Verdict
Summary
Squirm is a doozy of a horror film, knowing exactly how to gross you out with close-up shots of people eating spaghetti right when things start to get wiggly in the plot, and it’s about as preposterous as Sharknado, but hey, it works!
Plot:
A small fishing town becomes overrun with worms!
Review:
Power lines go down in a storm, electrifying the soil in the small fishing town of Fly Creek, setting the stage for complete and utter mayhem within 24 hours. A young man named Mick (Don Scardino) comes to town via bus that morning, intending to visit his cute redhead girlfriend Geri (Patricia Pearcy), a backwoods kinda gal that has the attention of the local handyman who also works at a worm farm, a dumb lunk named Roger (R.A. Dow) who makes it pretty clear that he’ll dump the worm farm to marry Geri if she’ll have him. When Mick shows up, Roger sees him as a threat, but there’s an even bigger threat that begins to rear its ugly head: WORMS! The electrical shock that the power lines gave the soil has enraged the worms in the earth, causing them to come up and infest the town in every way possible like a Biblical plague! Worms in the sodas, worms in the showerhead, worms in bed, worms in the closet, worms, worms, worms! They attack by the thousands and hundreds of thousands, eating people, infecting them (!), and even turning dumb Roger into a raging slave! Roger sets his worm-chunked face to Mick, his rival, and just like that, the town of Fly Creek is a battleground between man and worm!
Squirm is a doozy of a horror film, knowing exactly how to gross you out with close-up shots of people eating spaghetti right when things start to get wiggly in the plot, and it’s about as preposterous as Sharknado, but hey, it works! Somehow, this movie garnered a reputation for being an in-your-face (literally) creature feature, and it goes completely bonkers with tidal waves of worms (seriously), becoming a nightmarish and garish horror movie that must be seen to be believed. It takes awhile to get going, but the last quarter portion of the movie is just insane. Writer / director Jeff Lieberman really upped the ante on the creature feature concept with Squirm, and I won’t soon forget it.
Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray edition of Squirm brings the film back in print as part of their “Kino Cult” series, and it is numbered #13 on the spine. With a new commentary by the late film historian Lee Gambin, and another commentary by Lieberman that has been ported from the previous editions, plus a making-of feature, a tour of the locations, and the trailer, this new edition is a must for fans of the film and the genre.
