Slither (2006, USA)
Directed by James Gunn
Normally I only review movies that I own on DVD, but I came across this little gem last night on my On Demand channel. It turned out to be the best $3.99 investment I’ve made all year. This movie should not be confused with the movie of the same name from 1973 that starred James Caan, Peter Boyle (RIP), and Sally Kellerman. No this movie is way different.
Slither is the directorial debut of James Gunn, who was the screenwriter for such fine films as Tromeo And Juliet (a Troma Entertainment production); and the 2004 remake of Dawn Of The Dead. This experience has really paid off. James Gunn has taken elements of such classic movies as The Blob, Night Of The Living Dead, Alien, and The Thing and blended them all together into one fine action packed extravaganza.
The plot is fairly simple. A meteor crashes to Earth in the woods near the small country town of Wheelsy, South Carolina. An odd looking maggot-like creature comes out of it. A guy named Grant comes along and pokes it with a stick. The maggot shoots him in the stomach and that’s when the trouble starts.
Pretty soon Grant develops a really bad skin condition, as well as a couple of nifty tentacles that protrude from his stomach, and a serious craving for meat. Pretty soon dogs, cats, cows, horses and everything in between start coming up missing including the woman that Grant was sneaking around with when his wife wasn’t in the mood for sex. Not long after that the cops show up looking for Grant and his wife, Starla, becomes suspicious.
Pretty soon Starla discovers there’s a whole lot more to the story than the cops realize and a posse is formed to hunt Grant down. A trap is set. Grant shows up. Well it’s not really Grant anymore because Grant by now has turned into a sort of giant combination slug/squid like thingy. Grant gets away. The cops find the missing woman that Grant was fooling around with, and that’s when the fun really starts.
This movie has everything (well except for gratuitous nudity): Alien slugs, icky looking monsters, zombies, cannibalism, over-the-top acting (the foul mouthed mayor especially), blood and gore galore, and it all comes together perfectly to create what can almost be described as a Troma movie with a much better budget. This is one movie that will gladly purchase on DVD.
Rating: One full thumb up the butt
Tracy (Never Had A Nickname) McCall
Head Writer,
Singer, Songwriter,
Attorney at Log
Paulie Family Productions
Bloodsucking Freaks (1975, USA)
Directed by Joel Reed
This movie is also known as The Incredible Torture Show (TITS). If you’re looking to break up with your girlfriend or divorce your wife, just watch this movie with her. You have to be pretty demented to enjoy this movie, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Women will find this movie extremely misogynistic, and men will enjoy it for the same reason.
This movie is about a guy named Sardu, who with the help of his midget assistant put on a show of torture in your local New York theater. What the theater audience doesn’t know if that they are witnessing real acts of torture being inflicted on kidnapped women. Eventually Sardu kidnaps a world renowned ballerina and a popular theater critic and forces them to perform.
Interspersed within all of this are some truly demented scenes such as the human dartboard scene (my favorite scene in the whole movie), the midget gets a blowjob from a severed head scene, the brain sucking scene, the penis sandwich scene, and a cage full of naked women who’ve all gone insane.
But of course, like all good things, the fun doesn’t last and eventually the naked women escape and exact their terrible revenge on their captors. And did I mention that this movie is actually a comedy? Oh sure, the average person probably won’t think it’s all that funny, but for those of us who know how to say “It’s only a movie!” this movie is quite a treat.
Rating: One full thumb up the butt
Tracy (Never Had A Nickname) McCall
Head Writer,
Singer, Songwriter,
Attorney at Log
Paulie Family Productions
Bloodsucking Pharaohs In Pittsburgh (1991, USA)
Directed by Dean Tschetter
This is my all-time favorite movie next to Psychos In Love, however, Psychos In Love is not available on DVD.
Bloodsucking Pharaohs In Pittsburgh, with a name like that how can you go wrong? This movie has everything, except for pharaohs oddly enough, but it does have lots of blood (not really much gore), a fez wearing killer, a roller skating waitress, an ass kicking meter maid with hiccoughs, two cops (one of which can’t stand the sight of blood), and a woman that struggles with her addiction to nicotine.
The plot? Well let’s see… A fez wearing killer is going around killing people with a wonderful assortment of power tools including an electric hedge trimmer, a shop vacuum, well you get the picture. The killer is also collecting body parts for a reason that’s never really explained. Hot on the trail of the killer are two cops, one of them knows all of the victims and can’t stand the sight of blood; the other one is married to a woman that can’t stop smoking.
The two cops are inadvertently joined by a meter maid with a chronic case of the hiccoughs, and together they set out to the Egyptian District, which I’m sure anybody from Pittsburgh is familiar with. There they follow the clues which lead them to the killer’s hideout for the exciting showdown.
Okay, the acting isn’t especially great and neither are the special effects, but the pure campy humor and the wonderful scenes of Irma at the Stop Smoking Clinic really put this movie over the top. I can’t watch this movie enough times.
Rating: One full thumb up the butt
Tracy (Never Had A Nickname) McCall
Head Writer,
Singer, Songwriter,
Attorney at Log
Paulie Family Productions
