The first thing you'll notice when you choose to Play Movie is that you'll think you started a special feature. There is a "Special Introduction" by the producer Ted A. Bohus that plays before the movie. There's really not a point to it other than to make you wonder if you chose the wrong menu option. Once you get through those few minutes, the actual movie starts. The Deadly Spawn opens with a meteorite landing in the woods. Two campers see it and investigate. They are quickly killed, but not in a particularly gruesome way. After the creature finishes off the campers, it moves to a nearby house where there are two couples and their sons staying. Aunt Millie (Ethel Michelson) and Uncle Herb (John Schmerling) and their son Charles (Charles George Hildebrandt) are visiting Millie's sister Barb (Elissa Neil), her husband Sam (James Brewster), and their son Pete (Tom DeFranco). Pete is a normal teenager, if a bit of a nerd. Charles is a 10-year-old horror freak. He watches horror movies excessively and collects every bit of memorabilia that he can, so much so that his parents are worried about him. Luckily, his knowledge just might help them. Sam and Barb are killed pretty quickly, so that the creature can spawn and feed their bodies to its terrible offspring.
The day is dark and rainy, but still Pete has friends coming over and Millie is having tea with friends. Ellen and Frankie show up to study biology with Pete. On the way to the house, Ellen (Jean Tafler) and Frankie (Richard Lee Porter) find one of the baby spawn, so when they get to the house, Ellen decides they should dissect it. Once they open it up, the insides don't look like anything that they've ever seen before. Ellen and Frankie argue that it's alien, but Pete says that aliens can't possibly exist. He'll learn differently quickly, even if he refuses to admit it. After Kathy (Karen Tighe) shows up to join them, things start to go downhill quickly for the teens. While they're fooling with that, Charles finds the creature in the basement. He is fascinated and stands there watching it and its spawn devour the bodies. Charles is the only truly smart one in the movie. He's studying the creatures to try and figure out how to defeat them. In another part of the house during all of this, Uncle Herb is drunk and ends up devoured. Aunt Millie's tea party is quite a bit more exciting than these old ladies expect when the spawn show up there. I must admit that I laughed quite hard at this scene. Seeing one stuck to an old lady's neck just made me snicker. I don't think it was meant to be funny though. Someone in this house is going to have to figure out how to stop these deadly spawn before they continue on to the rest of the world.
The Deadly Spawn has a very similar plot to several other 80's movies, like Critters. While there is a lot of blood, it just doesn't seem particularly gory. There are a few scenes, like Barb's face bring ripped off, that shock a bit, but they're still very similar to other horror movies. There's just nothing unique or very interesting in The Deadly Spawn. The movie is now on Blu-ray, but honestly I see no reason for a Blu-ray version of it. The movie isn't even in widescreen, doesn't have subtitles, and doesn't have remastered audio. At the very end, a few minutes before the credits, there is a spot where there's just a white screen for a second. The production quality hasn't been redone at all and neither has the audio, so I see no reason for the extra expense of a Blu-ray version. There are quite a few special features, but not so much that they wouldn't have fit on a DVD. They are decent features, but nothing spectacular. I found that I got bored during them as well. I know a lot of people consider The Deadly Spawn a "cult classic," but I didn't find anything original enough to deem it so. If you're a fan of the movie, then I guess you might want it on Blu-ray, but otherwise I recommend avoiding it.
