Slugs (1988) Review

Slugs (1988) Review

 

Just when you thought you’ve seen it all, here comes Slugs: The Movie. Note the title distinction. That’s what the title card in the movie actually says. This is not to be confused with anything else that might be called Slugs, including the novel upon which Slugs: The Movie is based on. It’s exactly what you’d expect; normally docile vegetarian slugs now have a taste for flesh and are invading a town. I didn’t expect much from this one, but was actually surprised by it. Was it a pleasant surprise? Well, “pleasant” isn’t exactly the right word.

The premise is simple. Toxic waste creates mutant slugs that breed in a small town’s sewer and begin to invade people’s gardens and homes. They even cause one old couple to blow up their greenhouse. A health inspector, sanitation expert, and scientist discover what’s been killing everyone, and the realization comes well before the halfway mark of the film, which was a pleasant surprise. Sometimes it can take almost the whole movie for characters to catch up with the audience and realize what has been killing people. The characters aren’t great, but any halfway decent killer animal film needs at least one memorable player, and luckily, there is one here. The sheriff is a cantankerous bozo who is always pissed off and over-the-top, and he’s hilarious. I wish he’d got more scenes.

Slugs is bad, but there are two kinds of bad when it comes to movies like this. There’s so bad it’s boring and a waste of time, and then there’s so bad it’s entertaining. This is the latter, thankfully, and it’s because of two main things: the dialogue and the slug attacks. This has, without a doubt, some of the worst dialogue I’ve ever heard in a killer animal film. It was a Spanish-American co-production, so I think there were some language barriers to overcome. Not a word spoken sounds sincere or convincing. Most of the dialogue is banal, but some lines are particularly funny, like this amazing retort: “You don’t have the authority to declare happy birthday!” It’s even funnier in context.

What kind of harm could a bunch of slugs do to people? Well, regular old slugs wouldn’t do, so this mutant variety can actually take a bite out of someone with their cute little toothy mouths. Their slime trails are also poison, so when one unfortunate dude consumes a slug in a salad, he gets super sick and larvae explode out of his eyes. It’s an amazing bit of gore, and there are several gory scenes throughout. A naked couple gets eaten alive in a bedroom, and it’s actually pretty disturbing. The devoured corpses look revolting, and many live slugs were used, though I think more than a few were harmed in the making of this production. I don’t care that they’re only slugs, no animals should ever be harmed just for the sake of making a movie, and I’m glad there are more rules against that kind of thing now.

The pacing is not what you would call sluggish (pun intended) and the effects are typical for a piece of 80’s schlock like this, but it’s atypical in one odd way. The music is weirdly epic. I mean, they’re slugs. They’re these little black slimy lumps slowly moving along, and yet there’s this grandiose score played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The ending, though, is pretty ostentatious. It ends the only way it could have ended: with the characters blowing the slugs the hell up in a giant explosion that destroys the entire sewer and even kills one of the main characters, but of course it leaves just one slug left alive for a sequel that never happened.

Slugs is a campy creature feature that is worth checking out if you want to see some slimy critters wreak gory havoc on humankind. There aren’t many more takeaways beyond that, but it was enough to not feel like a wasted premise.