SQUIRM
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| Rated PG (How in the heck?)
| | Copyright 1976 The Squirm Company
| | Reviewed by Andrew Borntreger on 26 August 2001
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- Mick - Clumsy city boy who is the last person you want carrying his fishing rod through a crowded bus. Our hero!
- Geri - She looks like Ally McBeal's cousin from the backwoods of Georgia. Seriously, they made a point of showing her naked a few times and I think her boyfriend (Mick) had a larger chest. It was a close race.
- Alma - Sister to Geri and she appears to be all arms and legs. Plus her movements exhibit the grace of a marionette.
- Mamma - Geri and Alma's that is, obviously she ate paint chips as a child (cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo). Worm food.
- Jim Reston - Just your standard swaggering southern sheriff. He hates city folk, nonsense, city folk, hot weather, city folk, and being eaten alive by worms.
- Millie (I think) - She runs the diner and doesn't seem to understand how electrical meters work.
- Willie - Old man that owns the worm farm. He is in the wrong business at the wrong time.
- Roger - Helps his dad out with the worm farm and ever since his mother/aunt (they were one in the same we suspect) died things have been tough. Ends up as compost.
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This one is a doozy.
Coming from myself that phrase should set off warning klaxons in your head. The treatment my common sense organ suffered at the hands of this movie makes Rodney King's beating pale in comparison. Not to say that it fails to entertain, but my head felt like a big wad of cotton following the second viewing.
Ominously scrolling text warns the viewer that something ugly happened in the small town of Fly Creek, GA. Obviously a terrible thing did occur, because the hamlet ceased to exist (I've checked a number of maps). Barring the discovery of a video camera, complete with lost footage detailing the mystery and a young woman saying "F**k!" over and over, the world will never know.
Severe storms have just finished battering the Georgia coast and caused widespread damage, including one utility tower's structure failing. The resulting collapse means that high-voltage power lines are left dumping their electricity into the muddy ground. Bloodworms do not enjoy being zapped, as is evidenced by a number of them screaming (yup, screaming) at the camera. Seeing them stick out those painful little pincers they have was effective, but adding in an unearthly shrieking to offend the ears confused me. Did the nocturnal horrors develop vocal chords?
Mick's bus is en route to Fly Creek, but forced to turn around after finding the road blocked by fallen trees and water. He opts to disembark the coach and hike through the woods. Now, let's get this perfectly straight. A city kid, encumbered by luggage, is going to find his way through an unfamiliar forest without aid of neither map nor compass. Wow. Good thing that Geri counted on this and borrowed Roger's truck; she easily locates her boyfriend in a particularly swampy section of brush.
The first portent of something being amiss is when Mick stops in at the diner to enjoy an egg cream (he's from New York). Lurking in the drink is a large bloodworm. The merchant and sheriff think that the tourist is playing a prank and soon accusations are flying. Don't let the drama distract you! How did a six-inch bloodworm make its way into the milk carton, seltzer bottle, or chocolate syrup container? Mick ends up back in the truck feeling distinctly unwanted in this dirt-poor town, while Reston adds one more entry to his "Why I Hate City Folk" list.
More funny business is on the way, because Roger freaks out when Geri returns his truck. All the crates, full of worms when he gave her the keys, are now empty! The inbred is briefly angry with the redhead, but soon calms down and goes back to having a crush on her. That honestly might be more attributable to his being a guy than mom and dad's close genetic ties. Meanwhile, Mick changes into dry clothes while Alma watches and gets high.
Besides the electricity, telephone service for Fly Creek is a casualty of the storm. The residents will have to wait until someone from Statesboro arrives and fixes the lines. Why not Savannah? The "town that vanished" is on the coast, because it's a saltwater marsh and they talk about the lagoon. No matter what, Savannah has to be closer than Statesboro. I should have given up after they used Highway 41 as a coastal road (it runs through Atlanta).
Geri and Mick discover a skeleton in the local antique dealer's backyard and go running to Sheriff Reston. He is very displeased with the two when they return to the spot and find it missing. Our hero (referring to a scrawny kid this way makes me cringe) later finds the missing remains in the back of Roger's truck. He takes the skull, breaks into the dentist's office, and compares it against x-rays. The skull belongs to the antique dealer who was seen alive only one day earlier! At about the same time Geri gets a firsthand look at the phenomenon when a number of earthworms chew up Roger's face. Since when could annelids, angry or not, burrow through flesh?
Amazingly, none of the young people (Alma is privy to some "facts") tell either the authorities what has transpired. Instead Geri decides to take a shower. She turns the facet, but no water comes out. The audience watches in horror as worms slowly start to flow from the showerhead and then retract when she turns off the facet. We're horrified because it is obvious the basic principles that govern a home's water system are beyond the filmmakers. Help! I'm a rational person forced to watch an irrational movie!
Rummaging for scrap wood to board up the house separates Mick from the others and brings him into direct contact with Roger. He was not killed when the worms attacked earlier and seems to have an affinity for the creatures. It might even be that the burrowing masters are controlling the idiot's brain. Methinks that would be an improvement, but I digress. The jilted suitor beats up on Mick and leaves him for worm food, then goes to the house and grabs Geri.
Night brings more terror, as mounds of what looks like pasta is used to realize the script. A wave of segmented death rolls into town and starts eating everyone. Mick finds his way back to Geri's, but must somehow kill the (partly) human antagonist. He does and the lovebirds climb out a window to pass the night in a tree. In the morning a repairman wakes them up, demanding to know where everyone is and saying that he fixed the line and tower. What looked to be a two hundred foot steel tower collapsed and we're supposed to believe that Joe Bob fixed it all by himself with the tools in his pickup truck? The insults to my intelligence just keep coming; even Roger would be insulted. |
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| Things I Learned From This Movie: | |
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- You can tell that a coastline is part of Georgia if, when looking at it, the ocean is on the right and the beach is on the left.
- Trees hate it when you pee on them.
- Guys: holding a block of ice against your genitals is not advised.
- Marijuana cures poison ivy.
- Earthworms can burrow through flesh.
- Skulls are "righty loosey" and "lefty tighty."
- Conversation about worms is best avoided when eating Italian.
- Being lightly struck in the torso with a sheet of plywood will knock you unconscious.
- Sweat-soaked shirts burn easily and make excellent torches.
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- 3 mins - Usually music by Akira Ifukube would accompany a scene like this.
- 15 mins - Thunder is heard, not seen, you dumb girl.
- 36 mins - Milk: it does a worm good. Pass it on.
- 37 mins - How is that skeleton still together? Why doesn't Willie see them? Arrgghhh!
- 48 mins - Okay, maybe (big maybe) I can understand lying about Roger being attacked by the worms. Why fib about Mick being bitten though? Does she want to go to Hell?
- 68 mins - Half of the house just got smashed; there's plenty of scrap wood right here you idiot!
- 73 mins - Mamma heard the worms filling the upstairs bathroom, but not Alma screaming?
- 79 mins - Question for the director: "Geri didn't see Roger standing in the doorway? Do I look that stupid?"
- 89 mins - Whose shadow is that?
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- Alma: "Where'd you get that shirt, Roger? Been out robbing corpses again?"
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| | Audio clips in wav format | SOUNDS | Starving actors speak out | |
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| File | Dialog |  | squirm1.wav
| Reston: "Now don't you think an apology is in order, fella?"
Mick: "Apologize for what? Finding a worm in my egg cream?"
| | squirm2.wav
| Roger: "It's him isn't it? He come down here and busts his way in? Well, if he come near you again, I'm gonna bust his liver loose if he tries to touch you!"
| | squirm3.wav
| Geri: "Tell him about the worms!"
Reston: "Worms?"
Geri: "They bite!"
| | squirm4.wav
| Worms screaming.
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| | Click for a larger image | IMAGES | Scenes from the movie | |
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| | Watch a scene | VIDEO | MPEG video files | |
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 | squirm1.mpg
- 2.1m
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| Roger was trying to win over Geri by forcing himself on her. Somehow she pushed the much heavier and burly young man away, causing him to fall on a number of hungry earthworms. After that nature takes its course.
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| | Leave a comment | EXTRAS | Buy the movie | |
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