Neon Maniacs (1986)

"When the world is ruled by violence,

And the soul of mankind fades,

the children's path shall be darkened

by the shadows of the Neon Maniacs."

Does that intro voice-over make any sense to you? Good, then it sets up this movie perfectly.

The first few moments establish that there are killers living under the San Francisco Bridge that murder. Oh, they also have trading cards for some reason...

Don't worry, these are never explained nor seen again after this point in the movie.

Each member of this group of murdering killers has his own theme/preferred murdering method. It's kind of like someone said, "That Village People thing was pretty cool. Let's mix that with a bunch of deadly killing murderers who all dress in costume. But they're not 'People' so we'll call them 'Maniacs.' And everyone is going wild about neon because it's 1986, so we'll toss that word in too."

Neon blood, because...well, the word is in the title so...

So, after their random killing of the fisherman (to establish that they are, in fact, murdering killers) the Neon Maniacs venture out to do some good old-fashioned murdering of teenagers. Unfortunately, one of their would-be victims doesn't get murder-killed. She gives a statement to the police and then goes back to high school, where no one believes her story.

EXCEPT...for one plucky, young pseudo-Punky Brewster type who is really into horror films.

So plucky, her hat couldn't possibly stay on straight.

Plucky Brewster decides to investigate on her own and (accidentally) discovers that the monsters have a weakness. As she's doing some digging, one of them trips into a water puddle right in front of her. That's right, these creatures have their own garlic/silver bullet. And it is...WATER!

Yes. These scary slashing-hackers disintegrate when they come into contact with the most common substance on earth. You could literally defeat them with a spray bottle.

Or a water gun...

...water bucket...

...shower combo.

It's clear that this movie doesn't care about logic. It's got a central conceit that no one thought through (i.e. Does the fog they're walking through also harm these monsters?). The film pours everything into the idea of 12 themed killers, but dries up otherwise. There's no gory deaths to wash over the viewer, and barely more than a spritzing of story. Recommended only for 80s horror buffs.