Review

A meteorite crashes in a small town, with local honcho Grant Grant finding it. He is immediately infected by a parasitic worm and develops a taste for meat of the red and dripping kind. Before you can scream out "the blob is coming", Grant has turned into a monster and is infecting everyone in sight via Brenda the slug creature. Combating this alien invasion is Grant's wife Starla and local cop Bill.

Did I mention the slugs are turning people into zombies? Over to Outsider for his review of this perfect Halloween movie.

Okay, so I have had a few comments (I actually get them, who knew?!) from peeps wanting to know answers to these questions: so why all the horror flicks lately, Mr. Outsider? Are there not any other types of film out there? I really miss your out of left field, immature, profane take on things and some of your reviews have been... soft... lately - some even sound like a mainstream critic.

Well, I have listened to these comments and I want to address them in this particular review. First, Halloween is horror and it is the right time for those types of reviews. Yes, there are many other films out there, unfortunately right now most of them blow ass. And as to my reviews? Being soft? Why, because I am trying to mature and gain the respect of my 26 fans by appealing to their inner intellectual?

Fuck that then, you little girls, sit your silly asses up and take notice, this review's for you!

Not everyday you watch an invasion movie featuring slugs and zombies!

Hello, little pansy man, this is Halloween and this is what Halloween is about. I promise to knock out a spiffy Christmas or Easter flick, perhaps even a gay-tastic romantic-comedy about a ball-less man selling his soul for a piece of rump some time, but right now it is all about the bloodshed. Halloween is not about funny little people doing their funny little things or how the retard rose up and overcame his retardation, it's about blood, guts, boobies and pumpkins. Suck it up, walk it off and go pick yourself up some testes as well. I don't have time for your babbling.

I love the 80s! More than VH1. I think it was one of the most successful decades at giving up bad horror films that worked. See, these days there are a ton of horror films and most of them smell like the equivalent of a huge pile of doggy dumplings left on your deck after a hot summer day. In the 80s, bad horror was still entertaining shit. Night of the Creeps, Critters, Friday the 13th 2-306, Prince of Darkness, Basket Case, Re-Animator, etc. Gore, glorious T&A, completely ludicrous plot twists and of course - over-acting. These were the staples of the 80s and they were adored.

Nowadays, horror movies seem to spend all of their time selling their soul for that blessed PG-13 rating. They are watered down for the sissy little girls and boys that you whiny parents are raising, all 'Yikes, there's a boogeyman in the closet' and shit. Instead of telling that whiny little bitch to 'suck it up or I'm gonna let the Boogeyman barbecue your nipples', you take him to the sissy flicks. Hollywood then makes stacks of cash to buy more blow and prostitutes with and then: repeat.

You rarely come across a truly gory, over-the-top horror flick unless it goes direct to your local Blockbuster. And those almost always suck. Studios have given up on trying to bring in this crowd as it is far easier to sell to the PG-13ers. Sons of bitches! On top of that, on the rare occasion they do make a gory flick, it sucks AND swallows. Directors who are just trying to shock people and have no idea how to make the idea interesting. Look at Hostel, all gore and all retarded. That was a filmmaker (Eli Roth) catering to the lowest common denominator. Gore for the sole purpose of grossing you out, the absolute worst kind of horror film. These guys are the maggot droppings of the film world.

So now comes Slither on DVD. The film made barely a dent in the box office, and I personally blame this on the marketing which was horrible. But this is a film that gets almost everything right. This is a throwback to 80s horror and especially 80s creature features like the aforementioned Night of the Creeps, The Thing, Return of the Living Dead, The Blob, etc. The filmmakers know that the plot is standard but they treat it with love and attention. They also remember the past, as street signs and businesses all contain names of famous horror icons or directors (for example: the Mayor, Jack MacReady and his store of the same name are a direct lift of Kurt Russell's character's name from The Thing).

Nathan Fillion (Serenity bitches! Go buy it!) stars as Bill Pardy, local sheriff of a small town just doing his time. Nothing really happens there, so Bill has little to do but pine for his lost love, Starla Grant (Elizabeth Banks). Starla is the local town school-teacher beauty (who's so freakin' hot I want to do geometry all over again) who stares into the sunset waiting for her life to get a little excitement. Starla is married to Grant Grant (the always glorious Michael Rooker), the local rich dude that essentially swept Starla off her feet and now of course takes full advantage of her and bangs every other not-so-hot chickee in town. I have a firm belief that when a man has two first names, he is a stove-top-flaming homosexual. If he has the SAME two first names, he is not only a flaming homosexual, he is also a deep lover of animal husbandry. I digress. Starla does not realize that Bill loves her, Bill knows he has no chance against a rich bastard like Grant. Ahh, a triangle.

One night, while Grant is out in the woods trying to get his nookie on with a local harlot, a meteorite hits. Grant gets infected from said meteorite and the film begins to fly.

Starla soon begins to notice weird things about Grant, such as his face looks like it ran through a nuclear reactor. But still, she loves him and wants to work their marriage out (WTF?). Meanwhile, Pardy is investigating some recent animal slaughterings in the area that unbeknownst to him were caused by the icky Grant Grant (see what I mean about the animal husbandry? DAMN I'm good!).

Then, of course, one fateful night it all comes together as Bill, Starla and the angry, foul-mouthed Mayor (Gregg Henry, this guy could sell a fuck-laced sentence to a church choir, hilarious!) discover Grant's secret as well as the thousands of little parasites recently unleashed into the community. These slugs get inside the townsfolk to drain and control them, creating walking zombies with a thirst for blood. So yes, it is a combination of those Oscar favorite genres: the slug body invaders and the zombie genre.

You can pretty much figure out the rest from here on in, but I am going to tell your sorry ass anyway. Slugs are everywhere, taking over the town, and the townspeople are one blood-starved bunch. Bill, Starla, the Mayor and a few other locals band together to both stop the parasites and destroy Grant, who apparently is the alien ringleader as the first infected. Much gore, blood, hilarity and chaos ensue.

This is one of those rare horror-comedies that actually works because it knows how silly all of this is, yet they still play everything straight. There are some fantastic and intense set-pieces as well as hilarious situations that are so absurd the filmmakers HAVE to acknowledge them. Overall, one of the most entertaining, not dreadful, horror films I have seen in a long time. I say entertaining because, yes, I thought The Descent was far more intense, though I really could only watch it a handful of times...but, THIS film I could watch twenty times without blinking. Entertaining, I said.

Nathan Fillion is simply golden. Yes, I am biased as I already love the guy, but he just never hits a note wrong. If you don't already love him as an actor, then you are a silly bitch and this film should finally change your mind. His character, much against your typical horror lead in this situation, is basically worthless. He tries his ass off to save everyone and screws it up every time. At one point, the man even has to be rescued by a little girl. I absolutely LOVED how his character was written. He is not the smartest or most capable guy around, but he is the most likeable. He wants to save everyone (and primarily his lost love, Starla) but he simply cannot understand what the FUCK is going on. I especially loved his character towards the end. There is a twenty-minute build-up to something big, that Pardy is determined to get right. This was the classic setup in those 80s films where the hero puts it all together and lunges into action against all odds. He finally knows what he needs to do to save everyone and it becomes a huge hero moment that goes a totally different way. I cannot explain it without ruining it, but I wanted to watch that scene four hundred times just to keep laughing my ass off.

Banks and Henry both nail their parts. Banks as the semi-loving wife "she really does want to make her marriage work even when her husband's ear is dripping puss" is a perfect fit. Starla is not a one-note character and Banks hits all of the necessarily points of fear and love. I was thrilled too that she did not just abandon her hubby and run off with Bill at the first sign of his illness, she was a wife first. Henry is simply fucking mad! The guy is a foul-mouthed, unlovable jackass who somehow manages to get himself elected mayor contrary to his most abundant love for anything politically incorrect. It is pretty standard in these types of films to have the 'bluntly state the obvious' character, but Henry takes the character to new heights. Michael Rooker also performs admirably well, even under pounds of make-up, as the back and forth Grant. He is a dirtbag, he knows it, but he still loves his Starla. Awww.

Writer-director James Gunn is one hit-or-miss guy. Gunn really took off writing the Scooby-Doo flicks. The first one was decent enough, though it was sorely lacking the entire concept of the show, and the second film was good enough to wipe my bulbous ass with. He redeemed himself completely in my eyes with his recent the Dawn of the Dead remake, that rare remake that outclasses the original. Now he is officially one to watch. Gunn knows his 80s horror and does an admirable job of paying homage, not ripping off, these long forgotten gems. The scene in the barn and the bathtub scene are both going to go down as personal all-time favorites of mine and will most likely be re-watched ad nauseum. I love me a good killin'!

So, all-in-all, Slither was a great throwback to a decade too quickly forgotten. I loved those films and I love how this one does not imitate but brings back the nostalgia of those from long ago. The gore is all physical special effects (ok, mostly), which is SOOOOOOOOO refreshing in this CGI crack-infested film environment. The acting and characters were dead on, the story moved at a clip and it achieved what only rarely does a horror-comedy achieve: it worked.