Slugs: The Movie (1988)

I'll have to confess something for you all out there. I'm 33 years old and has been watching eurocult since the teenage years. Juan Piquer Simón is a favorite and I've a big fan of Pieces, The Rift and Fabulous Journey to the Center of the Earth... but not until tonite have I seen Slugs! Yes, it's bizarre. Very strange and very odd. But that's the way life is sometime.

Slugs begins with a young couple getting killed while fishing... cut to an old man getting killed. And then some exposition... and then some more deaths. And a couple of huge explosions in the end. Did I mention the graphic gore? Okey, the story is so thin but works very well... actually, it's so thin that I'll have problems remember the details! The heroes are some kind of government guys, one works with sanitation in the little town and the other... is some other guy. They discover that the town is slowly taken over by a breed of highly aggressive killer-slugs who have a fondness for human flesh!

Ah, shit. Let's put it down like this: Slugs feels like a perfect American creature feature from the eighties, but with more detailed and graphic gore and no humor. They way I want it. It looks slick and quite expensive, with a glossy feeling and music that sounds like it's from some eighties TV-movie. The actors are okey and do their job, the cinematography is excellent and Simón really knows how to direct with flair and style. The script is so cheesy it can be with tons of silly dialogue and scene that are almost surreal in their absurd execution.

I was skeptical at first, because killer-slugs isn't something I can see attacking people (if their not big like... horses or some other animal), but these creature are really vicious! They have teeth, they are quite fast and they bit hard and brutal so the blood sprays all over the scenery. They also have worm-like parasites inside that can infect people - which is seen in a spectacular scene where a guys head is exploding from angry worms! We also have the loving couple - very nude too - who are attacked by slugs after a healthy dose of graphic sex, not to mention the guy trying to chop of his arm with an ax to remove a one of our nasty title creatures... and much, much more.

Slugs completely lacks any depth. But do we really need that in a movie with killer-slugs? It's so filled with charm and cheese, gore and galore, sexplosion and explosions that you'll never have to worry about being bored or disappointed. It's old-fashioned and still "modern" and gory.

So I bet you all want to the buy the DVD now? The Anchor Bay US-version is OOP, but... don't be afraid, it's just been released in the UK very cheap and features the same wonderful anamorphic and uncut print as the Anchor Bay-version (actually, the new one also has the AB logotype in the beginning). So there's not much to think about, is it?