Baratas Assassinas

I am sure this film is one of those 'cheap' DVDs that we have here in grocery stores for £4.99. I bought it for a pound, but I think that was too steep.

As one reviewer said "No-one has to make a film this bad." And as someone else said, "What were they thinking of?"

This film does belong to 'so bad it's good' genre, but it wasn't good enough to persuade me to stay up for the denouement.

A typical bizarre scene is where the Sheriff rescues a young men who has fallen in the deadly lake. The young man is in trouble but he is clearly going for the Gold Medal for bad acting. I think the actor should attend Stanislavasky's current drama school in the Gulag somewhere.

So, the young man is being attacked by something we can't see - it later turns out to be a medium-sized silt-sifter with a red vertical stripe painted down its middle.

So, we can't see this vicious fish that's mauling the young man; but with very great reluctance the Sheriff, an old warrior from Star Trek, takes aim at the mildly disturbed surface and fires. Apparently his vision and aim are top notch because he kills that red-striped fish with just the one bullet. End of scene.

Another amusing aspect is the man who has retired from something in the rat race and invested ALL his income in some lakeside roadhouse and hotel. His wife and daughter didn't think this investment and move to the sticks was such a good idea. But when a strangely-bearded musician is killed by large stick-on bugs at the hotel, he resolves to sell out for 25c in the dollar.

25c in the dollar! I just had to worry about a father who makes that kind of investment.

The whole thing is ludicrous. The script is weird. It's not apparent but hardly two consecutive lines make much sense.

I was impressed by the first swimming girl because she seemed to have Buffy-style patter and reminded me a little of cross between Faith and Charisma Carpenter. It's a shame that she turns out to be the community's loose woman and has to develop all those great bug-induced squishy lumps.

It's a funny film if you're in the right company, but I can't honestly encourage to BUY this film at any price.

My wife can't stand Randy Quaid (except in ID4), and I'm beginning to come around to her point of view. Actually, though, he's the comedy highlight (sad but true) of this really weird rip-off of Arachnophobia. He plays the John Goodman character, except less seriously. His self-styled "bug commando" resembles nothing less than Wyle Coyote as he detonates a hand grenade on himself but is later "recovering nicely" by the end of the movie.

For extra fun, you can watch Star Trek vets George Takei and James Doohan humiliate themselves. If only they could have got Nichelle Nichols, Grace Lee Whitney, and Marina Sirtis, the cast of has-been Star Trek actors would have been complete.

Oh, the plot? Well, it's somewhat of a mess. There are these roaches (although sometimes they're worms and sometimes they're really big mosquitos - not for the screenwriters the hobgoblins of consistency and continuity!) and they're overrunning a small lakeside community. There's no real explanation for this. The local sherriff (Doohan) seems to be in on this (he's taking advantage of the devalued property to buy up the land cheap), but maybe he isn't. Maybe he's being controlled by the "queen" roach. Maybe he isn't. It's hard to tell.

Essentially the bugs get inside human bodies and eat their way out after breeding within. The daughter of a local lodge owners is the heroine, inexplicably stalked by a Peeping Tom who preaches doom and despair (what he has to do with the movie's plot is never made clear either, although we do get to see her in near-naked once or twice).

Anyhoo, she becomes romantically involved with the local bad boy (who is being stalked by the local even badder girl, who meets a suitably gory end), and together they must try to defeat the roaches. A few more people die, including Takei's scientific character (poor George seems to have picked up William Shatner's acting style through osmosis - oh the humanity!), and Bernie Kopell and Anne Lockhart (in the middle of a sex scene - ugghhh!).

Our hapless heroes must call in General Merlin, Quaid in a remarkably low-budget role for him (he usually humiliates himself in much bigger films) as a military man turned bug exterminator. They eventually wander off, find the roaches lair, defeat the queen roach (after she finishes off a big slab of ham, i.e., James Doohan), and even though there's at least one other giant bug out there (the one that killed Takei's character), and the female scientist and the surviving deputy are making ominous "something is out there still" noises, the heroine drives off the end for a shock ending that will surprise absolutely no one.

The CGI of the giant queen roach isn't bad, but watching Quaid spar with the puppet version (complete with unconcealed wires) has to be seen to be believed. The rest of the movie is typical gross-out fodder. There seems to be a kind of tongue-in-cheek intent here, but that only works if the movie is funny. It isn't. Sorry.

For people that really enjoy trashy low budget horror movies that don't take themselves serious, there is definitely something here. However Bug Busters is too inconsistent to fall in the cult classic or hidden gem category.

Rany Quaid as gun-tooting, ex-military pest exterminator is on fire, unfortunately he only appears on the scene in the last 25 minutes (besides some funny commercials), the rest of the cast is a bit hit and miss, especially an early performance from Katherine Heigl. The tone is inconsistent here while some actors go for camp, others play it straight, it's neither here nor there until the movie finally commits for the third act.

Don't expect too many memorable effects either, the practical effects look dated and where not really great back when this was released either. So I recommend it to trash fans, but you might want to fast forward quite a bit during the first our.

In the small lakeside town of Mountview, in California, the Major decides to pulverize a dangerous substance to protect the local plantation. Thirteen years later, a harmful and lethal species of cockroaches appears nearby the lake, threatening and killing the local dwellers. The famous exterminator General George S. Merlin (Randy Quaid) is called to fight against the bugs.

Yesterday I was walking around downtown of Rio de Janeiro, and I found this DVD on sale for less than US$ 3.00. When I saw the names of Star Trek crew James "Scotty" Doohan, George "Sulu" Takei, Randy Quaid and the delicious Katherine Heigl in the cast I immediately bought and saw it at night.

The story of "Bug Buster" is simply ridiculous and the performances are awful, being difficult to highlight the worst in the "amazing" cast: the hero David Lipper, in the role of Steve Williams? Ty O'Neal, the smart Deputy Bo? Meredith Salenger, the slut Veronica Hart? George Takei, the crazy entomologist Professor Hiro Fujimoto? Randy Quaid, the exaggerated General George S. Merlin? I believe the correct answer would be all of them. Further, the cheap special effects are laughable. But this director Lorenzo Doumani is "hors-concours", seeming to be the reincarnation of Ed Wood. In spite of being so bad, the most impressive is that in the end I liked this flick, and I laughed a lot. It has also a great potential of cult-movie, a big joke, missing only the usual naked women, or the breast of Katherine Heigl to complete the appeal. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Baratas Assassinas" ("Cockroaches Killers")

Down-right dumb flick about a teenage girl (Katherine Heigl) who moves with her parents to a lakeside town that is about to be infested with killer mutant cockroaches. The cockroaches finally start to slowly take over the town with gruesome killings and it is up to the town to bring in silly exterminator Randy Quaid. Another low-budget horror flick that has a sick humor and characters less interesting than paint drying. Former television alums James Doohan (of "Star Trek" fame) and Bernie Koppell (of "The Love Boat") have prevalent roles. Heigl and actress Meredith Salenger are nice to look at, but they are sub-par performers and their beauty cannot compensate for this disgusting bomb. Turkey (0 stars out of 5).