Two guys are camping when a meteorite falls from the sky. An alien entity comes out of the meteorite and eats them. Nearby is the home of Sam (James Brewster), his wife Barb (Elissa Neil) and their two kids, Charles (Charles George Hildebrandt) and Pete (Tom DeFranco). Visiting are Aunt Millie (Ethel Michelson) and Uncle Herb (John Schmerling).
When the hot water doesn’t work, Sam goes down to the basement to check it out and gets eaten by the alien. Barb goes down to the kitchen to start the coffee. She sees the basement door ajar. She goes down the basement stairs to see how things are going with Sam. Barb gets eaten. Each time the creature eats someone it grows. Eventually it develops several heads with mouths full of sharp teeth. It then begins to spawn. The eggs hatch and tadpole-like creatures emerge. The tadpoles also have rows of sharp teeth.
Upstairs everyone assumes that Sam and Barb left for the day. Millie heads off to her mother’s (Judith Mayes) house to help her set up for a small get together she is having for friends. An electrician shows up for an appointment. A note on the door tells him that the back basement door is open. He goes into the basement and is eaten by the monster. By now the spawn have wiggled their way out of the basement and head out into the neighborhood towards Grandma’s house.
The youngest son, Charles, is a monster movie fan. He puts on one of his monster costumes and goes down into the basement to scare the electrician. He comes face to face with the mother monster. Charles analyzes the situation and figures out that the monster has no eyes but has very acute hearing. He remains motionless and tries to figure out a way to deal with the monster and the tadpoles.
Meanwhile, upstairs older brother Pete’s friends, Frankie (Richard Lee Porter) and Ellen (Jean Tafler), show up for a study group. Ellen found one of the tadpoles outside, but it is dead. They dissect it to try to figure out what it is. As they work, the monster and its spawn begin working their way up from the basement.
“The Deadly Spawn” AKA “Return of the Alien’s Deadly Spawn” AKA “The Alien’s Deadly Spawn” AKA “Return of the Aliens: The Deadly Spawn” was released in 1983 and was written and directed by Douglas McKeown. It is an American low budget science fiction horror movie. A quasi-sequel was made in 1990 called “Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor”.
Bad acting and camp doesn’t stop the movie from being creepy, gross and fun. The mother creature isn’t all that great, but it has enough teeth to overcome any criticism. The gore starts at the beginning and continues all the way through. If you like old fashioned low budget “B” monster movies with extra blood and guts, this is right up your alley.
Special effects artist John Dods created the mother creature in his basement. It was so big that one of the heads had to be cut off in order to get it out of the basement doorway. It was then put back together on set. The slithering effect of the baby spawn across the floor was done by cutting squiggly lines in the floor and then pulling the spawns along them under the floor.
Reportedly, in some places, the title was changed to “Return of the Alien’s Deadly Spawn”, “The Alien’s Deadly Spawn”, or “Return of the Aliens: The Deadly Spawn”, to cash in on Ridley Scott’s “Alien” 1979. (Like no one would know.)