Review: Slugs (1988)

Slugs is a gloriously rubbish slice of eighties hokum. If you like your horror films silly and illogical with lots of blood and gore, then this is for you! Nominally based on the novel of the same name by Shaun Hutson, the film actually seems to have nothing in common with it except the title … oh, and the slugs of course.

We open with a couple on a rowing boat, and there’s a disturbance in the water. The chap fishing has one foot dangling overboard, and the girl is about to take her top off … you know what’s going to happen! Somehow the slugs grab the chap’s foot and drag him under where there’s an explosion of blood! Then we’re in America where slugs have gone carnivorous and are attacking people – speeded up! A man in a greenhouse puts on a glove into which a slug has gone, and then screams and cannot get the glove off! Mighty strong these things. The solution: to thrash around screaming before grabbing an axe and cutting his own hand off! Then another woman prepares dinner, not noticing the large black slug in her lettuce as she chops it up. It’s then eaten with neither of the diners noticing the slug – or tasting it … Then the man collapses in a restaurant later on and his face explodes as slug larvae burst out of him! It’s all crazy daft stuff, with the police not noticing the slugs or their trails, and these creatures popping up all over the place and eating people!

It all ends in the sewers as Our Heroes don yellow outfits and descend to try and find the source. What’s interesting is that an earlier scene suggested there were giant slugs but we never see any sign of them … But the solution seems to be to spray them with a mixture of lithium and arsenic which a local school science master has in industrial quantities! Madness. Of course all the sewers explode, as do several houses for no reason … but a slug survives …

It’s a crazy mad bad film, but it’s actually well made, and for the most part well acted (there’s a couple of phone-them-in performances). The Arrow disk contains some nice extras including an interview with the effects guy and some photos of the impressible model shots that were undertaken. Even the supremely silly shot of a slug rearing up and biting someone’s finger was fascinating – done with enlarged models: a giant slug and a giant finger! Although silly, it does work well!

If you’ve a passion for the best of the worst of eighties horror, then this is certainly one to add to your shopping list!

ARROW FILMS: Release Date: 26th September 2016

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS

• Brand new restoration from original film elements
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
• Original Uncompressed PCM Stereo audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary with Slugs author Shaun Hutson
• Audio commentary by writer and filmmaker Chris Alexander
• Here’s Slugs In Your Eye – an interview with actor Emilio Linder
• They Slime, They Ooze, They Kill: The Effects of Slugs – an interview with special effects artist Carlo De Marchis
• Invasion USA – an interview with art director Gonzalo Gonzalo
• The Lyons Den – an interview and locations tour with production manager Larry Ann Evans
• 1988 Goya Awards promo reel
• Original Theatrical Trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Wes Benscoter
• Fully-illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing by writer Michael Gingold