Slugs

Hello folks, and welcome back, to Insect Horror Theatre, where we cover only the absolute finest feature films from the horror genre that solely focus on insects as the villains. I'm your host, and tonight, we will be looking at this spectacular masterpiece, "SLUGS". Before we dive any deeper, let's focus on the first major sin of this box art, which is that the title of it, in big bold font, lacks a goddamned exclamation point. You can't just have a single word title horror movie, especially one named for the villain of the movie, and then NOT have an exclamation point. That's just box art 101, man.

Honestly, I'm always a bit torn when I go into doing one of these and legitimately cannot make fun of the art itself, because that slug right there? A+. That's an A+ slug. Can't deny it. Shit, even if the person in the, inexplicable, hazmat suit about to face off with Slugzilla here looks fairly good. But that's okay, because there's still a LOT to unpack here. Let's start with the fact that this apparently was a movie that even the New York Times enjoyed, which comes as quite a shocker. But this isn't a blog about bad movies. It's a blog about bad BOX ART for movies, so, whether the film itself is good or not is fairly irrelevant.

While there's quite a bit here to laugh at, I have to say that I think my personal favorite piece from this whole mess is the statement at the top about how this is based on a "horrifying best seller." Look, I already think that insects are the least horrifying thing you can make into a horror villain. You can enlarge them, you can have them in mass numbers, but when it comes right down to it, the only one that really gets away with it is spiders, and that's just because they're so genuinely unsettling looking. I mean, "The Fly" gets kind of a pass because it's technically not really the insect that's the bad guy, but overall, it doesn't matter what your insect is. Locusts. Worms. Leeches. I don't care. It's NOT scary. I don't care how many of them there are, I don't care about how big they are, they aren't scary, end of discussion. They may be GROSS, but that's a whole different situation entirely, because what's gross isn't inherently what's scary. You know what else is gross? Vomit. But imagine being chased by vomit. It's still gross, not question, but it's not scary.

So for this to be a film, one would look at it and laugh and go, "Haha, boy, Hollywood sure does think they can turn anything into a scary movie don't they? Slugs? What will they think of next!" but then to find out this was actually a novel is just downright hysterical. Perhaps it's just me, and my lack of ability to find text terrifying, but at least other horror novels will give you something even slightly genuinely unnerving, like a child eating clown or ghosts or whatever.

This is a book about fucking slugs.

You didn't even pick the most terrifying insect. You picked SLUGS, dude. Like, in my post for "Squirm", I talked about how everyone could just walk away from the worms. They're small, and while they might amass in number, just step on 'em and you'll be okay. Slugs are right up there with worms, when it comes to varying levels of terrifying. There is nothing scary about a fucking slug. I'm sorry. That's just a fact. Slugs aren't scary, end of story.

And let's go back to that guy in the hazmat suit on the front cover. Is this a radioactive slug? Perhaps. Unfortunately, the blurb on the back doesn't give us much to go on, except for "they came from beneath the waters", which really could mean anything. I'm gonna go out on a limb and just say this slug is radioactive. Otherwise what use would having the hazmat suit even be? And when it comes right down to it, just pour some salt onto him. He's a slug. He'll die instantly. This is a villain with an extremely simple defeat. This is not rocket science, people. Unless you're the guy in the hazmat suit. It might be rocket science for him, and only because I don't know people other than rocket scientists who would own hazmat suits.

A side note, but I feel it warrants it; they didn't even make the font sit on the spine. They chopped out the block that the font is on on the front cover and slapped it onto the spine, putting a big black box with text in it on the spine of the box art, and that just looks sloppy, even for this.

Let's also discuss the images on the back of this box, because...wow. I've never seen a less connected collection of images that, when put together, fail to convey any sort of context to what they're trying to show me. Like, we've got 4 images here to pull from. The first appears to be a couple out at a fancy restaurant, okay. That's normal enough. The second appears to be a giant explosion. Alrighty. The third appears to be a rotting corpse, which is...yeah. And the fourth and final image is just a straight up topless woman. Is she gonna seduce this slug? Does the slug, like the rest of us, just really want to be loved? I don't know, and I don't know what kind of woman would fuck a giant slug. I mean, I know they're out there, but still.

This is as baffling as it is coherently designed, which makes it only all the MORE baffling, really.

"Slugs!" (fuck you, I'm adding an exclamation point, sue me), seems to be a mishmash of possibly all sorts of things in the movie, but when you put all those things together out of context of the movie, it makes no goddamned sense at all. And again, I wish to reiterate this because I feel it's fairly important, SLUGS AREN'T FUCKING SCARY. They just aren't. I don't care if they're giant, or radioactive, or here to steal our women, they AREN'T. SCARY. PERIOD. In fact, just to prove to you how not scary slugs are, I have compiled a short list of insects that would've been infinitely scarier had this film been about them:

• Solpugids, or Sun Spiders (or the Camel spider)
• Praying Mantises (they have goddamned KNIVES FOR ARMS for christ sake)
• Centipedes (try running away from something that's 80k feet long, bitch)
• Cicadas (they are creepy looking and they are loud enough to drive you nuts)
• Tarantula Hawks (BECAUSE IT'S NAMED FUCKING TARANTULA HAWK)

So there you go, film executives. Five, fairly original, ideas that are way scarier than slugs for your next insect horror movie. Just send a check to care of  'Go Fuck Yourself Industries', thanks.