The Worm Eaters

My review was written in October 1981 after a Midtown Manhattan screening.

Filmed in 1977 but recently picked up for distribution by Joe Gage's New American Films, "The Worm Eaters" is a grotesque horror comedy in the category of "intentionally bad" camp humor. Writer-director-star Herb Robins gives every indication of working in the vein of the late exploitation movie director Edward D. Wood Jr., but his film has enough outrageous laughs and gross-outs to captivate a minor segment of today's younger audience.

Robins portrays Hermann Umgar, a club-footed worm breeder living near Lake Melnick. Just as his dad had been cheated years before, Umgar is target of a real estate scheme whereby his land will be condemned by the city to make way for condominiums.

Though pic has a "serious theme" and much attempted pathos, Robins goes for intentional silliness, playing a poor man's Mel Brooks who sings and talks to his beloved worms (each with a pet name) while cracking Borscht Belt jokes. Supporting cast looks like people randomly recruited off the street, and they are encouraged to shout their inane dialog in an hilarious attempt at "acting".

Key requirement for main roles (including Robins') is a willingness to chomp real worms on camera. Gross closeups of the actors' mouths chewing disgusting food with live worms wriggling out of their choppers will no doubt amaze the younger patrons while striking adults as a new variant of pornography.

Pic gets really wild when Robins introduces a subplot of his worms somehow causing humans to turn into "worm people" (half man/half worm) when ingested. This sci-fi gimmick is hysterically realized, with the cast wriggling along the ground (resembling mermaids, the bottom half is a worm) and secreting shaving cream. Filmmaker's notion of irony has three fishermen turning into worm men and hooking Umgar (sleeping in his bed) to reel him in and demand that he bring them worm women to build a new, better civilization in the lake. A "red algae tide" on the lake's surface is the pic's big special visual effect.

Unlike the spate of comedy spoofs filling the horror market recently, Robins seems to be serious about his weirdness, including strange scenes of him dancing (in slow motion) to a music box with his worm Bertha dancing on his hand and a tasteless finale of himself being run over by a truck.

Technically the film is surprisingly watchable, being lensed in brightly lit 35mm with functionalism stressed rather than atmosphere. Beyond that, it's amateur night.

Ignore those folks on here that say this movie blows. It is so great! I love every minute of it. What great characters! I am serious, there are some great characters. I love Herb Robins' character, he is so unique and he makes the greatest facial expressions. Great lines of dialogue. The husband of the weird fudgies lady is so funny. Everyone does over-act, but it's in a hilarious way. Kill me for saying this, but it's the kind of over-acting that John Waters is famous for - it's just too much! But in a good way. Yes, there's worm eating, but the story itself and the acting is really great. It doesn't even need the worm eating to be a stellar movie! If you like weird movies, you should see this one. I give it a 9/10!

1977 comedy (some facts list 1975) has Herb Robins assaulting the town using worms in a way that I really can't tell you for it would be giving away the surprise of the film. There is actual worm eating, and the ending is classic. Even got a chezzy title song. Played at the Seattle Film Festival in the mid-80's, this film got little attention and should be some sort of cult classic. Not recommended to people who don't want to see worm eating.

One of my beloved movie bibles, "The Time Out Film Guide," calls Herb Robins' 1977 gross-out horror comedy "The Worm Eaters" "a truly disgusting film." Reason enuff for any aficionado of bad cinema to rent it out in a flash, right? Unfortunately, this movie is not so much disgusting as it is truly awful, and every element of the cinematic arts--acting, directing, scripting, photography, editing, scoring--is rock-bottom deplorable here. "Director/writer" Robins himself plays Umgar, a clubfooted worm breeder who talks to his little squirmy darlings, calls them by name, and takes decided action when some slimy land developers try to push him off his turf; namely, he puts his pets in the local town's food. Thus, we are treated to various loudmouthed (every character in this flick seems to scream his or her lines obnoxiously), truly ugly personages eating spaghetti & worms, hot dogs & worms, ice cream & worms, cake & worms, and even worms & worms with his/her mouth wide open and in delectable close-up. For some reason never explained, these folks then turn into worm people themselves, and squeak and slither for the rest of the picture, supposedly hilariously. But not a single gag is the slightest bit funny here, many details go unexplained, Umgar's phony German accent is almost incomprehensible, the film's theme song is offensively and annoyingly catchy, and the net result is a film far worse than just about anything in the Ed Wood oeuvre. I've seen a lot grosser films, truth to tell, but none much worse; still, I wouldn't want to watch "The Worm Eaters" while scarfing down a bowl of linguini marinara!

The Worm Eaters (1977)

* (out of 4)

Ted V. Mikels produced this film that was directed, written and stars Herb Robins. In the film Robins plays a German man who has a special friendship with some worms. He eventually has a breakdown and starts feeding these worms to some of the locals who themselves turn into mutant worm creatures. THE WORM EATERS is an extremely bad movie but if you could come up with a catchy title and get it into the drive-in market then you could have a good hit on your hands and I can imagine a lot of people going to see this movie just on dares. The film runs 90-minutes, which is about thirty-minutes too long because there's really not much going on here. For the first forty-five minutes or so we see Robins talking to himself, talking to worms and just coming across as a complete weirdo. Once people finally start eating the worms these "shock" sequences really aren't all that shocking today considering many mainstream shows (Man vs Wild, Fear Factor) have gotten you used to seeing people eat worms. The scenes here are obviously done by a couple stunt worm eaters because we just see close up shots on their mouths with the worms in them but apparently no worms were injured, which seems true since we never see them bitten into. The mutant worm creatures appear to just be the actors with some sort of sleeping bags around their bottom half with various types of white foam coming out of them. Obviously this film wasn't trying to be the next CITIZEN KANE but it just needed a lot more entertainment in order for it to work. Those curious about the strange title and low-budget nature of the story might be tempted to watch it but there are certainly much better movies out there.