The Deadly Spawn is a monster movie in the vein of Evil Dead - made locally on an obviously low budget, but by people who are obviously passionate about what they are doing. I'd say Raimi was more interested in the craft of filmmaking, whereas the emphasis of The Deadly Spawn is crazy creature effects. (It's probably worth noting here that Spawn had 1/15 of the budget of Evil Dead though.) Sure, there are some rough edges here and there, but at the end of the day the clear affection for the creature feature shines through, and makes The Deadly Spawn a really fun and gory b-movie romp.
The story is about an alien that crash lands to Earth on a meteor a la the Blob. It's sort of a multi-headed fat worm thing with a ton of teeth, and it quickly starts its reign of terror by eating a couple of campers who go to check out the meteor. (At this point, just don't go anywhere near something that fell from space... it never turns out well.) It then makes its way to a house and climbs in the basement window, where it just kind of hangs out, eating whoever happens to come downstairs. It gets bigger and bigger every time it eats, so by the time we see it the thing is probably a full six feet tall and six feet wide. It can't move very well (I don't know if it has feet or even legs), but what it does have is deadly spawn - as it grows, it releases a bunch of little baby monsters. Some are the size of small snakes, and some get to be about cat sized. All with deadly teeth and an appetite, of course.
The house where the monster has taken up refuge (aside from being one of the most grotesque examples of interior decorating I've ever seen) belongs to a family of four - Mom & Dad, grade school son (who loves horror movies) and college-aged son. They have an aunt and uncle visiting them, and the older son invites over a couple of people to study for a biology test. So you've got a pretty decent-sized group of people for the monsters to eat. Which they do. Our group spends about half the film unaware of the threat, but eventually they realize that they are up against some crazy shit, and mayhem ensues.
And it's the good kind of mayhem. You get a lot of solid monster action and gore - it's definitely low budget, but it's really enjoyable. The main creature design is really pretty unpractical (it's got so many teeth that it seems like it'd be impossible for it to actually bite onto something), but it looks cool. And honestly, it reminds me a lot of really old school movie monsters - for some reason The Creeping Terror comes to mind. It's big and bulky and people might have to climb into its mouth for it to actually work - luckily the filmmakers avoid those shots. But it has a 80s sensibility to it as well - as in it can bite off heads and splash gore against the walls. And the fact that there are little creatures all over the place helps change up the vibe too - they can attack from just about anywhere, and climb into just about anything (they have a penchant for climbing *in* bodies, it seems). Sure, they look like hand puppets a lot of the time, but it adds to the old-school charm. Plus, the little ones look really cool in motion.
Considering this had to be more of a local production, I thought that the acting was pretty decent. Everyone was able to act adequately terrified, and no one distracts from the main focus of the film with questionable acting skills. That's all you can really ask for. The characters in the film are decently-written too. While the clever writing will not be what people remember about The Deadly Spawn, the characters behave and respond realistically. They seem pretty believable as normal people - this makes the stakes feel a little higher when the monsters attack. Plus, if you ever wanted to see Dr. Fraiser Crane's corpse torn apart by little creatures, there is an eerily similar character (and Kelsey Grammer look-alike) here.
But even though you kind of like the characters, the monster violence in The Deadly Spawn is still enjoyable. The overall tone of the film is more "oh, this is fun!" rather than "this is terrifying." There are some surprises along the way, but nothing that hits too hard dramatically. Like I've said, there's definitely an affection for the creature feature genre on display here. It's got quite a bit of low-budget charm, and ultimately it's a fun watch.
I would recommend this film.
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