Squirm
SQUIRM was shot in 24 days, which basically screams masterpiece in my mind, and the original composer, Bernard Hermann, who also composed classics such as The Day The Earth Stood Still and Psycho, died before he could begin work on it, which I guess is one way to get out of having to be associated with this thing. Supposedly, the worms are meant to be “carnivorous”, as if that makes them anymore dangerous because, come on, it’s a fucking worm. How carnivorous could it be? They just went, “You know how worms only eat you AFTER you’re dead? What if they did that when you were ALIVE?!” and thought that that was the basis for a wholly great horror film.
Look at the cover of this thing, man. Besides having a title that basically begged for a porn version to be made featuring guys in giant worm costumes (don’t lie, you wanna see that), this thing just screams “shelf in video store nobody ever rents from”. Like, you’ve got this image of the actress on the cover, but it’s not even a very good image, and she doesn’t look particularly horrified as much as she is confused, likely to both what’s happening and WHY she signed onto this in the first place. Then you’ve got some of these evil worms burrowing into her face, which is a nice touch I’ll admit, that’s sort of gruesome, and even more coming out of her showerhead, which is also some nice imagery. But, like…does this mean the producers of the movie just shoved some worms up the holes on a showerhead? Because if so, that’s…boy that’s kinda gnarly. Poor worms. Unless they were dead, I guess.
The whole cover, actually, portrays that bathroom, if you notice. The back cover is also tiled like the wall of her shower on the front, and yet another image on the back with, I’m assuming, her hand reaching upwards for some sort of help from these awful worms that somehow a grown ass woman can’t run away from. Like, there’s no variety whatsoever to be found on this thing. It’s just bathroom shots all the way ‘round, and for some reason, I love it for that. It just says “we put absolutely no thought into this whatsoever”, it’s like buying someone a paperweight as a gift. Squirm is apparently part of the “natural horror films” genre, where the actual threat isn’t supernatural, but instead something like animals or plants, which I honestly didn’t even know WAS a genre until writing this up right now. This is a great list, I’ll link it here for you, because it just details all the “natural horrors” found in movies like this. In fact, according to this list, the only true worms horror movie is this one. The other two only feature either giant leeches or a singular giant worm. I would argue and say Tremors is kind of wormy, but that’s neither here nor there, I suppose.
Anyway, this is the sort of movie I’d expect to see either at a flea market table for a dollar or maybe one of those old mom and pop video rental stores growing up, and for that alone, I love it. I love how terrible this whole thing comes across, because it’s not inherently bad, like, you can tell they put some effort into this, but it STILL came out bad, which is fantastic. I kinda wanna enlarge this box art and hang it on the wall, maybe at a bait and tackle store I will never own.
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