Slither: '80s horror's greatest hits

James Gunn's Slither is a great mash-up of gory '80s horror and '50s alien creature flick. Grant (Michael Rooker), after being spurned by his hot wife Starla (Elizabeth Banks), makes out in the woods with Brenda (Brenda James). Earlier, a meteorite hit the ground in these same woods--blissfully ignored by local Sherrif Bill Pardy (Firefly's Nathan Fillion) as he tries to snooze in his cruiser and avoid inane conversation from his partner. In a riff on the 1950s The Blob, the meteorite contains an alien organism that fires a slimy something into Grant's chest, and after that he is, well, not himself--he eats raw meat, padlocks the basement door (informing Starla it is a 'surprise' for her birthday), develops acute skin problems, and slowly transforms into a slithering, tentacled Lovecraftian monstrosity.

The real fun starts when thousands of alien slugs get loose. These wormy things try to leap into people's mouths (and other places, courstesy of a homage to Cronenberg's Shivers) and turn their victims into mindless zombies, which cuts director Gunn loose to unleash hordes of B-horror references to Romero films and comic-splatter classics like Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator.

Though it's obviously a pastiche of '80s cult classics like From Beyond, The Fly, The Hidden, Evil Dead and more, Slither works on its own as an engaging horror-comedy. Harkening back to a time when the makeup effects guys were stars, the prosthetics are appropriately elaborate and slimy, enhanced by the occasional CGI. Cult actor Rooker manages to give a real performance buried under layers of makeup and goo, and there's an attempt to populate the film with memorable characters.

The film is never genuinely scary, but it is fast and witty, with several laugh out loud lines. One of the Sherrif's posse, for instance, on a stakeout for the mutated Grant, spots the slithery creature and comments that it looks like "something that fell off my dick after the war."

Slither is a great little B-movie, best watched with a few beers.

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Written and Directed by James Gunn

Starring:

Nathan Fillion..Bill Pardy
Elizabeth Banks...Starla Grant
Gregg Henry...Jack MacReady
Michael Rooker...Grant Grant
Tania Saulnier...Kylie Strutemyer
Don Thompson...Wally