SLITHER

OK, it’s not obscure, it’s boobie-less, and there is no Big black prosthetic spunking beast todger. So what? This movie still kicked ass.

James Gunn, previously of Troma and partial screenplay writer for the Dawn of the Dead remake, created a little gem here. The movie is set in Hicktown USA, populated by hunters, line dancing rednecks, and cops who like to clock birds with their radar guns. A meteorite lands in the woods and out crawls a parasitic alien life form, which launches itself at Grant Grant, out in the woods looking for a good time with a barfly he picked up while stewing about his marriage. Grant then turns into a mutant squid, cleans out the town’s population of dogs, spawns a legion of mouth-seeking leeches, and turns almost the entire town into zombified hive mind minions. Nathon Fillion (a.k.a. Captain Tightpants), as sheriff Bill Pardy, basically reprises his Firefly role as a wisecracking, gun-toting cowboy (as God intended it) and saves the Earth but not before we get to see a whole lot of splatter. It pays homage to B-grade horror and is meant to be funny and gross. Reminds me of the good old days, when my brother and I used to rent bad horror by the truckload and laugh our asses off.

Sadly, Slither was a box office bomb. I guess people were more interested in Stay Alive, which of course was a movie about…what? Remind me? Oh yeah, a video game where you DIE FOR REALS. Whatever.

I think the real fault of Slither lies not in the film but in movieplex pricing. If I’m going to pay $10.50 for a movie, plus concession, plus baby-sitter, plus time spent sitting through 20 minutes of network television commercials before the coming attractions even start, then I want to be pretty sure that it’s going to be an awesome movie experience. In a world where Uwe Boll is making movies, people are a little leery of horror. If a horror film isn’t advertising itself as The Most Extreme Torture Mystery Thriller To Ever Rock Your World, it’s gonna be an uphill battle. Did I see Slither in the theater? No. Would I recommend it as a rental or a DVD purchase? Yes. By the GRS (George Rating system) it only gets 3 Georges...no boobs, no scares, but plenty of laughs, gore, and a fresh approach. I’m bumping it up to 4 Georges just because of the plethora of the latter three criteria. And Captain Tightpants.