This is an updated version of a review that was originally published in Bleeding Skull! A 1990s Trash-Horror Odyssey.
I moved into a new house once. During the first week, I didn’t unpack a single box. I also slept on a mattress with no sheets in the living room.
Mark Polonia moved into a new house once. He thought, “Well, I can’t let this location go to waste. I’ll write a script about a family moving into a new house with beasties in the basement. I’ll call the movie Night Crawlers and shoot it before we unpack.”
And that’s what separates mortals like me from gods like Mark Polonia.
Mark and his real-life family arrive at their new home. In the basement, they discover a hole that leads to underground tunnels. Since the previous owners of the house “were murdered on the other side of town,” Mark has every right to be suspicious. Sure enough, he discovers that the tunnels were created by human-eating aliens that are descendants of dinosaurs. The monsters look like old pumpkins with ping-pong balls for eyes and Red Vines licorice for arms. Mark teams up with a priest (Todd Smith from Splatter Farm) to save the planet. Mark’s wife and daughter make a pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie is my favorite food after pancakes, and this is just one more reason why the Polonia Brothers own my heart.
Night Crawlers is 67 minutes of total joy. That’s no surprise, since it was made by the Polonia Brothers. Every movie they made was driven by passion and integrity, and every time I watch one of their movies, I feel inspired to live life to its fullest. But like the Polonia B-sides Hellspawn and Terror House, this movie will please approximately 3% of the planet’s population.
This means you.
Night Crawlers is a simple SOV horror movie that is complemented by many montages of everyday life in the Polonia household. Plus a cameo by their cat. What could be better? Mark’s family unpacks boxes and sets up knickknacks over a trance beat and shredding guitar licks. Mark and Todd chat for five minutes while making their way through a crawl space with green and pink neon lights. Mark has a drink with a co-worker in a place called Schooners Pub, which is actually a wet bar in someone’s basement. Every so often, the beasties attack through the magic of Video Toaster effects and people cough up blood. At the end of the movie, Mark finds the aliens’ spaceship. It looks like a cutscene from a Nintendo 64 game.
Midway through Night Crawlers, we spend some time in a video store. The TV in the store is playing early Polonia Super 8 movies. The phone rings. A clerk answers it. A customer wants to place a hold on a video. But instead of GoldenEye or Apollo 13, they want Savage Vows—a SOV slasher starring Mark Polonia.
That’s the reality I want to live in.
