For a creature that is not inherently scary, the common slug sure has menaced a lot of horror movies. From Night of the Creeps to Slither to The Puppet Masters, the slimy little mollusks have played the villain on screen again and again. But it is only Juan Piquer Simón’s 1988 film Slugs (aka Slugs, muerte viscosa) that gives them top billing. Of all the slug horror movies, this one is the sluggiest.
Slugs is also trashy, gory nonsense, which is to be expected from the director of Pieces, one of the most insane slasher movies ever made. While Slugs lacks the inspired lunacy of Pieces, it’s not for lack of trying. The film stars Michael Garfield as Mike Brady (that’s right), a worker with the health department who suspects that a recent rash of gruesome deaths are the result of a new strain of slug that has mutated from the dumping of toxic waste. Obviously, he has a hard time getting anyone to believe his theory until he calls up on a “slug expert” to back up his claims. But will it be too late?
Outside of the incredibly icky gore, there isn’t a whole lot that Slugs has going for it. The story is basic at best. The acting is wooden, done no favors by the dubbing of pretty much all the dialogue. Director Juan Piquer Simón isn’t a filmmaker known for his style, but “style” isn’t something for which horror fans are hoping to find in Slugs. His greatest asset is that he doesn’t seem to know where the lines of good taste are, and therefore has no problem crossing them again and again. It was true of Pieces and it’s true of Slugs as well, and while the movie is more or less artless from a technical standpoint, it does have the freedom to go bonkers in a handful of show-stopping gore sequences, including a nasty post-coital slug attack and a scene inside a restaurant (arguably the most famous sequence in the film) in which a man, having accidentally ingested one of the slugs, more or less explodes from the inside. These scenes were obviously Simón’s favorite ones to shoot, and damned if he doesn’t throw his heart into it.
The slugs are basically treated here like the titular entity from Chuck Russell’s 1988 remake of The Blob; one touch and it’s only a matter of moments before your entire body is consumed. The science behind this isn’t really explained, “science” being another thing horror fans aren’t looking for in Slugs. That’s just one of the movie's many aspects that create cognitive dissonance. The morality of the script (by Simón and Ron Gantman, adapted from the novel by Shaun Hutson—yes, Slugs is adapted from a novel called Slugs) is all over the place even by horror movie standards; the victim of a gratuitous and exploitative sexual assault is killed by the slugs while her attacker escapes unpunished. The music, which sounds like a collection of library cues, is constantly at odds with what is on screen. What I’m saying is that the movie is a big, sleazy, gross mess.
Thankfully, that won’t stop the folks at Arrow Video from giving it the best possible Blu-ray treatment they can, creating a new 2K scan for a 1080p HD transfer that looks very good despite the fact that Slugs is a fairly ugly, low-budget effort to begin with. It is, I’m almost positive, the best the movie has ever looked. The majority of the bonus features consist of interviews with people associated with the production, including co-star Emilio Linder (“Here’s Slugs in Your Eye”), art director Gonzalo Gonzalo (“Invasion USA”), production manager Larry Ann Evans (“The Lyons Den”) and special effects designer Carlo de Marchis (“They Slime, They Ooze, They Kill”). There are two commentary tracks, the first with author Shaun Hutson (on whose novel the movie is based) and the second with former Fangoria editor Chris Alexander. The film’s original theatrical trailer is also included.
I’ll admit that the “killer animal/nature strikes back” sub-genre is not among my favorites in horror, but I don’t think that has anything to do with me not totally loving Slugs. I suspect that’s because it’s not a very good movie, even if it is sometimes fun in a trashy, gory way. It’s not Juan Piquer Simón’s best movie. It’s not even the best killer slug movie ever made. If you’re going to check it out, know what you’re in for… and maybe keep some salt nearby.
Movie Score: 2.5/5, Disc Score: 3.5/5
Patrick lives in Chicago, where he has been writing about film since 2004. A member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Online Film Critics Society, Patrick's writing also appears on About.com, DVDVerdict.com and fthismovie.net, the site he runs and hosts a weekly podcast.
He has been an obsessive fan of horror and genre films his entire life, watching, re-watching and studying everything from the Universal Monsters of the '30s and '40s to the modern explosion of indie horror. Some of his favorites include Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931), Dawn of the Dead (1978), John Carpenter's The Thing and The Funhouse. He is a lover of Tobe Hooper and his favorite Halloween film is part 4. He knows how you feel about that. He has a great wife and two cool kids, who he hopes to raise as horror nerds.
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