No Surrender Cinema: Neon Maniacs
Conceptually cool, somewhat incomprehensible, and a cult classic curiosity: these three traits best describe the subject of May’s No Surrender Cinema. Horror films were at an all time high in the mid to late 80’s thanks to movies like Friday The 13th and Nightmare On Elm Street doing big numbers at the box office. Thanks to Jason, Freddy, and other mainstream scary movies, the horror genre was quickly filling up with all sorts of films to satisfy fans. Video store walls and late night cable schedules were packed with psycho slashers, supernatural forces, and twisted killers of all shapes, sizes, and disguises. Among that assortment of evil resided a film focused on the group of killers known as the Neon Maniacs!
“When the world is ruled by violence, and the soul of mankind fades…the children’s path shall be darkened by the shadows of the Neon Maniacs.” This ominous quote is our intro into this 80’s oddity. No sooner does the voiceover end that a fisherman comes across the skeletal remains of an animal, which for unexplained reasons he picks up and finds…trading cards? Tarot cards? Those wallet sized pictures you’d order when you had your class picture taken so you and your friends could exchange? Whatever they are, they show us the grotesque gang that we’ll come to know and love as the Neon Maniacs. Each of these cretins has a distinct outfit or defining trait to distinguish one maniac from the next. It looks like a bunch of G.I. Joe’s fell into the same vat of toxic waste that gave birth to The Toxic Avenger. While the fisherman is distracted by finding the only set of cards in the 80’s that wasn’t released by Topps, an unseen assailant swings an axe to end him.
A sinister sounding voiceover, a twisted troupe of characters, and a death all within the first several minutes should be enough to hype up any horror fan, but any goodwill the movie has built up is ruined by the opening credits. The song playing over the intro sounds like something John Tesh would have on his set list. Songs that don’t exactly fall in line with where the movie is going is nothing new (see my review of Cage for another example of that), but I’m five minutes into a horror movie and the only things bleeding are my ears.
After our quick detour through the Wonderful World of Elevator Music, we get into the story. Like any tried and true 80’s horror flick, we’ve got the group of kids who are out looking for a good time. Natalie (Leilani Sarelle, later of Basic Instinct fame) and her friends are all smiles as they head out on the town looking for a good time. They stop off for some drinks, come across the geeky kid who’s smitten with her to establish that Natalie’s the kindhearted one, and set up camp at a local park. It’s at that point that all the 80’s cliches come out. The guys are horny, so the group starts breaking off into pairs. Those who aren’t lucky enough to get laid are left to their own devices, like hanging out on their motorcycle or tossing fireworks into a public space. As we see the group getting into their various forms of fun, the movie intersperses scenes of sneaking and stalking by unseen assailants, and it’s not long until the Neon Maniacs are on the scene, laying waste to the teenagers in various ways, usually in a way that’s inspired by their appearance.
One thing about the Maniacs, before we get any further into the meat of the movie. They’re undeniably maniacs, but I have no idea where “Neon Maniacs” comes from. It sounds more like the name of an 80’s modern rock band than the name of a group of horrific looking killers. These guys are creatures with skin of a dull green shade. Nothing neon about their clothing either (and given that each killer is dressed for their particular role, you have to wonder what mall the Neon Maniacs are frequenting so that they can keep up appearances). Despite the title of the film falsely advertising its stars as being neon, we get an action filled introduction to the Maniacs as they dispatch of the teenagers with evil glee. Teenagers are hung by “Hangman”, a fleeing co-ed is killed by an arrow from “Archer”, and “Samurai” slices a young ladies head off at an incredibly inopportune time for the young man she was with. Since it’s an 80’s horror movie and this public park is apparently closed off to the public except for our victims, no one can hear Natalie’s screams as the Maniacs attack the van she’s hiding in, and she’s only saved by their choice to leave the scene of the crime.
Of course no one believes Natalie, despite her being in a state of traumatic shock. The Maniacs dragged off the bodies of their victims, and all that’s left at the scene is some strange green goo. Hey, that’s a pretty bright green too! Could this be the elusive Neon? More on that later. Natalie is so traumatized that she goes home and goes for a late night dip, and we see that the primitive looking Maniac listed in the credits as “Ape” has followed her home. He’s unseen to Natalie, and he’s clearly not happy when she submerges herself in her pool, narrowly avoiding her potential demise. Not only does Natalie go for a swim to relax after witnessing her friends die right before her eyes, but she’s also at school the very next day! She either has the best sense of composure of anyone ever, the worst parents in the world, or is just helping to move our plot along a little faster. I’ll let you guess for yourself.
With all the action in the opening portion of the film, Neon Maniacs now transitions into an afterschool special. Since we killed off everyone we knew except Natalie the Good Girl and Steven the Dork, we need to flesh out our non-Neon Maniacs. Natalie is very clearly troubled, and the stress of having siblings of the recently departed accost her, or have their parents call and accuse her of playing some sick game don’t help. Steven believes her, mainly because he’s in love with her, but she also has another ally in Paula. Paula is this movies answer to Corey Feldman’s portrayal of Tommy Jarvis in Friday The 13th, Part IV. She’s obsessed with horror movies, has a bedroom full of costumes and props, and likes to drag her friends into the local graveyard for film shoots. Paula hears about what’s going on with Natalie and heads to the scene of the crime herself to look for clues. Our Neon Nancy Drew soon learns that the killers have taken up residence inside the Golden Gate Bridge, and that their major weakness, one that could even prove fatal, is water.
Yes, a group of killers who are hurt by water have set up shot inside a bridge. And how does Paula decipher that water is what they need to combat them? She watches one of them fall in a puddle. It’s all a little eye-rolling, but it leads to an interesting fight scene where the regenerated Maniac (yes, they can do that too) breaks into Paula’s home, only to be defeated by a squirt gun and a shower head, leaving him nothing more than a literal tub of goo. This incident causes Natalie and Steven (who are of course now head over heels for each other) to lose their reservations about Paula and keep her close to them so that they can all watch each others backs while the Maniacs are on the loose. It’s something that Natalie and Steven probably wish they knew sooner, as they were chased through a subway train by several Maniacs before making a quick escape due to the hijacking Maniac not knowing how to operate the train. And despite the subway token clerk seeing the Maniacs run through the station to hijack the train, there are no witnesses to back up any of Natalie, Steven, or Paula’s claims. The cops don’t trust them and think that they might be crafting a story to cover up their own killing spree. The trio only have each other to rely on, but even though there are Neon Maniacs coming to kill them and a police force that’s breathing down their necks, they’ve got time to go to the school dance!
The school dance/costume party/Battle of the Bands isn’t just another crammed in set piece, so don’t worry. This is where the ultimate siege of the Neon Maniacs takes place. While Natalie and Paula are enjoying Steven’s band, the Maniacs make their assault, blending in with everyone else because costume party. The opening line of Steven’s song states “Let me ruin your evening…”, and he didn’t know how right he’d be. The school security guard is disemboweled by Doc (the only Maniac with a medical degree), the one called Soldier starts machine gunning kids down, and while our heroes attempt to get everyone to use their squirt guns (which they passed out as party favors in case of situations like this), it’s hard for scared teenagers to operate their Super Soakers in a mass panic. Natalie, Steven, and Paula manage to defeat several Maniacs and make their escape (and the former two have a romantic rendezvous while hiding out and avoiding certain death). An assault on a school function still isn’t enough to convince the disgruntled detective that something is amiss here, but he reluctantly allows the trio to bring the police force and fire department (because hoses) down to the storage area under the bridge where they were previously spotted. What would they find, and would it be enough to clear our heroes names?
There’s a lot going on in Neon Maniacs, but that doesn’t necessarily keep things exciting. The opening sequence is cool and a bombastic start, leaving viewers hopeful for an increasing body count, but then things slow down and taper off into a high school love story. I can see that the producers of the film wanted to establish Natalie, Steven, and Paula as more than just Maniac fodder, but there’s a balance between scares and story that’s lacking. It’s also my understanding that the original version of the script called for two dozen Maniacs to be featured, as well as more of an explanation of where they come from. They’re supposed to be inter-dimensional monsters that come and go through a portal, but our only real taste of that is at the end, when the detective stays behind to lurk around some more. That goes about as well as you’d expect in this type of movie, even though most of the Maniacs were disposed of back at the dance. They even have “pets” that we see briefly (called “Scavengers”) that drag away their victims for them! The concept of multiple killers each with a defining gimmick is awesome to me, making the Neon Maniacs come off like a homicidal wrestling stable. The execution (pun intended) is lacking though, as the film doesn’t do much to flesh out the who/what/why of the Maniacs. I’ve seen other reviews making Village People comparisons, and with an Indian (“Mohawk) and biker (“Punk Biker”) in the fold, the Maniacs might be more at home at the YMCA than at the high school gym.
Even with its flaws, Neon Maniacs has a strong curiosity factor. The movie was one of the many 80’s offerings that played with frequency on USA Up All Night, and I recall watching it any time I could. The names involved aren’t particularly notable; Andrew Divoff who played Doc here is the only one with a long resume, having played the villain in Toy Soldiers, the titular character in Wishmaster, and numerous other roles through the years. The action sequences that bookend the movie are fun, and contain the typical amount of bloodshed for the time period. The middle portion gives us the tense face-off between Natalie, Steven, and a few Maniacs on the subway train, and Paula’s bedroom battle with the one stalking her made for a jumpy few minutes. It’s that middle portion, coming off the carnage of the first several minutes that can be a chore to get through for some. I wouldn’t put Neon Maniacs in my upper echelon of 80’s horror, but it’s a sentimental favorite that’s worth a watch just to see something different attempted, even if the end result was a bit of a clusterfuck.
Neon Maniacs is available on DVD and Blu-Ray, and can also be found broken up in parts (but airing in full) on Youtube. It may not be one of the best action slashers out there, but it stood out by straying from the norm and breaking away from the copycat killers and run of the mill ripoffs that flooded the 80’s horror market.
