Slugs, muerte viscosa (1988)

Directed by Juan Piquer Simón [Other horror films: Escalofrío (1978), Misterio en la isla de los monstruos (1981), Mil gritos tiene la noche (1982), Los nuevos extraterrestres (1983), The Rift (1990), La mansión de los Cthulhu (1992)]

Slugs, muerte viscosa, commonly shortened to Slugs, is a pretty fun movie. There’s not many mollusk-based movies out there, and this Spanish addition probably does as much as can be done to make the plot palatable, and it’s worth seeing.

This is a movie I’ve heard about for years (though I never knew it was based on a book from 1982 titled Slugs, written by Shaun Hutsun, until I watched this one), and reception tends to be positive, which I can understand. It’s a quick-paced movie, it doesn’t take long at all to get into the slug action, and there’s more than a few enjoyable sequences spread throughout the film.

The finale here, for instance, had a pit of water filled with slugs which, of course, someone unfortunately fell into. A bedroom floor was covered with slugs, which led to some more deaths. A greenhouse blew up – quality explosive sequence, and in fact, there’s a lot of explosions toward the end, and it’s just a lot of fun.

While I wouldn’t call the movie overly gory, there are a few sequences which might be more disturbing, such as a man’s lunch being ruined by some parasites because he accidentally ate a slug. It’s a glorious sequence. The special effects throughout are all quite strong, actually, so Spain definitely came to play when they made this.

Most of the performances aren’t particularly noteworthy, though. Michael Garfield and Philip MacHale were fine, but they didn’t make that large an impression. John Battaglia was amusing at times, and Santiago Álvarez came through at the end, but again, no real lasting impressions. I did think that Kim Terry was a bit weak, but she didn’t appear too often, so that’s not a problem.

Oh, and a character wanted to declare a health emergency, and the reply he got was “You ain’t got the authority to declare ‘Happy Birthday.’ Not in this town.” I laughed quite a lot at that, and there were a few other humorous moments (“And what exactly do you do?”), but a lot of the film is played straight, which you might not necessarily expect from a killer slug movie.

As I always say, if it’s not mollusk, it’s not right, and Slugs is mollusk. It’s not a great movie, but it does have a lot going for it. I personally prefer the wormy goodness of Squirm, but Slugs is a solid movie worth experiencing at least once if you’re a fan of 80’s horror.

7.5/10