Full Moon Fever: SEEDPEOPLE

 by Patrick Bromley

When horror goes plant-based.

One of my goals for 2026 is to get back to writing Full Moon Fever, my once-regular column devoted to Full Moon movies. What began in 2014 as an experiment in covering Full Moon's then-new streaming service has dwindled over the last decade as most of my writing has, in part due to the demands of life, in part due to lack of inspiration, and in part due to an overall disillusionment with the direction of Full Moon as a company. With few exceptions, I have found many of their new efforts borderline unwatchable, mostly because they lean into being cheap and shitty instead of being cheap and shitty but trying to make real movies. That was the charm of Full Moon in its heyday: they had limited resources but made movies at the very edge of their abilities. Of course, their recent reliance on AI in their movies hasn't helped matters. Fuck AI and fuck them for using it so much in movies like Prompt and AIMEE: The Visitor. 

Back in the salad days of the early '90s, the company was making stuff like Seedpeople, a goofy monster movie that at least attempts to be taken seriously and uses practical monsters, the latter of which the company still often practices but the former of which is a thing of the past. It's described on its Wikipedia entry as a "horror comedy" despite the fact that there is little to no comedy in the film. That's part of its charm: it means this shit. I get that people may laugh at it in a "this is so silly that I must form a protective layer of irony around me" way, but I don't think that's in the text. I think Seedpeople is trying its best, like all of the Full Moon movies I appreciate most.

That doesn't make it one of my favorites, though. The story is neither strong nor weird enough to stand out in the Full Moon catalogue. What makes their movies special is the fact that they wouldn't get made anywhere else, but Seedpeople is very much in the AIP tradition. Put a black and white filter on it and you'd swear it was directed by Roger Corman in the '50s. Charming? Sure, but not quite special. It tells the story of a small rural town that experiences an invasion from spore-like aliens who spray goo to replace humans with Seedpeople counterparts. If all of that sounds familiar, that's because it very much is.

Seedpeople is directed by Peter Manoogian, whose tenure with Charles Band dates way back to the Empire Pictures days, during which period he directed a segment of Adam Riske favorite The Dungeonmaster,  plus Eliminators, Arena, and the excellent (and trapped on VHS [in the US]) Enemy Territory. At Full Moon, Manoogian directed Demonic Toys, The Midas Touch, DevilDolls, and Seedpeople, the studio's take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers that's somehow still credited to "an idea by Charles Band." His idea? Rip off Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And Invaders from Mars. And maybe Critters. The movie was born the way all Empire and Full Moon movies were born: with a title and a poster and a screenwriter hired ot flesh the idea out. In this instance, the writing duties fell to Jack Canson, one of Full Moon's in-house guys who wrote Robot Wars and Trancers II and Mandroid and Subspecies and Bad Channels all under the name of Jackson Barr. The creators behind Seedpeople were dependable company workhorses, responsible for doing good work during the Paramount era (era)...or maybe the work was good because it was made during the Paramount era (era), when the budgets gave Full Moon more money and space in which to make movies.

One of the movie's more noteworthy aspects is that it co-stars Andrea Roth in an early performance as Heidi, the ex-girlfriend of leading man Sam Hennings, the geologist who comes to Comet Valley to investigate the arrival of a meteorite. Outside of Full Moon, viewers may recognize her most as Denis Leary's beleaguered and abused wife on the FX drama Rescue Me or as the mom from the underrated 2009 horror film The Collector. I guess that's not really noteworthy if you don't know Andrea Roth's work -- and there's a good chance you don't -- but Full Moon typically used their own stable of genre stars like Barbara Crampton and Jeffrey Combs and rarely do we get a "before they were famous" performance that I thought it was worth pointing out. What else is Full Moon Fever for if not stupid shit like this?

I wish I had more to say about Seedpeople. It somehow manages to be the Full Moon equivalent of a programmer, a piece of Full Moon content rather than something more memorable. The Paramount period is known for movies with their own personalities -- personalities that helped establish the company's brand in its early years. This doesn't quite fit in with that crop (Seeds? Crop? Is that anything?) and instead feels like the kind of cheap B-movie most people associate Full Moon with making. The fact that it failed to spawn (Seeds? Spawn? You there?) a franchise at a time when just about every other Full Moon property was being franchised is proof enough that it doesn't work the way it was intended. Apparently, a sequel was pitched in the '90s by Jay Woelfel and past podcast guest Dave Parker but Full Moon opted not to run with it. The creatures did appear in the 2018 comic book series Dollman Kills the Full Moon Universe. My subscription must have lapsed because I didn't read that issue.

Got a movie you'd like to see covered in Full Moon Fever? Let us know in the comments below.