Slugs

What's the use of bashing this movie totally into the ground ? I think both cast & crew were perfectly aware that they weren't making a true masterpiece of cinema. They joined into the trend of making disgusting and utterly nasty mutated animal movies and - keeping that in mind - it's good for what it is. Besides, the director of Slugs - the Spanish Juan Piquer Simón - was the same guy who brought us the most hilarious "so bad it's good"-movie I ever saw !! He delivered Supersonic Man 10 years earlier and I'm still laughing when I think about that, so I can't be too harsh on him.

Slugs is a very easy to watch horror film. It's nothing more than a slideshow of bloody and gory scenes with an extremely thin plotline to connect it all. A whole lot of lousy characters are introduced and a few minutes later they're brutally getting killed by thousands of ugly slugs. That's it ! Meanwhile, a guy from the healthy department is running from one side to the other, trying to convince his little town that they're facing a terrible disaster. Don't worry too much about where the slugs come from and how they got this big, because the scriptwriters didn't seem bother much about that neither. Mutated flesh-eating slugs...period ! The acting is bad and the dialogues are ever worse...Pay no attention to what they're saying because it looks just like a lousy attempt to create a little atmosphere. Nasty killings and whole buckets of blood ! that's the only reason to give it a look.

Killer slugs on the rampage in a rural community.

Believe it or not, the story behind the screenplay started as a book. In the original novel, the titular slugs were not caused by radiation or any such thing, but actually on author Shaun Hutson's knowledge that there were three species of carnivorous slugs. (The book's success apparently was enough to get the author the gig to write "The Terminator" novelization.)

If you love the late J. P. Simon's "Pieces" (a true cult classic if ever there was one), you may also love "Slugs". It has some of the same great things going for it: incredible special effects on the gore, a great 1980s mentality and some of the worst dialogue ever to hit a screen near you (which may be due to the fact that the actors are not proficient in English).

The film is best enjoyed by taking it as not seriously as possible. I mean, thousands of slugs that come and go in unison, eat people and apparently have the ability to plan ahead? Not very plausible. A high school teacher who has his own lab for experiments? Not likely.

But I personally love this movie. I think it is so unbelievable that it is just perfect for a good film with friends, some Tootsie Rolls and a soda. And if you have the legendary horror historian Jon Kitley lurking around making slug-shaped chocolates, that just tops it off. This Spanish film made in America featuring Italian actors is a must-see.

The Arrow Video Blu-ray is jam-packed. We have audio commentaries with "Slugs" author Shaun Hutson and filmmaker Chris Alexander. The Hutson commentary is interesting in that he never actually met any of the film's producers, actors or director, so the focus there is much more on horror literature. There are also new interviews with actor Emilio Linder, special effects artist Carlo DeMarchis, art director Gonzalo Gonzalo and production manager Larry Ann Evans. The last one, with Evans, is really very insightful and tells you more stories about the making of the film than you're likely to hear anywhere else.

'Slugs' definitely qualifies for the so bad it's good category. If a film is going to be this bad, it better make me laugh and have some decent gore. Slugs delivers the bad-goods! It really is bad though. Painfully awful. Some of the worst dialog and acting I have ever come across. But damn if it didn't make me laugh so freaking hard my eyes were watering! In addition, it delivers some awesome scenes of gore and carnage that have to be seen to be believed. Slugs is classic shlocky, sleazy insanity that entertained me immensely.

I really summed it all up in my opening paragraph, but I cannot reiterate enough how often this film made me laugh. There is plenty of bad acting, but the character that gave me more laughs than anyone else was Sheriff Reese. He is an A-typical, too often portrayed, grizzled, hornery cop character, but is WAY over the top with it. I mean WAAAAAAAAAAAAY over the top! He pretty much shouts his entire dialog and what comes out of his mouth is so bloody funny, I am starting to giggle as I'm writing here. Honest to god, I don't laugh this hard at most comedies! It's not just the dialog, acting and story that are painfully bad, the music is also truly awful! The 'Slugs' theme is this cool screaming thing, but every other music choice is so bizarrely inappropriate it can't be ignored. You don't actually see the first couple of kills which had me petrified, but when the gore comes, it is nasty, exploitative 80's fun. At one point, a teenage girl slips and falls stark naked onto a floor teeming with slimy slugs and writhes about covered in the creatures, screaming on top of her lungs as they eat away at her, dislodging her eye from its socket. That is just one example of the fine slug-related deaths you will be treated to. Anyone who is familiar with Juan Piquer Simón's film 'Pieces' will already know the man loves his gore. If you liked that film, then you will surely get a kick out of 'Slugs'. Painfully bad dialog and acting that will have you howling, injected with a nice helping of gore, and copious shots of squirming, slimy, fat slugs! I think there is a very small section of the population that would enjoy this epic crapfest as much as I do. If that's you…enjoy the heck out of this one! Recommended!

Why isn't Juan Piquer Simon celebrated for the repulsive cinematic magic he has created? No only did he makes "Slugs", he made "Pieces", too, and even took a crack at Jules Verne's "Journey To The Center of the Earth". I read Shaun Hutson's "Slugs" long before I experienced the movie, and I even read the sequel, "Breeding Ground", before seeing the movie. In three words, it is thoroughly disgusting entertainment, with echoes of Jeff Lieberman's great "Squirm". The Spanish/Mexican blending of scenes doesn't really work, but who cares? The film, like any Ed Wood or Rene Cardona film, is entertaining. The slug attacks are gory and unrestrained and Simon's direction of the little critters is better than his direction of the actors. Lap it up!

Toxic-mutated, man-eating slugs descend upon a small US town, consuming everything human in their path. The town's health inspector, Mike Brady (Michael Garfield), is convinced by the threat, but even as the body count multiplies, the mayor and his businessman cronies won't listen. It's up to Brady to find a solution to end the slaughter and save the town.

Shifting the action from Shaun Hutson's Britain-set novel, "Pieces" filmmaker Juan Piquer Simón writes and directs, following formula all the way. I mean, the hero is virtually named Chief Brody and the upstanding-professional-versus-blinkered-authority schtick was done miles better in Steven Spielberg's Jaws 13 years earlier.

"What'll it be next," scoffs the sheriff, "demented crickets?" He's got a point. Convincing the authorities that there's a shark in the water is a far cry from carnivorous gastropods. But the premise actually works okay – its inherent silliness is a reasonable argument for scepticism, after all.

Slugs: The Movie (to give it its full title) is dumb as hell but not without merit. It's well made and swiftly paced, and there's just enough characterisation to make you care about the community under threat (even if those characters tend to be identified by a single feature: she's a drinker; he's an Englishman etc).

The special make-up effects are good, gradually ramping up in grossness. These little bastards are mean, happy to munch the flesh and the eyes off their victims. There are hints of the Piranha movies in the creatures' swarming nature (although the quality of filmmaking is a step up from James Cameron's cack-handed sequel). But a more appropriate comparison might be Fred Dekker's equally squirmy Night of the Creeps, which two years prior did a better job of embracing the camp 50s monster movie vibe.

While there are probably too many scenes involving people walking into offices and receiving phone messages (if ever there was a movie to be fundamentally altered by cell phones, it's this), the narrative structure is solid, and decent production values allow for a surprisingly exciting and large scale ending – even if Brady's final plan is preposterously reckless.

Slugs delivers few surprises, simply transposing its icky threat into a stock plot for a genre not used to posing such slow-moving threats. But it's fun and disgusting and worth a go for the post-pub slot in the run-up to Halloween.