Neon Maniacs

1986 "There are twelve good reasons to be afraid of the dark. And every one of them is a killer."
5| 1h31m| R| en
Details

A group of teenagers in San Francisco discover a nest of homicidal monsters living in a tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, but when they try to tell authorities, no one believes them.

Director

Producted By

Cimarron Productions

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Trailers & Clips

Also starring Clyde Hayes

Reviews

ada the leading man is my tpye
Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.
Flyerplesys Perfectly adorable
Protraph Lack of good storyline.
loomis78-815-989034 A group of teenagers are partying in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park when they are over run by the neon maniacs a collection of mutants, monsters and ghouls. Hanging, decapitation, stabbings and many other forms until the only survivor is Natalie (Sarelle). The Police don't believe her and she can only convince Steven (Hayes) the grocery delivery boy who has a crush on her. A fellow classmate Paula (Locke) also experienced an encounter with them while making a movie in the Park. Eventually Natalie and Steven allow Paula to join them and they discover that water will kill them! What? So they arm themselves with Squirt guns and head to the school dance where Stevens' band is competing in a battle of the bands. The gig is invaded by the maniacs and all hell breaks loose. No explanation is ever given to who or what the maniacs are and why they live under the Golden Gate Bridge. We also don't know why the live in rainy San Fran when water is what stops them. Wrapped inside this goofy storyline is a movie that is very well lit and slickly made. The gore and effects are the reason to watch here and its harmless 80's fun. Kendall Schmidt's musical score is annoyingly bad even for the time period. It would have fit better on a TV sitcom than in a horror film. There is mindless fun to be had if you completely check your brain at the door.
udar55 See, there are these twelve Neon Maniacs who live under the Golden Gate bridge and come out at night to kill people. No reason really, they just do. Natalie (Leilani Sarelle) sees all of her partying friends offed by this gnarly group but no one will believe her because the only thing left at the scene of the crime is some neon goo. Insert Steven (Alan Hayes), a fellow high school student who has the hots for Natalie, and Paula (Donna Locke), a young horror obsessed tomboy, to form a trio of folks who the cops won't listen to. This NEON MANIACS madness is really something and plays with the same logic of the home movies I made when I was a 12-year-old. Sad when you realize director Joseph Mangine was in his 50s when he made this. We never get any history on the titular creatures or learn why they are so intent on tracking our leads. But we do know they melt when water gets on them (you listening M. Night?). I guess you could get away with stuff like this in the 80s if you throw some slime around, which this film does plenty of. Probably the only film in the history of cinema to have the heroes discussing ways to off the monsters and one says, "Hey, isn't the battle of the bands tonight? We can do it there!" Insert two dueling bands (new wave vs. heavy metal) duking it out while the Maniacs converge on the school. The film ends with the hope of a NEON MANIACS II and I'm still, like, totally waiting.
Aaron1375 This movie seemed to have quite a lot of potential. It jumped out of the gates swinging, but in the end it turns into a bit of a dud. This movie starts out with a guy finding these playing cards with pictures of monsters and stuff on them. The monsters end up being real and they go on a killing rampage. What are they and what is their purpose I don't think is ever revealed. They quickly go kill some kids and I am thinking it was better than what people said. Then comes the standard cops do not believe a thing scene that usually appear in movies of this sort and then a rather interesting dream sequence. Then there is a whole lot of nothing going on. The movie turns into a total snooze fest, as some teens try and figure out what is going on. Then the end comes and it doesn't match up to the beginning and it is just a real letdown after the brisk pace that it started out with. Also, how come these monsters are a problem at all? They happen to have a rather lame weakness that is really quite easy for anyone to use. All in all a movie with potential that falls flat.
Michael DeZubiria Very rarely do you seriously come across a movie with no redeeming values whatsoever. I mean, there are tons of movies these days that are so bad that you say something like that about them, but it's a rare occurrence when you can apply that statement literally. Neon Maniacs is the story of a lot of creepy monsters that live under the Golden Gate Bridge, evidently for no other reason than to make people wonder why a lot of monsters who can be killed by water would choose to live so close to it. In thinking back on the movie, is there really any reason at all why they live under the Golden Gate Bridge? Is it just so they can include a couple shots of the bridge at the opening of the movie?Not only do we never find out why these creatures live to close to the one thing that can destroy them on contact, but we also never know where they came from or why they are killing people. Maybe they're upset because they're different. This is definitely an 80s horror film, so obviously you expect the acting to be just as bad as it is, and I think that Neon Maniacs really tests your levels of belief by trying to get you to believe that teenagers in the 80s thought it was the cool thing to do late at night to park their van in the middle of some park and play football and make out in the woods. Oddly enough, as dumb as that sounds, it looks even dumber on screen. I will not waste your time describing what kind of creatures these are, because they are little more than some make-up artists weak effort to make some disgusting monsters for a meaningless horror film and their exact descriptions are beside the point. There is everything from an alien to an ape-man, so you can just imagine for yourself what's in between, if you're lucky enough not to have seen this movie. If you've read any of the other reviews of this movie on the IMDb, you already know that the movie sets up for a sequel that was never made (my good friend and colleague Christopher Brown makes a good point in his review, that the sequel may have never been made because Lightning Video went out of business, but he also makes a shocking miscalculation of the quality of the movie itself – sorry Chris!). It's true that the movie leaves the possibility of a sequel so open that it calls too much attention to the fact that one was never made, but this is not an uncommon way to end movies like this. Little Shop of Horrors, for example, had a very similar ending, with the grinning plant showing up in the cute garden at the end of the film. Personally, I am more concerned with the sheer lack of quality of any kind from top to bottom in this movie (there's a scene at the end, during the `climax' of the film, where the hero and heroine are hiding from the approaching demons, and decide to lay down on the floor and make-out and just not worry about the monsters that are closing in, I guess hoping that they will just disappear – as it turns out, they were right), and besides that, even if someone wrote a sequel to this mess, who in their right mind would want to direct it?