They said it couldn’t be done. A fifth year of 31 Days of Horror? 31 more terror, gore and shower scene-filled movies worth highlighting? But Rejects always say die and never back away from a challenge, so we’ve rounded up the horror fans among us and put together another month’s worth of genre fun. Enjoy!
Synopsis:
A small town in upstate Spain starts losing citizens to a garden pest when carnivorous slugs decide they want to move up the food chain. Mike Brady (Michael Garfield), once a happily married architect with a blond wife and six kids is now just a happily married county health inspector with a brunette wife. He’s the first to suspect the salt-hating gastropods are to blame for the town’s recent rash of gory deaths, but the other authorities are slow to believe him so he joins forces with the local waterworks man and a British slug expert in the hopes of stopping the slimy onslaught before it’s too late.
Killer Scene:
A teenager in his mid twenties heads to his girlfriend’s house to sample her father’s alcohol and her vagina, but when he stops mid-coitus for a whiskey recharge the two discover the bed is surrounded by slugs. The naked girl makes a run for it and immediately slips and falls into the writhing, black morass where she’s quickly attacked by the little biting bastards. She screams and rolls around revealing a brief and unfortunate glimpse of her gaping bunghole while the slugs begin to feast. Blood spurts, her eyeball hangs loose and eventually she dies. Her prick of a boyfriend makes a halfhearted attempt to save her, makes an equally lame attempt to save himself and then falls into the squirming hell of the slugs himself.
Kill Sheet
Sex
The “teen” couple described above offer up the only real sex scene in the movie, and as such are the only real flesh on display here. We get boobs, butt, dong and the aforementioned glimpse of her cavernous nether-region. For the more prurient among you Mr. Brady’s wife does appear in a scandalously short teddy.
Violence
Slugs are messy eaters apparently as the numerous townspeople discover right before they die. Eyeballs are a special delicacy as more than a few folks have those munched first, but the creatures also bore through torsos causing geysers of blood and lead to accidents involving flammable materials and leading to massive explosions. One poor soul who injested sliced up slugs in his salad has his face explode with a bevy of slug babies birthed in his body. There’s also some very bloody non-slug violence when a gardener takes a hatchet to his own wrist.
Scares
Slugs aren’t known for their jump scares, and they’re not generally viewed as something to fear, but the film does a fine job of making the thought of them rolling up on your bare flesh a terrifying one. They bite, burrow and drag away their victims. It’s sufficiently creepy.
Final Thoughts
Slugs is a bit of a forgotten gem in the subgenre of nature-attacks horror, and that’s a shame because it’s actually good, gory fun. Spanish director Juan Piquer Simón (aka JP Simon) makes a solid-looking film on a budget and as with his earlier classic, Pieces, he never shies away from gratuitous entertainment in the form of gross practical effects and exposed flesh. Slugs lacks the wit of Pieces, but it still manages to succeed on gore and action alone.
How Can You See It?- Blu-ray/DVD/Netflix/On Demand
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Related Topics: Horror
