Eighties nostalgia is big business. Kids today are wearing tee shirts emblazoned with Rainbow Brite and the Thundercats, which is ironic, seeing as how they were barely a worried look in their fathers' eyes during the Reagan administration. Masters of the Universe and the Care Bears have been reintroduced to today's youth with profitable results. The Eighties nostalgia-trip video game GTA: Vice City has sold a gazillion copies. Hell, Mister T and Alf now pitch telephone services. The effects of this resurgence have had both positive and negative effects. Negative in that your resident Monkey with a Straight Razor feels ancient with all of these selective memories (where's the nostalgia for Oliver North and Foofur?), positive in that great horror gems from the Me Decade are receiving the DVD treatment. Anchor Bay has released the underrated Neon Maniacs for our consumption, and it still works pretty well after all these years.

After an early-morning fishing session, a man is walking home under the Golden Gate Bridge when he spots a cattle skull stuffed with, for lack of a better term, trading cards. Leafing through them, we're shown a rogue's gallery of monsters: a samurai, a feral beast, and many others. He's too involved in the cards to notice a door opening and someone stepping out until, in true horror movie fashion, he stops on a picture of an axe-wielding monster only to have an axe buried in his noggin. Later that night, our titular Neon Maniacs crash a standard Eighties party (full of sex and beer, of course). After a few inventive kills (one of which is quite the visual double entendre of "head") only poor Natalie is left alive to be found by the police. She tries to get on with her life, but the Neon Maniacs are hunting her down, leading to a pretty suspenseful chase through the subway. She finds some unexpected allies in Stephen (whom she has the traditional sex-in-the-face-of-danger scene with) and the obnoxious Paula, the female version of Tommy Jarvis from Friday the 13th Part 4. Leading the Neon Maniacs to the Battle of the Bands, they set a trap involving squirt guns (the Maniacs' only weakness is water) and fire hoses. Will they be able to stop the Neon Maniacs?

Neon Maniacs is pure Eighties cheese from start to finish. We’re given no background whatsoever on the Maniacs: they’re just monsters who live under the Golden Gate Bridge (right next to their Achilles' Heel. Go figure.) and love to kill kill kill. The makeup effects are thoroughly badass, and the sheer variety and quantity of the Maniacs ensures you’ll never get bored. There’s a soldier, a surgeon, a leather-clad gimp, a Mohawk Indian, a cyclopean frog-guy, a biker that reminded me of Fred Gwynn’s "Hot Rod Herman" look from The Munsters, and countless others. There’s at least a dozen of these creeps, and while they seem to come and go at random, they keep the movie fresh. Be sure to keep an eye out for the Wishmaster himself, Andrew Divoff, as the surgeon! Best of all is the Battle of the Bands sequence: it features two horrendously awful bands (almost as bad as the band in Hobgoblins!) duking it out for supremacy. It’s got it all: neon lighting, sport coats with the sleeves pushed up, and songs that would make Rick Springfield retch. Honestly, most of Neon Maniacs’ appeal stems from it being so kitschy, but for sheer camp value it can’t be beat.

Anchor Bay’s presentation of Neon Maniacs is very good. Picture quality was clean, and sported solid, if a bit muted, colors. Sometimes the soft-focus really overwhelmed the picture, but that’s how the film was meant to look. Audio was a whistle-clean mono mix with the soundtrack sounding bold (if not a little porno-esque). Sadly, extras are virtually nonexistent with the exception of a trailer. With an SRP of 20 bucks, I’d expect a little more.

Seeing Neon Maniacs again was a great experience. It had been a good 12 years since my last viewing of it, and while the years may have washed away some of its effectiveness, it’s still a great flick for your collection. It’s beer-and-popcorn horror at its best, and I highly recommend it.