Giant slugs, raw meat, trailer trash, alien rape, dead animals, blood-dripping zombies, and the line you always wanted to hear in a horror movie, "What the f*ck was that?"  How can you not love Slither, with its blend of disgusting images, great special effects make-up, nasty humor and weird sex?

Writer/director James Gunn (Dawn of the Dead, Tromeo & Juliet) scores big time with his feature-directing debut.  And as the writer he penned some of the greatest horror movie lines ever delivered by an actor while keeping a straight face,  "He looks like something that fell off my dick during the war", muttered by the aging sheriff’s deputy when he sees Grant's transformation into something like a giant squid... with teeth ...and oozing slime, has got to be one of the most disgustingly memorable.

And then there's the visuals: a grotesquely transformed Brenda giving birth to tens of thousands of bloody, squirming, leechlike creatures that enter their victims through the mouth scores so high on the creep factor meter and is horrible on so many levels, I don't even want to go there.

But it gets WORSE, or better, depending on one's taste, as sexual titillation is blended seamlessly with creepy crawly horror.  The scene in the bathtub, referenced in the DVD cover photo, is a brilliant example of a filmmaker who knows how to mess with our heads and is clearly enjoying himself while doing it.  Where else can you see an alien slug swimming across a bubble filled tub towards an unsuspecting, but suitably nubile teenager, looking for all the world like an oversized spermatozoa hot on the trail of a warm host?


Or that same teen, dripping wet and wrapped in a towel, wielding a sizzling curling iron to fight off the horde of host hungry slugs bent on penetrating her?

A great, laugh out loud script, deft direction, perfect casting, and a hair on the back of the neck raising score by Tyler Bates make this a not to be missed guilty pleasure. 

And the DVD extras totally rock.

-- jmb




SLITHER
Actors: Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Gregg Henry, Michael Rooker, Tania Saulnier
Director: James Gunn
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English
Region 1 
Number of discs: 1
Rating R
Studio: Universal Studios
Run Time: 96 minutes

AddTime:  2007-05-17 13:27:56
Count:  5237
Keywords:  slither, slime, squirm, zombie, nathan fillion, james gunn, alien,
Average Rating:  0