Remaking, sequelizing and even spoofing Al Adamson's legendary 1971 drive-in hit all sound like good ideas. But the handful of college-age pals who made this one failed at all three. The worst aspect of it is the fact that nobody involved looks remotely right for his or her part (well, except perhaps for Dr. Beaumont), making the whole dull film feel like a string of footage of random people blandly reciting lines of dialogue (often word for word) written in 1971 to no purpose. I guess they thought it would be funny, but since there are only maybe three or four jokes added ("nose ring", get it?) it never comes close to feeling like a clever or witty comment on the original.
It's loaded with references to the older film too, like having a local business called Zandor's, but these come off as condescending distractions since giving it the identical title and copying most of its scenes word for word already give the viewer the idea that there was a connection.
Impossible to take seriously but too bland and unimaginative to be comedy. A sequel would have been great, but it would have required them to do more than throw in a framing sequence borrowed from 1987's THE MONSTER SQUAD and pull a bunch of people off the street to recite the dialogue. These indifferent, uninvolved kids make you realize just how good the actors were in 1971. Even the move from a beachside tourist town to a mostly-unseen small town in the mountains works against the atmosphere and spoils the mood nearly as much as the lack of enthusiasm from the cast. The absence of any try at moody or spooky lighting, photography and music also remind you just how hard the people tried to make something out of nothing back in 1971 and what infintely better and more committed craftsmen they were.
A homemade oddity destined to be forgotten by all but the poor miscast people who appeared in it.
