"The Deadly Spawn" is a classic example of a horror flick made on a shoestring budget which is nevertheless worth watching due to the ingenuity of its creators.

The plot is basically non-existent. An alien comes to Earth in a meteor and hides in a family's basement. It starts picking people off and having little babies that look and behave like land-based piranhas.

The characters and dialogue are all completely forgettable. The enthusiasm that went into the creature and gore effects obviously didn't rub off on the cast.

But that's not what you watch it for. You watch it to see what a talented crew can do with little money and on that score, "The Deadly Spawn" more than delivers.

What this film lacks in budget and professionalism it certainly makes up for in terms of special effects; I would say that these are some of the most inventive, imaginative and damned good effects that I've ever seen in an amateur film. Okay, so some effects, like the miniatures at the beginning and end, are predictably awful, but the actual alien creatures themselves here definitely do not disappoint.

The plot is a typical one involving an alien invasion which begins with a meteorite crashing into the woods (hmm, where have we heard that before? THE BLOB maybe?). Scores of little worm things are released into the countryside, and some take refuge in the open basement of a house, where they quickly develop. The family members are then picked off one by one by the horrible creatures. So, to put it very basically, a group of people, trapped in an isolated location, are menaced by a toothy beast. I guess the makers of this film saw ALIEN when it came out four years previously.

The acting is, as you can imagine, really bad, with people either reading the lines off their cards or simply not bothering at all. It's not really, really, bad but it's quite laughable. There's nothing in the way of scenery or atmosphere, and the amateur nature of the film is noticeable at all times. And, sad to say, towards the end it all gets rather silly indeed, with our young hero employing the same methods as Roy Scheider did in JAWS to get rid of the monster.

But...there are some real stand-out moments here which just have to be seen to be believed. Some notable gore moments include a corpse with worms wriggling from the eye sockets and bursting from the sockets, and a head being pulled off and the decapitated body being thrown through a window. There's another hilarious moment where the worms attack a group of old ladies having a party. The creatures themselves sometimes look bad, sometimes look real enough to be convincing, especially during an impromptu dissection on one of them.

The highlight of this film for me, and I'm sure for many others, comes when a young boy ventures into his basement. He wanders through the darkness before his torch lights something up in the gloom. It's the alien, a multi-headed creature with rows of sickly-looking teeth, something which could almost be Lovecraftian in nature. At its feet (or should I say tentacles) lies a half eaten body. Then, from its jaws, falls the head of the boy's mother, all mutilated. The tiny monsters then proceed to tear the flesh from the head in graphic detail. Let me say, this scene is absolutely PERFECT. It immediately repulses, horrifies and scares, setting out exactly what it was meant to do. The effects work, because the basement is dark and the darkness hides any joints. There's no CGI, this monster has body, texture, you can almost smell it. I'm actually inclined to say that this one scene is one of the best I've ever seen in a monster movie; in this one moment everything falls into place and it actually becomes better than ALIEN, the film which it was ripping off. Therefore, it has to be watched because of this, just to watch this totally unexpected, graphic and shocking moment. And the rest of the film isn't that bad, so why not give it a go?

A meteorite containing a large, toothy, voracious, slow-moving multi-tentacled extraterrestrial with an insatiable appetite for human flesh crashlands in a sleepy small town. The wicked intergalactic fiend promptly scarfs down two campers and then goes into the basement of a house where a teenage monster movie fan (likably played by Charles George Hildebrandt) lives, eating the kid's parents as well. And this is just in the first ten minutes alone! The rest of the picture does a surprisingly expert job for the most part of maintaining a fast and frantic headlong clip. Sure, this blatantly cheap'n'chintzy homemade sci-fi/horror creature feature has its flaws -- clumsy direction, wooden acting from a game, but lame no-name cast, murky cinematography, occasionally sluggish pacing -- but there's a downright infectious sense of zesty go-for-it energy and enthusiasm evident throughout that's both quite endearing and hugely entertaining in equal measure. Moreover, this lively romp certainly doesn't skimp on the gleefully graphic and excessive outrageous splatter: gory highlights include a severed head being ravenously gorged on by the hungry beasts, a hilarious sequence with the nasty alien critters attacking a bunch of old ladies, plenty of shots of blood spurting all over walls and roofs, a college student having her head chomped off by the enormous main monster, and the main monster blowing up real messy at the exciting conclusion. Plus the characters are believable, well-developed and genuinely engaging to boot. The "it ain't over yet" sequel set-up final freeze frame is absolutely sidesplitting. A total howler of a low-budget campfest.