{"id":7690,"date":"2024-10-30T23:14:35","date_gmt":"2024-10-31T03:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=7690"},"modified":"2024-10-30T23:14:35","modified_gmt":"2024-10-31T03:14:35","slug":"slugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/30\/slugs\/","title":{"rendered":"Slugs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Slugs<\/strong> (1988)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New World\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 89 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, gore, language, nudity, sex)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Juan Piquer Simon\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Ron Gantman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Tim Souster\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Julio Bragado\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 5, 1988 (US)\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Cast: Michael Garfield, Kim Terry, Philip MacHale, Alicia Moro, Santiago Alvarez, Concha Cuetos, John Battaglia, Emilio Linder, Kris Mann, Kari Rose, Manuel de Blas, Andy Alsup, Stan Schwartz, Juan Majan, Patty Shepard, Miguel de Grandy, Tammy Reger, Glen Greenberg, Jay R. Ingerson.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $15,842 (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Since the \u201cstay at home\u201d policy has been in effect, I\u2019ve watched horror movies dealing with spiders and snakes. Where do I go from here? To a low budget creature feature called Slugs<\/strong>, of course. In it, killer slugs attack a rural town. What\u2019s that you say, killer slugs? Let me explain. It\u2019s a well-known fact that slugs are herbivores; they mainly eat leaves from living plants. Not these slugs! Due to exposure to toxic waste, they mutated into carnivores that feed on humans. Only one man can stop them… Mike Brady. No, not that Mike Brady.<\/p>\n

\u00a0This particular Mr. Brady (played by Michael Garfield) is the town health inspector. He first realizes something\u2019s wrong when he and the sheriff (Battaglia) go to evict the town drunk (Schwartz, Bedroom Eyes II) from his filthy home only to find the guy dead, partially devoured and covered with slime. Other mysterious deaths follow, all with tell-tale signs of slimy slug trails. He brings a few slugs he finds in his wife Kim\u2019s (Terry) garden to the high school science teacher, Foley (Alvarez), who witnesses their unusual dietary habits first-hand when one of them eats his guinea pig. Mike tries to warn the town officials about the deadly creatures, but none of them believe him (naturally). In the end, it\u2019s up to fearless Mike Brady to stop them with the help of his best bud Don (MacHale), the head of the town\u2019s sanitation department.<\/p>\n

\u00a0You pretty much know what you\u2019re in for when you commit to watch a movie entitled Slugs<\/strong>. It has slugs, A LOT OF THEM! They\u2019re all over the place; basements, kitchens, greenhouses, sewers, toilets, the woods and the town\u2019s water supply. They even come out of the faucets. They kill people, quite a few and quite messily. This movie doesn\u2019t skimp on the blood, slime and goo. It gives us shots of partially consumed corpses with the eyes eaten right out of the sockets. The centerpiece gross-out moment is the scene where parasitic worms burst out of a guy\u2019s head in a restaurant after he unknowingly ingests a slug-laced salad. Of course, the dimwitted sheriff attributes it to food poisoning. If there\u2019s ever a movie that should come with a free barf bag, it\u2019s Slugs<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Juan Piquer Simon (Pieces), Slugs<\/strong> is as deliciously campy as it is nauseating. It\u2019s a Spanish-American co-production meaning there\u2019s a fair amount of English dubbing. For a change, it\u2019s actually pretty good on a technical level. The spoken dialogue is a fairly close match to the Spanish actors\u2019 lip movements. The problem is the stiff line readings. Much of the dialogue is delivered in a stilted manner that suggests no attempt was made to polish it in translation. Acting definitely is not the movie\u2019s strong suit, but did you really expect otherwise? A lot of it is stiff, especially Garfield who barely registers on the emotional scale. When told of his friend\u2019s horrific death in the restaurant, you\u2019d think that somebody merely told him he left his lights on in the parking lot.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The movie\u2019s strongest suit is the special effects work which won a Goya Award for the team of Basilio Cortijo, Gonzalo Gonzalo and Carlo De Marchis. They go at Slugs<\/strong> full tilt boogie bringing their A-game to this enjoyable B-movie. There\u2019s one cool scene where a man chops off his own hand with a hatchet after slugs crawl into his gardening glove. Lots of blood spurt here! That\u2019s not all. Where most B-movie filmmakers would use rubber slugs, these guys use real ones, big black ones, many of them. The screen crawls with them in some scenes. They\u2019re strong too. Not only can they drag the bodies of their victims, they even manage to grab a shovel right out of a man\u2019s hand. Hey, I never said Slugs<\/strong> was realistic.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The screenplay by Ron Gantman isn\u2019t exactly A-level writing. A subplot involving teens throwing an ill-advised outdoor Halloween party is underdeveloped. None of them are even significant characters unless you count the young couple killed by slugs while having sex. A plot thread about a character\u2019s wife\u2019s alcoholism is dropped almost immediately after it\u2019s brought up.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It also expects the viewer to stretch credulity beyond the limit. Are we really supposed to believe the science teacher can mix up 50 gallons worth of an explosive lithium compound in a matter of hours? The plan to kill the slugs depends on all of them being in one spot at the same time. Yeah, like that\u2019s gonna happen. Again, what did you expect? It\u2019s a movie about killer mutant slugs, it\u2019s not freaking Citizen Kane. It does have some great bad dialogue though. Here are a couple of samples:<\/p>\n

Mike: \u201cNow maybe, just maybe, we\u2019re dealing with a mutant form of slug here, a kind that eats meat!\u201d<\/p>\n

Sheriff: \u201cWhat\u2019ll it be next, demented crickets? Rampaging mosquitoes, maybe?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0There\u2019s more, but I\u2019ll leave it to you to discover. That\u2019s my subtle way of recommending Slugs<\/strong>, a surprisingly effective low budget creature feature released by New World Pictures in the US. I don\u2019t recall it playing in theaters; I know it didn\u2019t open in Philly. I remember it being in video stores, but I didn\u2019t bother with it. If there\u2019s an upside to the COVID-19 crisis, it\u2019s that it allows me the opportunity to catch up on older movies I haven\u2019t seen. Slugs<\/strong> is one of the better ones.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slugs (1988)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New World\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 89 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, gore, language, nudity, sex)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Juan Piquer Simon\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Ron Gantman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Tim Souster\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Julio Bragado\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: February 5, 1988 (US)\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Cast: Michael Garfield, Kim Terry, Philip MacHale, Alicia Moro, Santiago Alvarez, Concha Cuetos, John Battaglia, Emilio Linder, Kris Mann, Kari Rose, Manuel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7874,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-scary-gory-wild-i-love-it"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Slugs-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7690"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7876,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7690\/revisions\/7876"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}