The Nest (1988)

Terence H. Winkless The Nest most be one of the most forgotten creature features ever. Produced by Concorde Pictures and with Roger’s wife, Julie Corman as producer, this is a small but ambitious killer insect-movie in the same tradition as Slugs and Squirm. I guess it was dumped to video directly, which probably made it less known than the titles above. Not that The Nest is a masterpiece, but it has an overall feeling of “fun” and “goo”, and I’m sure most readers of this blog like that.

A fishing village is invaded by roaches, first just irritating bugs like they always been, but soon they start to eat flesh – human flesh. They are also, of course, mutated! So soon more bizarre creatures show up, and attack our hero – the brave sheriff and his girlfriend, the daughter of the man who brought the secret testing facility to the town! Melodrama! Well, what more can I say? The story is all what you expect from a typical killer insect-movie!

I admit it looks a bit flat and the budget was propably spent on a few of the more spectacular effect-heavy scenes, but The Nest is just good old-fashioned monster-fun. First of all, the key to all good monster movies, a good cast: Franc Luz as the sheriff, Robert Lansing as the patriarch, Lisa Langlois as the girl and Terri Treas as the bad mad scientist responsible for the mayhem. Everyone do their best and even an old pro could have chosen to sleep through his part, but do a nice performance that ends in an awesome sequence when he… well, I’m not gonna reveal it to you, but like the restaurant scene in Slugs this is as least as memorable.

While the story is standard and offers nothing new, the fun and likable cast puts of a good fight against thousands of cockroaches and a couple of cheap but very gory and slimey monsters. The cat/roach mix is a fun monster and the Lansing-creature is very good, the final monster is the best. It’s a bit stiff, and don’t move so much, but it’s very inspired by the last creature from The Thing mixing body parts and with animals and a nice gory sequence with the bad guy gets what she deserves, in blood-spurting fashion!

The Nest might be a shallow little movie, but filled with love and atmosphere, monsters, blood and gore. It’s out from Corman’s own company and possible to buy from them via eBay. My wish is that it would come out in a remastered edition, because I think the flat look of it would disappear if some work was invested in the movie and if they made a new master from the original negatives.

Not a classic, but a must for fans of good old monster films!