11.08.2011

Slugs (1988)

Slugs. The movie. Good God, let that sink in. Slugs was actually adapted from a novel. In other words, someone in the world read or otherwise heard of Slugs THE NOVEL and decided it would be worth turning it into a movie. And that guy is a hero because this movie is simply awesome.

Mike Brady, a health official who has just moved to some small town, discovers a new breed of man-eating slug and tries to warn everyone but he is dismissed as a madman. And then people start being eaten by slugs, but everyone still ignores him. So he takes matters into his own hands... but can he outwit a bunch of extremely slow, tiny, non-aggressive, stupid little mollusks?!

This is quite possibly the greatest American horror movie of the 80s. If you know your horror films, you know how bold a claim this is. But it's just that good. It's got unflinchingly gory effects (very rare in American horror films, especially from the late 80s), hilarious characters, and dialog that sounds like aliens wrote it. It's a dumb idea for a movie, but it works somehow. And I love the title. It's like naming your movie about a bunch of guys in room, Guys.

The best thing about this movie has to be the slugs though. These aren't giant slugs or anything. For all intents and purposes they look like normal slugs, except for in one scene where one guy tries to poke on with his finger and they show a close up of the slug opening his mouth, showing tiny little teeth.

Yeah, you're thinking, but these aren't your ordinary crawling-really-slowly-on-the-ground slugs. These slugs are probably super fast and can use their acid slime to burn through bank vaults. These monsters are doing back-flips off of refrigerators and burrowing into your skull. These bastards are hacking into the security system and turning it against you. Right?

Nope. In fact, unless you fall on them you are pretty much safe. It would be like if you made a Friday the 13th movie, except Jason broke his back and was in recovery, and so you were only in danger if you walked into his hospital room and sat on his bed. Luckily for us, this movie is ninety sweet minutes of ridiculously stupid people falling on (or eating) slugs!

Personally, I can't think of a better way to spend ninety minutes.

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