Fly Creek, Georgia has a problem. That problem: flesh-eating worms.
Dive in with Mick, Geri, Roger, Naomi, Alma, and the Sheriff — and not too many more folks with speaking roles due to budgetary constraints.
I promise, you’ll be hooked.
Halloween film #2 is Squirm.
Squirm is one of those late night TBS gems from my childhood that I’m sure I’ve seen before, but not uncensored. And certainly not in its proper scope and glory.
There’s a powerful storm sequence to kick things off. I suspect the bulk of the budget went into that.
Visuals of a bait shop in peril – explosive action, the apparent ‘screams’ of worms being electrocuted.
But, alas, those 100,000 worms (a number we’re told several times) are now supercharged and (as you may have surmised) hungry for human flesh.
Pensive staring out the window, overwrought Southern accents, dish breaking antics, botched pick-ups, squirming, creeping, crawling, some Southern hospitality, laid back vibe-sploitation, and more than a few references to a ‘egg cream’.
The director, Jeff Lieberman has an astounding filmography that includes 1988’s Remote Control where as IMDB will tell you:
“A video store clerk stumbles onto an alien plot to take over earth by brainwashing people with a bad ’50s science fiction movie. He and his friends race to stop the aliens before the tapes can be distributed world-wide and their only weapon is a special remote control.”
And Blue Sunshine:
“A bizarre series of murders begins in Los Angeles, where people start going bald and then become homicidal maniacs. But could the blame rest on a particularly dangerous form of LSD called Blue Sunshine the murderers took ten years before?”
A movie where people are timebombs for 10 years presents an interesting villain, if there is one —someone willing to wait ten years to see the fruits of their labor… but also won’t change their mind. Sign me the hell up.
But back to the main attraction:
Squirm is a sweaty, slimy, swampy, Southern film.
Young lovers, creepy worm farmers, and power-hungry authority figures all collide.
It’s a flick full of exchanges like this:
“It’s my neighbor’s truck. He runs a worm farm.” “A worm farm? People eat them?”
When a character is told…”We’ll see you later then.” We would not be seeing him later.
There’s, naturally, a sheriff spouting lines like, “I want you the hell out of this town.”
This sheriff has STAR POWER or so he was told in his high school production of Godspell.
A charming and affable cast. Mostly.
The film doesn’t fuck around — it has some true scope and tackles a yankee in the South subplot with… about the ease you’d expect from a film called Squirm. As my friend observed, “He’s squirming in his new location.”
There are some gorgeous shots in an otherwise schlocky and semi-forgettable affair. The body count is low, but if you like a skeleton they clearly had access to for the entire shoot — you’ll be getting plenty of that. When it does appear, the gore is over-the-top*.
The nudity is minimal and 100% gratuitous, but it wouldn’t be a horror movie from the 1970s without it.
Squirm features perhaps the most tense spaghetti eating scene since Lady & The Tramp.
Mom’s spaghetti.
The diner from an earlier scene was clearly re-dressed to be an Italian restaurant with a few checkered plastic table cloths.
And not to spoil too much, but the best use of a giant piece of plywood — perhaps in cinema history?
It’s semi-jarring to see money-saving moves like that juxtaposed with pointlessly extravagant scenes where (for example) a tree falls through a house or a bathtub is filled with creepy crawly critters or a man’s face is filled with worms.
But being a know-it-all city boy in a movie like Squirm won’t get you far… so I’ll yield to the filmmakers on this one.
Genuinely tense in parts if you commit to the established world, but also silly as all get-out.
*Make-up design was by future notable pioneer of physical effects, Mr. Rick Baker.
Currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
One dollar. Stream it up.
— Recommendations for further viewing: Tremors (1990), Slugs (1988), Lake Placid (1999), Slither (2006)