A meteorite crashes down to Earth somewhere in the US countryside. Two investigating campers have obviously never seen The Blob and are rather surprised when the meteorite-inhabiting alien monster they'd otherwise expected sees them as a rather enticing snack after a long journey.
Afterwards the thing crawls through the open basement window of a nearby family home. Basements are fine breeding grounds, so the monster develops into a whole family of monsters in the time of a few hours.
The creeping and crawling things have found a nearly perfect new home - there still are plenty of walking and talking snacks left, and when the alien family gets too large, the children can always go and crash a vegetarian party, which is defined as a party where only vegetarians are eaten.
Yet the house has a rather unfortunate flaw in the shape of Charles (Charles George Hildebrandt, son of the Tim Hildebrandt, who also produced), fan of monster movies and future special effects wizard and/or Una Bomber. Charles is the sort of young person who does not take kindly to someone eating his mother as well as the sort of young person who gets very creative when it comes to the punishment of such acts.
The Deadly Spawn was produced on a shoestring budget, with an amateur cast and crew and without the benefit of state of the art equipment. Usually films like this turn out like the terrible Direct-to-DVD abominations that are shambling through the world's video stores, always on the look-out for new viewer brains. Somehow director Douglas McKeown and his crew were able to avoid the pitfalls of crappy acting, a crappy script and crappy gore effects and produced a very fine labor of love.
Obviously, a film like this has its flaws: The acting is amateurish, but we are talking enthusiastic and talented amateurs who seem to love what they're doing here, not some dweebs the director lured in with the promise of a can of beer.
McKeown's direction is somewhat raw while still providing some inspired moments in the monster scenes. It looks like the work of someone with a deep love of classic horror and science fiction films who was actually able to understand enough of the technical aspects of what he saw in them to put it to good use.
Even more impressive are the excellent monster and gore effects that don't have to fear the comparison with those in much more costly productions of their time.
Yet what is best about the movie is its aura of enthusiasm for and commitment to MAKING A REAL MONSTER MOVIE, as if this was the greatest thing a person could achieve (and I'm not sure I disagree with the sentiment). Despite the gore The Deadly Spawn also has an aura of innocence which keeps it even more in the same spirit as the classics.
Everything in it happens with a sense of fun and joy I can't help but find infectious.
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