This fun bit of eighties horror comes from the director, Juan Piquer Simon, who also brought us the classic Pieces as well as the under-appreciated Cthulhu Mansion. This heartwarming little drama follows a small town that is dealing with an unfortunate infestation of slugs. But not just any slugs mind you, but mutated ones that have been living in a toxic waste dump!
Things start off with a man about to be evicted from his home being found mostly eaten. Then we have an unfortunate gardening mishap, followed by a prime example of why you should always clean your lettuce before making a salad. Just saying, those anchovies weren’t anchovies, and we also get coitus interruptus slug style! Our main character is Mike Brady… heh that is funny. He is the local health inspector and catches on that something bad is happening. He ends up enlisting the sewer guy, Don Palmer, to help him deal with the critters by luring them into a central location so they can blow them up. You know typical monster movies stuff. People live and others die before the day is saved… or is it?
I’ve always enjoyed this movie. Hell, I read the book it was based on before ever watching it. I highly recommend the book from Shaun Hutson as well as his other horror outings. They are a blast. This movie captures the spirit of novel very well tossing lots of good gore and creature mayhem at the audience right away and never letting up. The characters might seem a little two dimensional as they fit the established roles for a movie like this, damsel in distress, local official who gets what is coming to him, the hero, and the doomed sidekick, just to name a few. They also toss in some nudity and teenage shenanigans to round out the formula. This is all packed together in a nice tight package that clocks in at just under ninety minutes. Not one second of which is wasted. Sure, Slugs might be a silly movie, but it is never boring, and I appreciate that.
Speaking of the kills we get a respectable nine, though a couple of them are offscreen and/or seen after the fact. There is the first kill where they find the body, which is all hamburger and bone. A hand gets lopped off before a couple gets exploded in their greenhouse. The best ones are the teenage girl landing face first in the slug pile popping up with an eye out as the critters munch furiously on her, followed not long after by her boyfriend. Oh, and a guy’s head collapses after taking a dip in a pool full of the hungry little bastards. But my favorite has to be the salad eating developer whose eyeballs pop out at a fancy lunch meeting. Seems even the slug’s parasites have mutated and do a number on his brain! This is a very gooey and fun flick for sure. I suppose I should also mention the design of the slugs. When we do get closeups of them we see a lot of teeth and that alone is enough.
There is also some awkward dialogue, inappropriate music choices, and other such wackiness that only add to the fun that is Slugs. If you are looking for a scary creature feature, then this isn’t what you want. But if you are looking for a movie that gleefully tosses gore at you without taking itself too seriously then I highly recommend this flick.
© Copyright 2022 John Shatzer
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