A group of teenagers are partying in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park when they are over run by the neon maniacs a collection of mutants, monsters and ghouls. Hanging, decapitation, stabbings and many other forms until the only survivor is Natalie (Sarelle). The Police don't believe her and she can only convince Steven (Hayes) the grocery delivery boy who has a crush on her. A fellow classmate Paula (Locke) also experienced an encounter with them while making a movie in the Park. Eventually Natalie and Steven allow Paula to join them and they discover that water will kill them! What? So they arm themselves with Squirt guns and head to the school dance where Stevens' band is competing in a battle of the bands. The gig is invaded by the maniacs and all hell breaks loose. No explanation is ever given to who or what the maniacs are and why they live under the Golden Gate Bridge. We also don't know why the live in rainy San Fran when water is what stops them. Wrapped inside this goofy storyline is a movie that is very well lit and slickly made. The gore and effects are the reason to watch here and its harmless 80's fun. Kendall Schmidt's musical score is annoyingly bad even for the time period. It would have fit better on a TV sitcom than in a horror film. There is mindless fun to be had if you completely check your brain at the door.

A group of teenagers in San Francisco are attacked by homicidal monsters living under the Golden Gate Bridge and set out to prove they are real.Despite its faults, logic, editing, pace and such director Joseph Mangine's ambitious Neon Maniacs counter balances its short comings. Larry Odien, Allan A. Apone and Douglas J. White's make up and practical effects are surprisingly good and the period music score is creatively ominous. To Neon's credit Mangines creates some jump moments notably the bus scene. Paula played by actress Donna Locke (who has disappeared off the planet) has a cute Goonie appeal. Leilani Sarelle's Natalie is a solid lead and not surprisingly went on to do bigger thing. The rest of the cast give typical 80s low budget hammy performances.In retrospect writers Mark Patrick Carducci's ambiguous origins of the Neon Maniacs adds to the films appeal and although uneven with more style over substance it deserves it cult status if only for the 80's nostalgia, it's monsters 'cool' factor and surreal atmosphere.

A group of slow-moving, inter-dimensional maniacs, each with their own unique look and method of killing, emerge from under The Golden Gate Bridge at night to prey on the people of San Francisco. Having witnessed the creatures at work, high school students Natalie (Leilani Sarelle) and Steven (Clyde Hayes), aided by teenage monster movie fan Paula (Donna Locke), find themselves targeted by the maniacs and are forced to fight back with water as their only means of defence (despite the colourful killers living next to a river, plain old H20 proves to be deadly to them!).When Neon Maniacs was first released on VHS, I thought it was junk, writer Mark Patrick Carducci failing to do his rather intriguing basic premise justice, director Joseph Mangine compounding matters with his uninspired direction, and the cast giving dreadful performances all round. Having recently given the film the benefit of a re-watch, I still think it's junk, but at least it now has the advantage of being nostalgic junk, the horrible clothes, nasty hairstyles, crappy effects, and awful pop/rock music (particularly during a terrible battle-of-the-bands scene) providing a reasonably fun time despite the overall technical shoddiness. Steve's hideous jacket; Natalie's big hair; Paula wearing her Nostromo baseball cap at a silly angle; the nasty neon tubing backdrop to Steve's band: it's delightfully dated elements like these that just about made this one worth watching.5.5 out of 10, generously rounded up to 6 for the trip down memory lane (the 80s were worse than I remembered), a couple of gloopy melting maniacs, and Leilani Sarelle in her swimming cossie.

Title: Neon Maniacs (1986) Director: Joseph Mangine Cast: It really doesn't matter, trust me Review: Oh my god. Lovers of extreme cheezyness and bad B-movies rejoice! I've discovered a truly cheezy, utterly bad film that you lovers of z-level entertainment can totally immerse yourselves into! Neon Maniacs! The story goes something like this. A group of high school kids decide to hang out a the local park, you know, the usual teenage stuff: beers, making out, bad eighties music. So in the midst of this little party they are having 12 psycho killers pop out of their underground layer and decide to kill the 12 kids in the stupidest ways possible. But wait! One of them escapes! And the killers cant have a witness running loose, so they decide to go after her at all cost! So thats where our movie begins.When I popped this film into my DVD player, I was ready for what was coming. I knew that this movie was going to be cheezy beyond all hope and that the acting and music was going to be terrible. Yet in spite of all my mental preparation...I still could believe how terrible this movie was! And I've seen some bad films in my lifetime! And I've managed to enjoy a few of them precisely because they are so bad like for example Troll II or Demon Wind, but Neon Maniacs was just too god awful.I thought, well its got a cool premise. Twelve different creatures killing off people left and right? I thought there were some possibilities for cheezy, trashy entertainment. Something maybe along the lines of The Toxic Avenger films or something. You know, the type of movie that you KNOW is low grade but you can have some fun with. Well, sadly that was not the case with Neon Maniacs.First off, we get the creatures. Heres the thing about them. They look stupid! I mean, there's one thats supposed to be some sort of jungle boy and his got this little bikini on...there's one thats supposed to be a samurai...one is supposed to be a war veteran. But heres the thing, you can never really get a good look at them. It seems the budget was so low that they hid the make up and their faces in a lot of shadows.So you can never really connect with any of these creatures or monsters. They are just a bunch of undefined shadows, and I mean this both literally and metaphorically. Heres the worst part: these villains are weak! They have absolutely no motivation as to why they kill! They have no origin story to accompany their sad existence! They are just there! And they kill! Thats it! You'd think that with such a wide range of characters appearing in a movie you'd have some sort of cool reason for them being who they are. I mean as it is, they are these crazy ass cartoon characters Samurais, war crazy veterans, Indians, biker dudes who we know absolutely nothing about! They just pop up from their underground layer with their crazy Halloween costume get up and kill people. What is this a reunion for the Village People? As far as we know, there's no mutants, no alien invasions or toxic waste being spilled anywhere...these guys just exist. And it didn't matter to the filmmakers to explain to the viewers why.Anyhows, aside from the villains looking absolutely ridiculous and giving me a few reasons to giggle, we also get some of the worst characters in the universe! Girl survives the killers attacks, so what does she do after 11 of her best friends are murdered? She goes to school as if nothing had happened! Then, when one of the characters knows where the villains hide out and what kills them she decides to go to the local battle of the bands show instead of trying to get people to help her and kill the creatures? Come on! Where are her priorities? One of the characters is a horror movie director wannabe...and shes filming her vampire movie in a graveyard. The vampire in her little film is about to suck the blood from a virgin. But there's one little problem, shes filming this during the daylight! Heellllooo? Anyhows, there's many little things like this that let you see that a bunch of idiots were the ones in charge of making this movie.The movie has some of the worst music ever committed to a motion picture. Ever seen one of those crappy ass wedding videos with that terrible syntheziser music on the background? Well thats exactly what they used through out this whole movie! And it really really blows! Trust me on this.Aside from all this, I found some mild enjoyment in the 80s nostalgia trip that the movie is. It reminds you just how bad the fashion and fads from that decadent decade were. In one scene there's a "battle of the bands" going on...but just between TWO bands! One band is a Chicago wannabe (we get to hear not just one but TWO of their god awful songs!) and the other is a mix between every other hair band that existed in the eighties.Anyhows, I found this movie only to be good for a giggle. You'll only enjoy it if your previously warned of how bad it is and you are ready for it. Or if your really into this type of bad film and enjoy watching a film thats so bad, that you just have to watch it to see where films can go when handed to complete incompetents. Watching Neon Maniacs only works if you know that this is just a huge piece of cheeze thats meant to be laughed at instead of taken seriously. You've been warned! Rating: 1 out of 5