brendan halpin

Tubi turns out to have a pretty extensive lineup of B, C, and lower grade horror movies. And they’re all free to watch with commercials. The only downside is that the commercials ALWAYS stall, so every commercial break is at least two minutes longer than it’s supposed to be because you’re staring at an unmoving screen halway through a Nissan ad. Weird because the movies never stall. And annoying to boot! But still I watch, so joke’s on me, I guess!

We started with Slugs (1988). Slugs mutate in the sewers and become carnivorous and start eating people all over town! How can you lose with this setup? Well, in the following way—space out the deaths and focus the first two-thirds of the movie on the extremely annoying lead running around town trying to convince people there are killer slugs. And then—get this! Throw in a completely gratuitous attempted rape, and have the girl escape only to get eaten by slugs! We never see the would-be rapist die, so I have to assume he didn’t. This whole sequence was absolutely repellant, and ruined a halfway (but only halfway, mind you) decent creature feature. Santiago Alvarez turns in a winning performance as the inexplicably British scientist who inexplicably has his lab in the local high school, and John Battaglia’s curmudgeonly sherriff is a highlight. Still, I can’t recommend.

On to 1993’s Ticks! Ticks are mutated in the California wilderness because Clint Howard is growing weed. (I really wasn’t clear on the mechanism, but anyway). And then a group of troubled teens including Seth Green and Alfonso Ribero go into the wilderness with Peter Scolari and Someone Who Looks Just Like one of the ADAs from Law & Order But Isn’t Actually Her, I Checked. This one has a leg up on most creature features in that the whole cast can act—Seth Green is actually really good! But one of the early deaths is Alfonso Ribero’s dog, and the death is rendered with uncomfortable realism as the dog has a prolonged seizure before he dies, and, I mean, kill all the teens you want, but leave the dogs alone. We bailed on account of canine death.

Finally, 1984’s Ghoulies! I remember this one being out and intentionally avoiding it because it looked like a cheap Gremlins ripoff. It is certainly cheap, but it’s not actually a Gremlins ripoff! It’s about a guy who inherits his satanist dad’s house and gets deep into black magic and summons the titular creatures as well as a couple of little people in Monty Python and the Holy Grail armor, and accidentally raises dad Michael Des Barres from the grave! Oops! Anyway, a 20-year-old Mariska Hargitay is on board as one of the disposable friends, but the day belongs to Des Barres. Okay, and the titular creatures, which are actually pretty well made puppets that glisten disgustingly. A little slow, but a really fun movie that was worth putting up with the stalling commercials for.