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Neon Maniacs: D-

There is a gang of humanoid mutants (or “maniacs”) living inside of the Golden Gate Bridge. At night, they roam the streets of San Francisco, killing random people and harvesting their body parts. The only person who knows this information is a typical Well-Behaved Young Girl who narrowly escapes their clutches. Guess what: no one believes her. Also, guess what: I don’t give a shit, this movie blows.

The maniacs are mostly lame, flirting with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers syndrome; they look sort of like variations of the Toxic Avenger, but they are supposed to be scary. Maybe two of the maniacs look like they have some cool make-up on, but the rest are some dudes with Halloween masks and garbage glued to them. I’m talking Halloween masks you buy at Target. The shit is so random! One guy looks like they threw flour on him and glued pubes all over him. What a shitty mutation.

Get ready to get pissed: The maniacs’ weakness is water. That’s right: The maniacs who live in a tower of the Golden Gate and who wander around San Francisco at night, where the atmosphere is all MOISTURE, are killed by fucking water. This is worse than Signs where the aliens who also have a weakness for water decide to invade Earth, a water planet, and they run around a dewy cornfield.

The maniacs wind up at a high school battle of the bands where everyone is wearing cheap Halloween costumes, so the maniacs fit right in. The Well-Behaved Young Girl convinces her friends to spray the maniacs with squirt guns and while 80’s rock plays and you are expected to just sit there and watch this garbage.

This is the “showdown” scene of the movie. There is a crescendo of low-budget and unamusing violence, limbs getting hacked off and off-screen kills galore, that is abruptly ended when some girl dressed as Dracula gets a hold of the firehose and sprays the maniacs to maniac Kingdom Come.

The movie almost didn’t get made and actually had some interesting people (like the guy who did make-up for Aliens) involved from time to time, and I guess because of all the hoopla that built up to Halloween costumed turds, this is considered a “cult” film. But I don’t buy it. I think it’s sloppy and cheap and fucking agonizing to watch. Maybe at one time, someone cared about Neon Maniacs, but you wouldn’t be able to tell by watching it.