Night Of The Creeps

I started on this set and then paused thinking I had plenty of time to finish it up and put it out before the month was out.  Then, before you know it, it was down to the wire if I wanted to get it out in the month of October because here we are on the last day of the month.  It's pretty cool that it's a horror set on Halloween though, right?

Night of the Creeps is ripe for a custom card set.  Zombies, in my opinion, always make for a cool visual.  Plus, you've got aliens, flamethrowers, a boy-gets-girl story and the combination of Tom Atkinson and Dick Miller.  A little of everything.  That was the intention I guess. This was Fred Dekker's first movie and I read where his thinking was that there was no guarantee that he'd ever get another movie so he threw in everything he loved about movies growing up.  But, the movie doesn't feel incongruent because of that, he and Shane Black did a great job of writing it so that all the pieces fit together.  

When I was thinking about doing this movie as a card set I was all set of the 1986 Donruss inspired design.  That one always seems to be a crowd pleaser and I thought it would work well.  But when I was looking at the poster art for the movie that I like to use for my card set's title card I noticed how the zombie figure breaking through the door glass reminded me, shape-wise, of a template I used for another 1986 movie, my Link set.  The story behind the design is that I couldn't see the Link set going into a design that was originally used as a sports card design so I threw together a hybrid of the 1979 Topps Incredible Hulk set and their '84 Gremlins set.  It's essentially the same design in two different colorways and a Gizmo inset on the Gremlins cards.  I chose the light blue color from the Night of the Creeps movie title screen logo.

I didn't have a set number of cards the set was going to be.  I just sort of let the images I found online be the guide.  Depending on the quality/quantity of images I found it would either be the best scenes, which I knew had to include some of the cool special effects, or I might even be able to somewhat storyboard the movie with the cards.  It turned out the latter with the set totaling 21 cards.  That was really the scenario I was pulling for even if it meant more work.

The back design is a play off of the card front design, just like the Link set.  I threw in a couple fun elements to jazz it up a bit and make it distinctly Night of the Creeps.  The backs feature and cast title card, a quote card back, a trivia quiz card back, 4 character profile card backs and 15 movie fact card backs.

Since this is a larger set I wanted to include something extra for any fans that wanted to add it to their collection.  So, I came up with a "Zombie Bradster" pin that pulled from the card design.  This is a 1.25" round acrylic pin back pin that comes on a card set matching card back.  Truth be told after the set was completed I felt like I missed the boat on a janitor Miner "screaming like banshees!" card, so I made up for it, even if there is a pin hole in the middle of his face.