A flick so utterly ridiculous you have to see it at least once, Slugs: The Movie (titled this way so we won't get it confused with Slugs: The Musical, I'm sure) may just be Spanish director Juan Piquer Simon's best film. And that's not really saying a lot. Known mostly for 1982's Pieces, this is probably Simon's second well-known effort and I'm willing to bet it's known more for its cover art than for what's within.

We know things aren't right in the small town of Ashton from the get go when a pre-credits sequence has a fishing teen sucked into the water while his girlfriend screams as the water bubbles red with his blood. But it's even more obvious when a crotchety old man is attacked within the first five minutes as well. At least we know Simon and scripter Ron Gantman (who based this on a novel by Shaun Hutson, if you can believe it - and I don't) aren't going to pull any punches, but it soon becomes apparent they're not overly concerned with plot either.

Michael Garfield soon comes into the picture as local health department head Mike Brady who begins to suspect something's amiss when all these dead bodies start to pile-up. And his suspicions continually get proven when, in what has to be the one sequence you need to rent this movie for, a gardening local man gets one of the slugs in his garden glove and cuts his hand off with an axe after he can't get it out by slamming his hand on the table and trying to cut it out with hedge clippers (plus he manages to tip a shelf filled with potent chemicals on himself AND blow-up himself and his wife in a huge explosion when said chemicals react).

From here Simon gives us plenty of dull scenes with Garfield trying to convince the sheriff the town might have a problem with mutant slugs, some really bad dialogue (especially in a scene where Garfield has his finger bitten by a one of them in his garden), and enough death scenes to shake a stick at. There's a nice bit of grue where a girl and her boyfriend find themselves attacked by a floor full of the wiggling bastards when taking a break from lovemaking, a dopey head explosion in the middle of a restaurant, and various other people succumbing to our toxic wasted mutated slugs.

In fact, it's these over-the-top death scenes (and that awesomely hilarious greenhouse moment I mentioned earlier) that makes Slugs: The Movie so endearingly bad. It's not the poor emoting by the cast, the less than stellar dubbing of the Spanish cast members, or the sloppy script that makes this bad - it's those amazingly silly attack scenes and a finale that contains what's possibly the most lamebrained scheme ever as Garfield attempts to lure the slugs into a sewer chamber and gas them (which only manages to cause more damage than the creatures could ever hope to).

Slugs: The Movie is inept stuff, but it's still not Simon's worst work (his Endless Descent is still worse) and it's certainly worthwhile for fans of trash cinema. Just be prepared to groan a lot. (Chris Hartley, 2/3/06)

Directed By: J.P. Simon.
Written By: Ron Gantman.

Starring: Michael Garfield, Kim Terry, Philip MacHale, Alicia Moro.