Slugs (1988) Review

In horror, there exists a fine (if nebulous) line when taking something mundane and trying to make it scary. Spiders, sharks, dogs, and clowns? Absolutely. Leprechauns, gingerbread men, and children? Maybe. But slugs? Those slimy little bastards who eat all your plants? In a world where salt exists in massive and easily accessible quantities? That takes a special kind of deranged optimism.

And yet here we are. Slugs (1988), directed by Juan Piquer Simón – the same maniac who gave us Pieces (“It’s exactly what you think it is!”) – proudly waddles into the creature-feature swamp with a straight face and a trail of ooze behind it. The setup’s boilerplate enough: small American town, mysterious deaths, local expert who suspects something’s off, and the rest of the town who’d rather die horribly than believe him. And he’s right: the slug apocalypse has begun.

These aren’t your average damp-garden freeloaders, however – they’re mutant, carnivorous, flesh-munching slugs. They get into your drains, your salad, and, in one gloriously disgusting scene, your face. When the gore hits, it really hits. Basilio Cortijo’s effects team seemed to operate under the philosophy of “if we can make it pop, burst, ooze, or spray, we will.”

There’s a moment where a guy’s eye explodes and a bunch of slugs pour out like tapioca pudding from hell. Another where naked teens get digested in seconds. It’s cheap, it’s slimy, and it’s kind of beautiful. My favourite though involves a man putting on a gardening glove, discovering a slug inside, and immediately deciding the only logical next step is to amputate his entire arm.

And because it’s a Simón movie, the tone swings wildly between earnest horror and unintentional sitcom. The acting is… let’s say community-theatre adjacent. The dialogue sounds like it was written by a committee of slugs trying to pass for human. Everyone remembers the “you don’t have the authority to declare happy birthday” line.

Slugs isn’t trying to fool you. It knows it’s garbage cinema and embraces it like a damp handshake. The source novel – shat out by Shaun Hutson in 1982 to capitalise on the man vs nature trend in pulp horror following James Herbert‘s The Rats – exists entirely so Hutson can describe in vivid detail everyone’s deaths at the hands of these slugs.

It’s a very grotesque and nasty book, loaded with distinctly British dark humour. I mean, just the fact so many trees died so the book could exist is very funny to me. And overall the movie is a pretty faithful adaptation. It does, however, lack a certain madcap energy that the novel possesses in spades. But that’s not fair criticism: Hutson was probably hogging all the heavy metal records and marching powder.

Is Slugs scary? Not remotely. Is it gross? Oh, yes. Is it fun? Absolutely – especially with beer, friends, and a tolerance for movies that were made with more guts than brains. By the end, you’ll be cheering for the slugs. At least they’re consistent. Just don’t think too hard about why nobody tries salt. Not once. That’s not horror – that’s negligence.