Review

Mike Brady has escaped Carol and the kids, and is doing time for his crimes in the sleepy town of Ashton as the local Health Inspector. Even small towns get Health Inspectors in the U.S.A kids. Anyways Mike might think he's living the good life but a deadly menace is slowly oozing it's way towards him in the form of giant mutated slugs that like to not only eat lettuce but also meat.

With a hilariously rising death toll, the movie isn't meant to be a comedy, it's up to Mike to convince the Police Chief or the Mayor to close the beaches before the gastropod terror devours the whole town. Naturally the powers that be aren't believing Mike, mainly cause he's a bit of a knob, so he enlists the aid of a sanitation worker and a high school science teacher to destroy the town before the slugs can get the job done. Read the Shaun Hutson novel instead kids!

Slugs is one of those movies that I've been sweating on seeing after digging the Shaun Hutson source novel and while I wasn't expecting Oscar bait, the movie is called Slugs after all, I was equally not expecting the total load of bollocks dropped on my DVD player. And thank you to a reader for sending a copy in, grateful honest. Besides shockingly poor acting, the dialogue will have you wondering if chimps throwing poo at walls etc were involved, and lets just say the lead character Mike Brady is a total tool. Worse on my tree of cinematic woes was Director Simón being deadly serious with the movie, good lord it's call Slugs man!

Things kick off with one of those scenes that just guarantee you know you are in “B” grade land. A couple are out on the Lake fishing in a boat. She gets down to her knickers and a midriff top pretty quickly for no apparent reason, well besides the obvious perv factor that I'm sure our metrosexual male readership would not be interested in, damn those slugs attacking before she got her top off! Moving on, never Actor is named, but she announces that he wasn't kidding about going fishing. So when he was putting his pole and tackle box in the car you didn't trig? Maybe when he put the gear in a boat it might have been a give away? Girls just wanna have fun, and get down to their undies out in the middle of a lake it would appear. Naturally the slugs attack, pulling our erstwhile fisherman into the dark depths for a spot of devouring and sliming. Isn't it leeches you have to worry about in the water? And with half clad chick screaming at the blood suddenly bubbling to the surface it's on to the main event, attack of the giant mutant slugs!

Before continuing I should point out that giant slugs is maybe being slightly dramatic, as the slugs look about the size of those leopard ones you can find in any Aussie garden. But the movie ones do have teeth! And they are hungry like the wolf, to paraphrase Duran Duran.

Not content with the lake attack Director Simón then has his ghastly horde attack this old dero in a house that he is being evicted from. This allows us to be introduced to the hard arse Sheriff and the chain smoking Mike Brady. Actually prior to learning the health inspectors name I had written in my review notes, “is this like a Stepford place for Brady Bunch escapees”, imagine my absolute glee in learning the lead character's name was Mike Brady. Anyways, sorry for the digression, while Mike is wondering if a zombie Marsha attacked the dero (okay I made that up), the Sheriff opinions it could have been wild dogs or raccoons coming down from the hills. Say what! Is the Sheriff currently suffering the after effects of party drugs or does he honestly believe that raccoons fill the same environmental niche as drop bears do in Australia? A quick bit of research, okay I googled, turns up the facts that raccoons don't normally attack humans, they make terrible pets, and they haven't been the culprits in a single fatality. Clearly nature is something beyond the scope of Sheriff training in Spain,uhmm, the U.S.

Meanwhile as Director Simón stumbles from one scene to the next there are a few things tossed into the mix to lighten our load. Plenty of T&A going down to ensure the mainly dude audience will be happy with their beer entertainment, though why on earth Brady's wife is wearing pantihose with a sheer baby doll nightie was something that will weigh heavily on most viewers' minds. The local JD, who bares an uncanny resemblance to Jon Bon Jovi in his younger years, is going hammer and tongs with his girlfriend, though he prefers bourbon to her womanly ways. Both end up as mutant slug fodder, but the sight of the JD's girlfriend doing a bare arsed roll covered with fake slime is pretty cool and disturbingly arousing.

But the cream of soda for mine was the greenhouse scene that simply had me rolling around the floor in fits of laughter. The put upon husband needs to bring in the plants from the front porch cause they have slime all over the leaves, of course that's pretty ominous to those of us who have prior knowledge of the giant mutant killer slugs. While he's out getting the pot plants two slugs crawl into one of his garden gloves. Naturally when the dude puts the gloves on our ghastly gastropods of gore go on the attack. Unable to dislodge the gruesome carnivorous slug filled glove, though he did knock over lots of chemicals in the process, our gardener resorts to the Bruce Campbell option of cutting off his own hand with an axe. Frack me it can't get much worse for the dude surely. Well it does when the wife walks in, screams, and ignites a can of gasoline. Kaboom, greenhouses in space. Absolutely awesome scene, almost saves the movie on it's own.

Simón does try to up the gore content, as the strange rapid fire scenes flash past (did Eli Roth study under Simón?), if by gore we mean manikins covered in strawberry jam. But alas it's to no avail as the movie is simply so inept and so serious that you are left wondering who the hell would investment money in it after seeing the first day's rushes. For the gorehounds we do get the odd exploding head or eyeball, as the slime of our gastropod nemesis contains hundreds of these parasitic worms that love brains and eyes and stuff.

On the bright side Mike Brady, who basically insults everyone in sight, crashes meetings, and makes a complete dill of himself, solves the slug issue toward the end of the movie. Okay it involved more deaths and overall destruction than the slugs could have conceivably delivered upon, but at least he was giving it the old college try.

Thankfully I'm up to my word limit, and there's lots more schlock to cover as well. Overall the movie is atrociously bad and about the only common ground between it and the Shaun Hutson novel is in the title. I would urge you to go source the book and give the movie a huge miss, you will thank me in the morning.