“You don’t have the authority to declare happy birthday! Not in this town!”

Justin’s rating: It’s a story of a lovely sluggy who was bringing up three very lovely slugs, all of them had heads of slime like their mother, the youngest one in dirt

Justin’s review: As I sit here in the darkness watching a killer slug movie from 1988, I ask myself why I’m still doing this after almost three decades. What is wrong with me, that I end almost every day with an hour or so of viewing some of the strangest and most obscure movies that have been cast out of polite society? Is there something broken in my brain? Did I get too much love as a child? Are the aliens controlling my habitual urges?

And then a terrestrial gastropod mollusc chomps down on a dude’s foot on the screen, and I’m reminded of my purpose. Slugs. Slugs! Slugs! SLUGS!

Striving to prove that you can take any critter that’s even slightly icky and spin out a killer animal movie, Slugs takes those rather adorable little guys and turns them into an apocalyptic threat to all humanity.

This is directed by Juan Piquer Simon, who is renowned for a slew of hokey cult movies you’ve probably heard of, including Pieces, Pod People, Supersonic Man, and The Rift. Oh, and it’s based on an actual novel, just in case you thought this lacked class or breeding.

When toxic ooze from the sewers mutates some big fat Black Slugs, they become teenage ninjas that fight a criminal organization while putting the moves on a local TV reporter. And by that, I mean “they gain a taste for human flesh and go on a chompin’ spree.”

But since this follows the Jaws playbook, the small town of Ashton is a little slow on the take that there’s a gooey menace in their midst. Only the local health inspector is suspicious that there’s an abnormally high number of corpses riddled with slime holes, and nobody believes him because his name is “Mike Brady” (played by The Warriors’ Michael Garfield). Mike Brady? Couldn’t have workshopped that name any further? I really didn’t need my brain to launch into the full Brady Bunch theme every time someone said this guy’s name on screen.

As you might expect, Slugs faces a gigantic uphill battle trying to make these small, slow, and squishable critters a legitimate horror threat. Instead of slowly and methodically building up trust with the audience to the point where we buy into this, this film immediately launches into unstoppable ravenous (and weirdly strong) slugs slithering rampant all over town, demonstrating feats of incredible strength, and eating people — including a gaggle of rowdy teens — inside and out lickety-split.

My favorite, absolute favorite part is at the end when the humans take the fight to the slugs in the sewer. Instead of calmly dumping a year’s worth of rock salt down there and calling it a day, the solution Mike Brady comes up with is to blow. Up. EVERYTHING. What ensues is a glorious firestorm in which cars, manhole covers, and houses alike erupt, probably killing just as many people as the slugs. And they don’t even get them all in the end!

This is, by far, one of the more gruesome creature features I’ve ever seen. I honestly think the slugs are incidental to what the filmmakers wanted to do, which is to fling half-eaten corpses at us left and right. I’m pretty impressed at the go-get-em attitude of these slugs. The piranhas of the midwest, I’ve heard. Apparently their bite is so fierce you can’t get one off, and if you manage to squash one, it’s got acid for blood or something.

Yes, this is gory in a not-that-believable way that the ’80s had, but it’s certainly not scary or even that creepy (for that, you’ll want to see 2006’s Slither). What Slugs does offer is a load of ridiculous entertainment, awful acting, bizarre death scenes and body horror, and some odd trivia facts about these creatures. There are also thousands upon thousands of real, live slugs and (why not) worms that the presumably delighted crew got to fling across various sets.

This movie makes me want to take a sharpie with me into every public restroom stall and write “FOR A GOOD TIME, POP IN THE MOVIE SLUGS” on the wall. I trust that it’ll find the most ideal audience that way.

Intermission!

• “That’s what I said, darn it!” WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE.
• I love the “slug trail” title animation
• I hope you like matted chest hair and voyueristic slugs
• “So teacher, what do you say let’s start some homework!”
• The soundtrack here sounds like it belongs in a 1981 TV action series
• I am rooting for that woman and dog to be slug food. Don’t let me down, movie!
• I would think chopping off your hand is a pretty extreme move
• GREENHOUSE EXPLOSION OF DOOM
• Ah, the ’80s fashion where sweaters fell all the way off the shoulder and then some
• “Killer slugs, what’s next? Demented crickets? Rampaging mosquitoes?”
• If you eat a slug salad, you’re going to get eaten from the inside out… somehow
• This movie really needed to spring for a cooler car for our hero to drive than a station wagon
• Yeah just leave your wife home with some killer slugs, tell her that “she’ll be fine”
• The water department guy has the biggest lunch ever
• Whenever you hinge your argument on “Listen, I know this sounds crazy…” you’re probably not going to win the argument
• What an amazing forest Halloween party with a single sad, solitary Jack O’ Lantern
• Haha just blowing up half the town are we, that seems justified. What? We could’ve simply poured salt all over the slugs? But then there wouldn’t have been any cool explosions!