Slithis

A true throwback film. Upon its release it was both a goofy homage to sci-fi monster flicks of the 50s and 60s AND a gory Drive-In exploitation picture. It's basic plot is about the title creature spawned by radiation. At first, Slithis attacks animals and then.....!

This is Stephen Traxler's only directorial effort, but he had a career behind the scenes including as a Production Manager. It's schlocky fun in retrospect. The 70s hair styles and clothes. The disco bits. The man in a rubber monster suit. The over the top gore with a bit of nudity - all in a PG film! That last note is worth elaborating on. When the film was submitted to the MPAA for a rating, it got an appropriate R. The producers took out some of the gore and the nudity and resubmitted it to get a PG. Did the cut version get released in theaters? Of course not! Wanting to be able to get the matinee audience, they simply released the R-Rated edition as "PG"!

After not having seen SLITHIS for many years, I caught up with it again at the New Beverly around 2007. They handed out copies of the "Slithis Survival Kit" and the crowd ate up the movie as enjoyable nostalgia (or, is it double nostalgia?). I even met a father and son in line who had gone to see the film on its original run together when the son was a mere child. Isn't that sweet - bonding over SLITHIS!?

High School journalism teacher Bert Convy Oops I mean Wayne Connors (Alan Blanchard) finally convinces his wife Jeff Connors played by the super foxy (Judy Motulsky) that some sort of sea monster is eating the stuffing out of the citizenry of laid back Venice Beach. Unfortunately, there is not a fish left in the sea, and a Slithis Monster has got to eat, so he continues to find food on shore including a quite tasty morsel Jennifer (Wendy Rastatter). Wayne enlists the service of nervous Dr. John (Dennis Falt) and fishing boat captain Chris Alexander (Mello Alexandria) "who's voice at times sounds like it was dubbed in from a Godzilla movie" they along with foxy Jeff set out to capture the very scary Slithis sea monster.

For a low budget movie the cinematography of Slithis is excellent, and really has a hippie dippy cool feel to it. Unfortunately, the script could have used one more scrub with lines like "the boat wasn't built for comfort or speed, reliability is the watchword" dispersed throughout. There are a couple of great Cameo's including a gear changing seen in the Police Chiefs ( played mirthfully by Alejandro Vass) office with droll police scientist Dr. Risling ( played by a real actor (Bill J. Stevens).

Slithis is definitely worth a watch with a solid acting job, at least movie of the week or sitcom guest star level, by Alan Blanchard who, by no fault of his own, may have been inhibited in his acting career by being a dead ringer for the aforementioned Bert Convy.

This film came out around the same time that "It's Alive," "The Incredible Melting Man," and "Bug," among others, were coming out. There was a whole slew of these cheesy B-Horror Flicks being released, and this one stands out in my memory as a fun time at the movies.

With a monster akin to the Swamp Thing, it had the horror aspect, with plenty of that late 70's, Russ Meyer-esque titillation thrown in for good measure. Not too heavy on plot, it makes up for it with what they believed at the time to be grossness. They did a fairly good job of it.

If you like B-Horror Flicks, you'll like "Spawn of the Slithis."

Spawn of the Slithis (1978)

* (out of 4)

A small town comes under attack by some sort of sea monster, which appears to have been caused by a nuclear leak. Pretty soon pets and humans are going missing with only bloody limbs turning up. A group of friends set out to find the creature and destroy it.

If you've read Stephen Thrower's NIGHTMARE USA book then you know how wonderful it is. You'll also know that there are countless exploitation movies that are given the special treatment and this here is one of them. You'll have to check out the book to get all the details but this film was basically meant to be a throwback to the drive-in era of the 1950s when guys-in-costume monster movies were all the rage. By 1978 these types of films were certainly out of fashion but director Stephen Traxler tried to bring them back but sadly the result is rather bad.

There are all sorts of problems with this film but the biggest is the God-awful screenplay, which makes one major, major mistake. Yes, the biggest mistake is that the film is deadly boring. It really doesn't matter how bad you're horror movie is as long as you keep it entertaining but I'd say the majority of the people would check out of this one rather quickly. There are way too many scenes that feature people simply talking about stuff that isn't interesting and a lot of times it doesn't even have anything to do with the story. The film only runs 86-minutes but by the time it's over you'll feel as if you had just sat through all three GODFATHER movies.

Another problem is the typical stuff that you'd expect from a low-budget movie like this. This includes some rather bad performances, no real style and a rather sloppy looking picture. There are a few things that I liked with the monster being one of them. Again, you can read the book to get more history on the film but it's worth noting that elements of the suit were borrowed from other popular movies. The creature outfit isn't mind-blowing but for a low-budget film I thought it was good. It's really too bad he wasn't used in the film more and that they went for a kid-friendly PG-rated movie.

Cheesy but watchable. Bad acting by some but not all bad. Has a nice microphone hiss in a few scenes which I enjoy. Nice opening shots of Venice, California. The lead girlfriend continues to get worse as a character the more the film goes, with awkward lines and shots. Has the typical Vietnam vets as street bums. Highly stereotypical and normal for films during this age. An odd play on various scenes with comedic music set to more awkward camera shots. The monster itself is pretty cool, also offering a hint of comedic action with its noises and walk. This film is really an interesting study of a America at the time frame filmed, more specifically California.