching it you feel the same....
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