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Slugs
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| Year: |
1988
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Director: |
Juan Piquer Simón
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| Stars: |
Michael Garfield, Kim Terry, Philip MacHale, Alicia Moro, Santiago Álvarez, Concha Cuetos, John Battaglia, Emilio Linder, Kris Mann, Kari Rose, Manuel de Blas, Andy Alsup, Frank Braña, Stan Schwartz, Juan Maján, Lucía Prado, Patty Shepard
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| Genre: |
Horror, Trash |
| Rating: |
  3 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
A girl and a boy are out on the lake in a boat, and he is fishing while she considers diving into the water for a swim. He isn't interested, though, and prefers to fish, but suddenly something tugs on his line and pulls him under; the girl doesn't notice he's gone until it's too late and wonders what he's playing at - then it all becomes clear when blood bubbles up from the depths and she starts screaming... Later that evening, an old wino is nearly run over, but manages to get home although his dog is reluctant to enter with him. Not surprising when the house is infested with the kind of slugs who killed the boy on the boat: flesh-eating slugs...
A masterclass in quiet restraint and subtle emotional power - no, wait, that's Shadowlands, this is Slugs, the movie so bad that even Shaun Hutson, who wrote the original novel, thought it was a disaster. So if even Shaun was embarrassed by the quality of this Spanish-American production from the director who brought the world the no-less-hilarious Pieces, then you should really set your expectations low as you settle down to watch this. And for many trash fans, this is precisely the frame of mind you need to laugh yourself silly at a film that tries unsuccessfully to make a common or garden pest into an overwhelming menace.
Well, plenty of Hutson fans liked the book, so it should have translated ideally from the page, right? Oh dear, wrong, as Juan Piquer Simón's skill with a scene of terror only proved how ridiculous the concept was; we had already had The Birds, Frogs and even The Day of the Animals which had a whole bunch of killer beasts, but by focusing on the slimy invertebrates exclusively it was clear this was one deadly animal too far. Or quite a few deadly animals, as the town of Ashton is overrun by them as they take over the sewers, dragging rats and er, chickens (eh?) into the depths for food. The only man who can put a stop to this slithery onslaught is the county health officer, Mike Brady (Michael Garfield).
Not the bloke from The Brady Bunch, rest assured. Although perhaps the bloke from The Brady Bunch would have been taken more seriously, because every time someone is eaten to death by the slugs, he points out that there's a problem and nobody in authority will believe him - what does it take when you're finding skeletons of the townsfolk scattered around the place? If that were not comical enough, the death setpieces are presented with such overemphasis that it's impossible to watch them with a straight face: take the bloke in the greenhouse, who gets a slug in his glove and in the process of trying to get rid of it, knocks over chemicals, is trapped under shelving, cuts his hand off (wouldn't that be more painful than the slug?) and blows up the greenhouse when the chemicals ignite.
Well, that's a perfectly sensible state of affairs, isn't it? As this was an international co-production, you can play spot the dubbed actor, a pasttime which is easy to participate in when those drawling American accents are plonked over Spanish thesps whose lips don't match their dialogue. Weirdest of all is the scientist, not only because Mike tells him he'll call him in the morning and he says, that's fine, after lunch (what?) but because he has an English voice that sounds oddly off-kilter. If there's one distinguishing feature about slugs, apart from the whole "they eat greenery" thing, it's their speed, which it's safe to say is less than incredible. Therefore to pile on the lunacy we're offered the sight of sped-up slugs advancing on the characters, and if that were not ludicrous enough, the method Mike comes up with to get rid of them must have killed, ooh, about fifty people at least and destroyed half the town. Still, exterminated those slugs, eh? Or did they...?
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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