Monster of the Day #529

Updated on August 1, 2012 By Ken Begg 25 Comments

Boy, get rid of the silverfish and then this happens.

Pin It



Related Posts

  • Ericb

    This kind of thing seems to happen quite frequently.  There are similar scenes in Shivers and Slither. I don’t even want to know what Freud would have thought of it all.

  • Gamera977

    Is this from ‘DMtH’ too? I’ve only seen it once in the theater and all I remember is the mean ol’ gypsy lady. Hopefully Amazon and some other dealers will have a Halloween horror sale and I can pick up the DVD. 

    And yeah I’d think Freud could write a dozen papers and book or three on this! 

  • Ken_Begg

    Nope, this is from another (comparatively) recent cult horror film.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    I was pretty “meh” about this film, honestly.

  • Gamera977

    Ahhh ok, waiting patiently to find out which one. 

  • Ericb

    Is this from Slither?  I don’t remember there being that many little beaties in the bathroom when they attacked the teenage girl (don’t remember any of the characters’ names).

  • Flangepart

    Ah, a gore fest. No wonder even the Nathan can’t make me watch it. Not my kettle of writhing parasites.

  • sandra

    My first though is that it’s a parody of that scene in SHIVERS.

  • Ken_Begg

    I believe this exact image was used for the poster art, and didn’t reflect the actual scene it references.

  • SLITHER. I had a chance to see this film theatrically (in the good theater up in Springfield, no less) and I refused because the previews made it out to be a comedy. I’ve always had an aversion to comic horror films, my thinking basically summed up by “if you don’t have enough confidence in the story to play it straight, why should I even bother with it?”

    A couple years later, I borrowed the disk from my Brother and saw the film. It had some laughs, but it was actually a straight horror flick in homage to those monster movies made in the 80’s. It turned out to be really good. As result, I felt profoundly ripped off. The dopey ad campaign kept me from catching this one in the theater, and I would have loved seeing it on the big screen. Morons!

  • Beckoning Chasm

     If you want to see a horror comedy that works as both horror and comedy, you should see Dan O’Bannon’s “Return of the Living Dead.”  Don’t bother with any of the four (!) sequels.

  • I tired once, but the dissected puppy  returning to life really rubbed me the wrong way.

  • GalaxyJane

    Even Nathan Fillion couldn’t get me to watch this one, don’t like gore films and was frankly way too squicked out by Night of the Creeps to watch an homage.  That said, I heard good things about it from folks that have a stronger stomach than I.

  •    I’ve never liked gore for the sake of gore, although there are films where it seems organic enough to the theme of the film to not seem so blatant (RE-ANIMATOR springs to mind as an example). SLITHER might’ve been one of those because I can’t really recall a lot of ‘gore’ in the picture. There was some, but I don’t think I’d call it a ‘gore’ film.

       Then again, maybe it is a gore film, just a better than average example of one. Maybe that’s why the gore stuff isn’t what springs to mind when I think of it? I saw it as a better than average invasion flick, but upon reflection I suppose it did have a rather high ‘gore’ factor. But it says something that most of it slipped my mind.

  • Ericb

    I guess it depends on how you define gore.  I don’t remember a lot of gore in Slither either.  It’s been 6 years since I’ve seen the film but from what my memory tells me that while there may have been a lot of disgusting stuff there wasn’t much in the way of blood. Perhaps it’s the lack of blood that makes it seem less gory in retrospect … or I just have a bad memory.

  • Ken_Begg

    Man, that was one of the funniest things I’d seen in years.

  • GalaxyJane

    I think gore is very subjective anyway as to what bothers people.  I am fine with lopped limbs and buckets of blood, but I don’t do digusting, body-horror stuff at all, hence knowing that no matter how good the movie, I wouldn’t enjoy it.  As an example, I can totally appreciate what a great movie “Night of the Creeps” is, but I have seen it exactly once, and that edited for cable, and find the though of sitting through it again intolerable. I can’t deal with bodily invasion by killer slugs (or zombies) so, seeing that this is a riff on the same thing, know better than to be able to enjoy it. 

  • The Rev.

    I’ve bemoaned what happens to animals in movies over the years, but I too laughed at that.  I’m guessing the very obvious prop helped with.  Just the way it was wagging its tail and yipping…

    The flapping, pinned butterflies were a nice touch, too.

    I love that movie so much.

  • The Rev.

    I’m guessing you’re never watching Shivers, then…unless you already did once, in which case I’m sure it’s in your “never again” pile.

    Come to think of it, I’m guessing you don’t watch a lot of early Crononberg stuff, eh?

  • Flangepart

    On the gore front: I love the TREMORS series, but can’t deal with too much goo.
    Juuuust enough to get the point across, and I can maybe handle it. Remember how old flicks would lead you to the event, than let you imagine the rest? Then you can stop before you reach the barfo-meter.

  • GalaxyJane

    Correct on both counts.  I’ve never even tried to watch “The Thing”.

  • Petoht

    I dunno.  Evil Dead 2 was a pretty funny horror movie.  Army of Darkness was more comedy than horror, but was a blend.  Then of course, there’s Shawn of the Dead, which was pretty brilliant all around.  There’s plenty of others, including Tucker and Dale vs. Evil.

    Also, I’ll submit that the best horror movies all have a little bit of humor thrown in.  Partially to keep them from being depressing slogs.  Also, the humor can lull you into a false sense of safety making the coming kill/nasty thing/whatever all the more shocking.  There’s a scene in Scream 2 that leaps to mind where a funny line is delivered mere seconds before the character is killed, making the death a lot more shocking.

  • The Rev.

    If you’re referring to the murder in the van, that was a bit of a shock.  Sadly, that was also the point in the movie I started yelling at the television screen, and the movie just went downhill from there.

    I think you’re spot-on about humor in horror movies.  Of course, you also get movies like Halloween, which manages to be almost humor-free and still pretty great.  (All I can think of is the girls panicking about getting caught with pot in their car as far as humor in it.)  A couple of the old Universal classics would also be like that, as would Godzilla.  Most of my favorite movies, though, tend to be excellent blends of humor and horror.  

  • Petoht

    Well, I make no comment on the general quality of the film or the series.  It was more just that scene with the van that was masterfully done.  Perfect character, perfect monologue before the kill, great camera work… that was a really great scene.

    Yeah, some movies make it work without humor, but I think that’s equally difficult to manage.  Frankly, humans find humor even in bleak situations.  It’s the whole reason black humor exists.  It’s a little release valve, and when used properly, can allow you to ratchet things up further than you could without anything.

    Unless you’re a true master, then you can get away with just about anything.  Hitchcock didn’t need humor, because he was a freaking genius.

  • The Rev.

    Ah, yes, of course, Hitchcock is another fine example.

    The van murder was well done, as far as the lead-up and actual attack go.  It’s after I stopped for two seconds to think about how utterly impossible the whole thing was that I started yelling.  The movie never regained my favor, and in fact I’ve never bothered with any of the subsequent sequels.  Same thing happened with Saw; the first movie pissed me off so much at the end that I tossed the whole series aside.  Happily, my understanding is I didn’t miss much in either series.