I love when animals attack / nature run amok films and I must try to feature more here. I briefly dipped my toe two years ago with The Nest (1988), to follow-up, I'm going to talk a little bit about Juan Piquer Simón's gooey gastropod horror, Slugs / Slugs, Muerte Viscosa, based on the 1982 novel by British novelist Shaun Hutson.

I was a little late finding an interest in literature, admittedly, I was an ignorant adolescent, figuring "I'd rather just watch the film". However, at the age of 21, out of sheer curiosity, I picked up a heavily thumbed copy of James Hertbert's The Fog (1975) for a couple of quid and consequently never looked back. Soon, I devoured more and more books by Herbert, including his seminal novel The Rats (first published in 1974), and quickly found myself with armfuls of books by other authors; one of them, suggested by my mother no less, was Shaun Hutson and a little book called Slugs.

I was smitten, at long last I'd found the literary equivalent of the films I adored. I tracked down as many Hutson novels as I could, including Breeding Ground, the follow-up to Slugs. I became a proud splatterpunk fan, hungrily poring over every book I could grasp that featured a sensational cover and a lurid blurb. Some good, some bad, but all of them always entertaining.

Starring: Michael Garfield, Kim Terry, Philip MacHale, Alicia Moro, Santiago Álvarez, Concha Cuetos, Frank Braña, Patty Shepard, Kari Rose and Kris Mann.



Slugs is one of those occasions when I read the book before seeing the film and I can distinctly remember loathing the film after getting around to it, especially since I enjoyed the book so much. Over the years I've become more appreciative of it, shortcomings 'n' all.

The story is simple: a rural township's residents fall foul to a horde of killer slugs, mutated by the dumping of toxic waste. The startling discovery becomes known to local health inspector Mike Brady (Michael Garfield) who, along with Sanitation supervisor Don Palmer (Philip MacHale), attempts to find a permanent solution to the gastropod menace, whilst facing disbelief and ridicule from the establishment.

Slugs is not a good movie. Slugs is not a bad movie. Slugs is a good-bad movie, and one of the best at that. Helmed by one Juan Piquer Simón, the same guy who brought us the enduring Pieces (1982) and the less enduring Cthulhu Mansion (1992); Slugs is a hammy mix of charming '50s creature b-movie and '80s gore-heavy horror. From the terrible dialogue during the opening sequence you'll quickly realise none of Slugs is going to make a lick of sense; it's rough around the edges and with the awkward fade-outs, the soundtrack makes it feel like a TV film. There's also a few scenes where you can quite obviously tell the production was split across two countries, but the end result is a lot of fun, endearing, and memorable.



It also helps that the film is completely excessive in its gruesomeness and absurdity; there's an abundance of blood, slug-goo, partially eaten faces, eyeballs exploding-outwards with worms, chest bursting, severed appendages, explosions, bad dubbing and dodgy mullet haircuts. If you like the reimagining of The Blob (1988) you'll enjoy everything on display here; I couldn't help but be reminded of it during this re-watch.

At about a quarter of the way through there is a hilarious scene where Brady is taken aback by the size of several slugs, he reaches down to pick one up and it cuts to a close-up of one biting his finger; the scene's inclusion could be an attempt to give the film a more broadly comedic tone, whatever the reasoning behind it, I'm just glad it exists. There's also a sequence shortly after where a girl gets gobbled alive by an undulating rug of slugs, after slipping on them barefoot and falling flat on her face! It's reminiscent of the latter half of Jeff Lieberman's Squirm (1976),  it's so exaggerated it qualifies as "splatstick", yet horrific enough to still deliver a shock. There's some nicely framed shots scattered throughout and the gore always features several closeups to induce vomiting with maximum effect.



Like the old Chinese proverb goes: "A world with a motion picture adaptation of Shaun Hutson's Slugs is better than a world without".