Much like an earlier entry in this year’s series, today’s Halloween Horrors post reminds us of the countless things in nature just waiting to kill us. As the long history of “killer animal” films has attempted to warn us, many of these creatures are ones that normally couldn’t do much physical damage but make no mistake… they hate us! Thanks to oversights in environmental protection and meddling from countless disreputable scientists, these normally harmless critters evolve and find ways to slaughter large numbers of the populace.

Today’s contributor, Roger Braden, was also created thanks to meddling from disreputable scientists and may be responsible for the slaughter of large numbers of the population, but he’s been a great friend to Horror And Sons for a few years, so we tend to overlook those other aspects. Roger first joined our series back in 2017 and has been a regular contributor ever since, but can usually be found on his own Facebook page, Valley Nightmares. Roger has also contributed to the pages of Drive-In Asylum. 

As we slither ever closer to Halloween, here’s Roger’s look at 1988’s Slugs…

Valley Nightmares Facebook Page: LINK

 

 

Slugs (1988)

Let’s get a few details out of the way first and then I’ll dig into the movie. Oh, and… Happy Halloween.

Distributed by New World Pictures, Slugs is based upon the 1982 novel by Shaun Hutson, who also co-wrote the screenplay. It was filmed in Lyons, New York and Madrid, Spain in November 1986 with the actors’ scenes shot in their respective countries. The soundtrack is by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Conductor Tim Souster. Slugs was directed by Juan Piquer Simon as J. P. Simon, the director of Pieces (1982, US 1983).

The movie opens with a scene on a lake. A young man and woman are in a rowboat; him fishing off the back, one foot in the water; the young lady complaining that fishing is boring, and that she wants to swim. He tells her that the water is too cold and that the city dumps sewage into it. Then, why in the world are you fishing in it!? This doesn’t seem to bother her as she strips down to her panties and a half shirt just as the dude says,”Hey, there’s something slimy in here.” He then quickly gets pulled under water. The girl thinks he’s joking until the water starts to boil and bubble near the boat and then turns red. She starts screaming. Fade out. Then the title screen begins, and it’s pretty cool, followed by the opening credits.

Confession time… Until about two months ago, I had never seen this movie. I’d seen that VHS cover in the video stores and looked it over, but I would always move on to something else. I don’t remember it playing on cable TV either. I’m sure it did, but I missed it. Now, I’ve been on a Tubi kick the last several months, and one night this showed up in my recommendations. I thought, “Why not?”, and checked it out. Shortly after that, it was announced that this awesome series was coming back. I knew that I had to write about it because I couldn’t stop thinking about it. That’s either a good sign or a bad one. I’ll let you all decide which. Now, back to the movie.

A drunk is walking his dog at night… in the street. Some punks drive up, mess with him, and make him fall down before driving off. He walks to his house, which is like 100 feet away. It’s trashy, and a final eviction notice is tacked to the door. The dog is scared and doesn’t want to go in. He cusses the dog, turning him loose before going inside his disgusting, no utilities hovel. We know slugs are in the house. We’ve seen and heard them.

Our drunk decides to kick back on the couch. He starts screaming right away, sinking into the couch as the slugs get louder while devouring him as his dog whimpers from the porch. This is all mostly bloodless, but that is not going to be the case moving forward.

Now, let’s meet our main cast in this small town of Ashton. No state is given, but it’s rural New York given the NY license plates and Lyons Central school buses. We have the county Health Inspector, Mike Brady. Yep, Mike Brady. His wife is a school teacher. The students call her “Wicked Bitch”. There’s the county Sanitation (Sewer) Officer, Don, and his wife. A local politician, David, who is trying to sell a big property to some company called Calgore, and his wife, Maureen, who is a drunk. Sheriff Reese, who is one of the biggest assholes you’ll ever met. John Foley, an Englishman, is the laboratory teacher at the high school. He sounds just like Austin Powers and knows a Hell of a lot about slugs. I’ll be referring to most of these folks (and a few others) by their job titles moving forward. The story jumps around so much it’s just easier that way and, honestly, besides Mike Brady, you’re not going to remember these folks’ names when it’s over.

Back to the story…

The Sheriff needs Mr. Brady to come with him to evict the drunk guy that, unknown to them, was consumed by the couch slugs. Here’s where we get our first good look at the Sheriff character; an angry, foul, aggressive loudmouth who can hardly wait to call you an idiot or threaten to fire you. After the discovery a deputy is standing on the porch loudly describing in awe what he just saw, and it had me laughing way too hard. Sewer guy investigates a complaint from a bitchy resident and gets help from… Mike Brady.

Weird things happen in the sewer, but the scene just dies. We see folks in town, and everyone is describing the dead couch dude. Cut to the high school, where a group of “teen” friends are talking about the couch dude. One of the girls mentions that the local legend, “The Goat Killer”, has to be responsible, then tells the very brief story of GK. From out of nowhere, one of the kids says, “You going to the Halloween party Friday, right?” Wait, what? We’re 20 minutes in, and you can tell it’s Fall, but there has been no sign that this is set during Halloween time. No decorations anywhere! I guess it gets added to the “Horror movies randomly set during Halloween” list. From here on, it’s slugs attacking everywhere. Hell, even Mike Brady gets bit by one in his wife’s flower garden!

The local greenhouse is overrun with slugs and are chewing up the man who runs it when his wife walks in. She sees what’s happening, drops her cigarette in chemicals, and blows up the place real good. In one disgusting scene, the drunk politician’s wife cuts up a head of lettuce with a slug in it. She doesn’t notice it, makes a salad, and feeds it to him! Even cut up, these slugs are lethal, because the next day, he basically explodes in a restaurant full of people. When evidence is taken to the lab guy, he says “Oh, God! There’s no end!” How I wish he would have said “Yeah, baby!” after that.

A couple of the students have a graphic sex and death scene. We’ve got slugs coming out of faucets and toilets all over town, and the body count keeps rising. Other than a lot of talk, nothing happens. Even the Sheriff doesn’t believe it, and he’s seen it first-hand! Finally, Mike Brady, Sewer Guy, and Lab Dude band together to try and take out the slugs after Lab dude makes a chemical that will make them explode!

“Will that blow up the town?“
“I hope not.“

We witness the students’ Halloween party, and its jaw dropping. It’s out in some field or park, NOBODY is dressed up, and there is only one jack-o-lantern… on someone’s vehicle.  There’s a pretty tough to watch part in this party scene where one of the girls has to basically fight off two dudes. After the third “No!”, the first guy leaves, but then she’s almost immediately attacked by one of the students, who puts a mask on. She fights hard, escapes, and hides in a drain pipe, only to get eaten by the slugs. While all of this isn’t overly graphic, I could have done without it.

The movie jumps again. The movie doesn’t flow well with the way it jumps back and forth so much. There’s little to no chemistry between the actors, who all play it dead straight. When you find out it was filmed in two countries, thousands of miles apart, and that they just spliced the scenes together, it makes sense as to why it feels off. That, and it looks like it was made in the mid-to-late 1970’s. Even the music throughout sounds like ’70s detective shows, such as “Kojak” or “Mannix“. Now, the blood and gore effects are pretty solid, with lots of bloody carnage and blood flying. There is some CGI, and its passable.

The finale plays out mostly in the sewer and is kind of slow. There’s a couple surprises. I loved that Sewer Guy says, “There’s enough methane down here to blow us all the way to Kentucky”. From New York to Kentucky is a lot of methane.

We do get an explosive ending, thanks to Lab Guy dumping his chemical in the sewer and blowing the shit out of the slugs, sewer system, and the town… but does he kill them all?

I had a lot of fun with this movie. It’s hard to believe that I’d never watched it before this year. Definitely a recommended watch, so have fun with it! Plus it’s another movie, however random, that we can put on our Halloween time watch list.

Slugs is on disc and streams on Tubi for free. Also available on YouTube, Google, Vudu and Amazon Prime for under $5

Many thanks to Horror & Sons (Dustin) for having me again and bringing back this fun series. I’m looking forward to reading everyone’s pieces!

Happy Halloween!