Slugs

Don't expect anything serious out of this movie. That would be your first mistake. With a title like Slugs: The Movie, you cant really expect to much. If you are as big of a fan of nature gone awry films as i am, you'll definitely have fun with this movie. I grew up as a kid with cheesy novels written under various psuedonyms such as The Pack, The Nest, and of course Slime. This film brought back great memories of impossible situations taking place with hilarious results.


The plot follows a small town being invaded by killer mutant slugs. Our hero is Mike Brady, the towns health inspector. Lucky for him, he might actually get to do some work this week. The characters in this film do not seem to have a personal life except for the occasional sex request. Besides from spending time with his wife, he follows the sheriff around while checking up on eviction notices. The certain notice is for a drunken fool who has a dog. He hides in his house with no electricity and throws all his garbage in the basement. Severe health hazard there.


When they walk in, they see nothing until Mike points out the gore soaked skeleton withs its eyes eaten out laying on the couch in a position that is just screaming Vogue. After noticing slime trails, the sheriff dismisses it as wild dogs. So while this is happening you are marauded with close ups of slugs using a lens trick to make them look gigantic. I guess they were trying to get under peoples skin with the creepy crawly factor.

Afterwards, many more town people are getting picked off by these carnivorous slugs. An old man who is tending his garden doesn't realize a giant slug crawling in his work glove. When he puts them on, it instantly starts biting him. Him being in a panic, he begins to hit it with a hammer and try using hedge clippers with one hand but never tries to pull it off. After a couple of minutes he decides to grab a rusty hatchet and lop off his hand Berserk style. His wife comes in and watches in horror as sulfiric acid starts a flame trail that leads to a bucket of gas and BOOM. Whole house blows up.


Back at the Brady residence, his beautiful wife notices these huge slugs and points them out. Putting two and two together, he decides that they are dangerous. In a hilarious scene, we watch him get bitten by a slug with teeth. Quite an awkward moment indeed. He then captures it and takes it to a scientist at a school who has an extraordinarily fake britsh accent. He then comes up with some solution that may put a stop to these menacing creatures.


The film was led up to its conclusion in an awkward manner. First of all, we have all these high school kids setting up to go to a huge halloween party. The average horror film fanatic thinks, "Hey, the slugs are going to show up there!". Wrong. That scene is dead. One of the girls does die after trying to be raped, which i thought was a hilarious turn of events, but sadly there is no high school massacre.

With the effects dating back to 1988, we are treated to a lot of blood but little sex. A teenage chick sneaks her asshole Heath Ledger look-alike boyfriend in after her parents leave to have pre-marital sex. All goes well until he gets off the bed drunken and a slug bites his foot. We then notice the nice wood floor is covered completely covered with this slimy suckers. She panics and falls off and we witness a bizarre scene in which a naked girl is crawling in a puddle of slugs screaming and we get the hint this is supposed to be sexy. This goes on for at least a minute.


Then we have the ending which is pretty normal for a film of this type. Nothing to argue about, but nothing to really boast about either. The acting, of course, is really corny and the dialogue is not interesting but we are treated to a fantastic score which doesnt seem to fit the film in retrospect.

An interesting yet dodgy 80's horror film. If you have the chance, it deserves a viewing.

-Maq