Techincally speaking, Night Feeders is about as cheap as they come. It has all the trade marks of a Z-grade feature, starting with the obvious, it is a video production (film would've been too expensive). In the end quality doesn't matter so long the film is entertaining. As it happens Night Feeders is one of those rare cases of a Z-grade feature that delivers what it intends to; extreme campy entertainment.
Movies of this sort are always too cheap to be taken seriously. Some movies embrace that and are played for laughs, like Evil Aliens or Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Night Feeders has a few good lines, and parts of it are pretty chirpy, but it is not a comedy. The movie presents four quirky rednecks who find them selves up against little green men. In horror films, I am used to seeing a mean spirited portrayal of South Eastern Americans (see Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or House of 1000 Corpses, among others). These guys, though they don't amount to anything thicker than cardboard, are not as unlikeable, and for an eighty minute feature (which is short) Night Feeders spends an appropriate amount of time with them before getting to the point.
Director Jet Ellors biggest mistake is his over confidence in his special effects crew. For about fifty minutes, Ellor is smart enough to keep the little men reduced to haloed silhouettes in the undergrowth but he cannot maintain this subtlety, and eventually, one of these guys steps into the light, and what we see is something that looks like it was generated using the same equipment that constructed the light cycle sequence for Tron thirty years ago.
Night Feeders runs out of steam in the last twenty minutes, and I found myself quickly loosing interest, what little climax there is is not very good. In the end, the movie entertained me, and if anything, it increases my understanding of Z-grade features. There is nothing really to understand other than, they are made mostly for fun and then the makers hope that the product will find it's way to a minor film festival or that the sponsors will offer more money for the next project.
