NEON MANIACS

Neon Maniacs Movie Review

A gang of monsters emerge from the Golden Gate Bridge, unleashing destruction as they carve their way through teenagers. What is the story of the monsters? Why are they here? Why do they hate teenagers? We never get the answers to these questions, though we can assume they hate teenagers for the same reasons everybody else does. The story of why we don't know their story is probably more interesting than the actual movie. Some time into the filming of this movie, production had to be shut down for a few months due to budget issues. Eventually, they got back up and running, but faced quite an issue--many of the actors portraying the monsters were not available to come back, so the characters had to be recast--yes, there are multiple actors playing the same monsters in this movie.

“O-Ee-Yah! Eoh-Ah!”

The monsters, I guess, are sort of like zombies, but posses skills--one is an archer, one is quite handy with the sword, and so on. About half way in we discover there is one thing that can stop these creatures--water, which makes you wonder why the live in the Golden Gate Bridge, but let's forget that. The acting in this movie is bad, but not unbearably so. The practical effects are actually a bit better than one would expect from this movie--unfortunately, the makeup is exactly what you would anticipate. There's a lot that screams "1980's" about this film, which is nice--one such scene is the dance/battle of the bands that appears to set up the final battle. The neon behind the bands is fantastic stuff. Speaking of this battle, the bands/music are horrible--Faith No More and Primus were both kicking around San Francisco at this time--were they not available?! Anyway, the final battle was not to be--the movie was halted again and those making the magic must have decided to call it quits and piece together something with what they had filmed. The results of this unfinished film: we have no idea what the monsters are or where they came from, there is no final battle, and the movie ends and goes into the credits so abruptly you will think you have a problem with your Roku...and we are left wondering forever what could have been with this film.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 5

Neon Maniacs Movie Trailer