Slugs (1987)

In the world of the "nature gone mad" subgenre, you typically expect such things like killer bears, sharks or alligators to be munching on the local populace. You know, big creatures that can really chew you up once they get a hold of you. Then there are the less threatening, but nonetheless pissed critters such as the hungry worms in Squirm, frogs in, well, Frogs and, of course, the ever terrifying rabbits in Night of the Lepus. Now you can throw mankind' s old enemy, the purveyor of slime and garden destruction, ladies and gentleman, I present to you, the ever evil and oh so intent on world domination.... the Killer Slug! Huh?

Based on a Shaun Hutson novel that I have never read, Slugs is sort of a bizarre mixture of campy 50's science fiction laced with hearty doses of 80's style gore and cheese. A small town finds itself under siege when the local slug population, turned bad by toxic waste dumping, finds it prefers the taste of human flesh to your Aunt Ethel's petunias. It's up to the local safety department inspector to play hero, trying to prove to the unbelieving police chief that, yes indeed, the slugs are on the march. Slugs is loaded with horrible acting, horrible dubbing, and a just plain lame premise. Killer slugs? How the hell can anyone die from a killer slug you ask? After all, they aren't the quickest things around, are prone to an easy squashing, and don't even have the benefit of armor like their snail cousins. If the characters here are so inept at fending off killer slugs sans protective shells, imagine their terror if it were the snails on the march instead of the slugs..."Oh no, it's the snails...and they have armor! Eeek!".

Oh, but they do die my friends, and in what is the film's main selling point, they die rather spectacularly...for being killed by slugs that is. The gore is fairly high for it’s R-rating, as we get slugs in just about every orifice imaginable. The highlight of the film has a gentleman who, after unknowingly eating a salad with slugs in it, has his head explode in the local restaurant from an infestation of slug parasites. Ah, and when that’s your film’s highlight, the less said the better. There’s more slug carnage as well, as just about every dippy character finds a way to become slug fodder in the most idiotic ways imaginable. Trust me, they all deserve it.

So, is Slugs a good film? Fuck no. Is it a decent film? Ah, well…that depends on your level of decency. The acting is bad, the story even worse, but you know what? Anyone watching a movie about killer slugs that even remotely expects the previous mentioned attributes is an idiot. Just kick back with a beer, enjoy the overall badness of it, and let that be that. It’s a movie about killer slugs for chissakes…what did you expect?