By Geno McGahee
When a horror film doesn’t take itself too seriously, that can be a good thing. It can be entertaining, but when they go too far in that direction, it can be unwatchable. In the 1995 horror film “SHADOW CREATURE” we had a film with a lot of potential focus too much on comedy rather than the positive things that it had going. All the elements were here. I don’t know why they went in the direction that they did.
Detective Brighton (Shane Minor) is a tough as nails cop with an edge. He takes the bad guys down and is the station’s enforcer on the streets. When he finds a mauled body, he wants to be put on the case in an investigative position. His boss declines, but after a strong plea, he’s given the shot.
Mayor Greenspan (Anthony Chrysostom) has a problem. He’s bald and he desperately wants hair, so much so that he’s put a lot of money into a hair-growing product, developed by Professor Melvin (Dennis Keefe). Unfortunately, it doesn’t grow hair and Melvin has gone into hiding. Greenspan and his goons are desperately hunting for him and are demanding a refund of the money.
The hair-growing product doesn’t grow hair but it does something else. When a fish comes into contact with it and bites the shop owner, a monster is born. The creature begins killing everything that it comes into contact with and Brighton is on the case. At one point, he finds the monster and doesn’t act too heroically, but eventually gets back on track and starts hunting it down with Melvin as an advisor. This leads to a big showdown with the monster, the mayor, the goons, Brighton and Melvin.
SHADOW CREATURE had a world of potential. The monster had a great look and the film began overplayed but then it got absurd in a bad way. They added sound effects at every turn that weren’t funny. It was almost like a laugh track. As the film progresses, it gets worse and worse. I get the feeling that there were two ideas going on here. There was one idea to make a serious monster movie and then there was some shithead that thought that making it a comedy was the way to go and they settled on that, mostly in post-production. It ruined the film.
The movie is written by Dave Scrivani, Chris Wojnicz and Jason Wolthuizen and there is the problem. It does not take people to write a movie. There are too many cooks in the kitchen and there has to be compromise when you have three different minds involved and apparently one of these guys thought it would be more marketable the more humor that was put in. He was wrong. This was missed opportunity and a nearly unwatchable film.
Rating: 2/10
