As any regular readers of this blog are probably aware, I am entomophobic - I am afraid of certain types of insects. Generally, the more legs they have, the more they freak me out, but I'm also not fond of maggots, worms and the like either. So there's probably a valid question as to why I'd willingly watch a film called Slugs. The answer is simple - I actually quite liked the book. The author, Shaun Hutson, is a horror writer who started publishing his novels in the 1980s, and it was in the early 90s that I started getting hold of them. While Slugs wasn't my favourite of his novels (that honour goes to Erebus), it had enough of an impact on me that I sought out new copies of the book (and the sequel, Breeding Ground) recently, and when I discovered that there had been a film made of Slugs I knew I had to see it.
Unfortunately, I have to admit that for the first time while watching a movie to review for this blog, I actually turned it off before the end. Admittedly I'd already seen the end from catching the film on TV a while back, but when it actually came to watching it from beginning to end I just couldn't do it. This film was just so... dull, it was depressing.
Slugs, or Slugs: The Movie to give it its IMDB title, is a movie about mutant killer slugs invading a small New York town and munching their way through anyone unlucky enough to get too close to them. As slugs aren't exactly known for their fast movement speed, this means that there are an awful lot of borderline-ridiculous contrived situations so that people don't notice the slugs until it's too late. And these slugs are pretty strong too - they can grab iron pry-bars, push up toilet seat covers and pull teenagers into lakes from boats. It falls to the town's Health and Sanitation Inspectors to face the threat of the slugs and stop them before they devour the entire town.
This movie is pretty ridiculous, but it's not ridiculous in a way that works, like the Basket Case sequels or even Macabre. It's ridiculous in that painfully bad way, with noticeably flubbed lines, distractingly bad dubbing (nearly everyone sounds like they're speaking in an echo chamber) and some pretty bad dialogue. In fact, the film only really has a couple of things going for it - three if you like movies about killer slugs, I suppose - some brief female nudity (which was cut from UK releases for some time because it was also blood-covered female nudity and we know how the BBFC feels about that) and its gore scenes.
Admittedly, the gore scenes are pretty good. Practically everyone who's ever seen the film, and probably a fair few who haven't but who saw clips will recognise its most noteworthy one - a man in a restaurant goes from having a headache, to having a bad nosebleed, to writhing on the floor and screaming while his head explodes with worms eating their way out of his skull. Yes, that scene does make me cringe every time I see it, so I guess in that respect it's an effective scene, for much the same reason that so many of us read those horrifying stories about people getting insects in their ears or burrowing into their brain somehow, despite our protests about how horrible and disgusting it is. It's a vastly-exaggerated conclusion to a primal fear we all have.
However, this film also has a scene where someone goes to prod a slug with a finger and the slug opens its mouth and tries to bite the finger like a bad-tempered dog, and another where an (obviously fake) hamster gets eaten by a slug like the slug was an anaconda, so let's not give the effects too much praise.
But what really broke me with this film was the music. The music over the opening credits wasn't too bad, but after that... most of it sounded like it had been made for a TV sitcom before ending up in the movie, and a good deal of it was wholly inappropriate for a horror movie that's not also trying to be a satire or comedy. The town chief of police got a comedy theme, for example, when he wasn't actually doing anything particularly comedic. And there's very little volume control on the music either - it plays at pretty much the same volume regardless of what's happening in the scene, thus destroying most if not all of the tension there.
Plus, nobody at any point just tries pouring salt on the little buggers. Which is just unforgivable in a movie about killer slugs. Read the book (and its sequel) instead; they're far more enjoyable.
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