Slugs

Slugs (1988)
Dir. Juan Piquer Simon
Written by: Juan Piquer Simon, Ron Gantman
Starring Slugs, white people

This poster is closer to accurate than many I've put up this month, and as an added bonus: Best font ever.

Alas, not the inevitable movie adaptation of the horribly racist arcade Arab-slaughtering side scroller classic "Metal Slug"; instead it’s a horror movie. About Slugs. It’s not a metaphor or something, the movie is actually about slugs. Scaaaaary slugs that eat human flesh and, in one particularly amusing scene, attempt to bite a guy’s finger with big monster teeth.

These slugs have invaded Smalltownamerica, NY (well, the exteriors, anyway. It appears to be the only American town where the inside of buildings are located in Spain) and are always up to nefarious business like swarming up from the cellar and eating an angry drunk, causing an old dude to blow up his own house, swarming onto the floor while a naked couple fucks, etc. That much you probably assumed. What you and I never suspected, though, is that this low-budget Spanish production about killer slugs would actually be a pretty-entertaining-often-stupid-but-rarely-boring success. The cast is likeable, the slugs are numerous, the gore is chunky, and the gimmicks are memorable. One guy falls into deep slug-infested water and it suddenly turns into a frothing fountain of blood, as though the slugs suddenly started thrashing about like piranhas. What more could you possibly want from a movie called SLUGS which is about slugs?

The only real problem I have with this movie is that --like Aja’s PIRANHA 3D-- for some reason it spends a good bit of time making us like certain characters and hate others, but never allows those feelings to pay off in the kills. Why bother establishing that the Sheriff is a prick and that the Mayor who refuses to close the beach --sorry, the sewer!-- is corrupt, if you’re not gonna give them some satisfying slug-related comeuppance? Why spend time making sure we like a couple major characters if they’re just going to be killed offhandedly and never mentioned again? The worst offender in this regard is a young woman we meet at the beginning who seems kind of nerdy and unpopular (which means that anyone who would ever watch this movie immediately identifies with her). She doesn’t appear again until the end, when she attends one of those high school parties they have out in the woods with red cups and dancing and awesome 80’s jams. Some asshole tries to get in her pants, she says no, he gets mad and storms off. Then he comes back in a mask and tries to rape her! Holy shit, what a fucking prick. Can’t wait to see how the slugs fix his metaphorical wagon. Guess what. No dice. Instead, she falls to her death and gets eaten by slugs, and he walks back to the campfire and talks shit about her. The fuck is that?! I think this is the only horror movie I’ve ever seen where they actually go out of their way to punish a girl for not putting out!* It’s so egregious that I actually sat through the credits in the hope that there would be an after-credits scene where this guy gets what’s coming to him, but nope. So audiences, please insert your own scene where he gets his dick bitten off by a slug or something.

Other than that, though, a pretty good one here. Guess I’ll have to read that novel it’s based on.

*I guess I should have expected that once I realized it was from the director of PIECES, one of the more unpleasant misogynist slashers I’m personally aware of. But don’t worry, most of the movie isn’t like that.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2012 CHECKLIST!

LOVECRAFT ADAPTATION: No, but based on a novel.

BOOBIES: Definitely.

> or = HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS LEVEL GORE: Solid, including defleshings and a hand lopped off.

SEQUEL: No, although obviously there should be one. 

OBSCURITY LEVEL: High.

MONSTERS: Just slugs.

SATANISTS: If so it's not very clear.

ZOMBIES: Nope.

VAMPIRES: None.

SLASHERS: Nope.

CURSES: None.

ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: Woke up for 30 or so minutes in the middle, then back to sleep.