Jarv’s Schlock Vault: Ticks

Ticks

They call me “Panic” ’cause I never do.

Jarv’s Rating: 3 Changs out of 4

Once again, to take a small break from the never-ending lists, I’ve decided to review a schlock film.

Ticks was part of the recent superb schlock bonanza that I’ve been on. Honestly, I haven’t seen a bad one in the last 6- they’ve all been varying degrees of awesome. This is a film I remember seeing in the mid 90’s- I certainly remember seeing that superb poster all over the place, but before I sat down to watch it, I was damned if I could recall a single piece of information from it, aside from the fact that it’s about giant insects eating people.

Oh, how wrong I was. Curse my useless Ecstasy ruined brain- how could I forget how simply awesome this film is? It has almost everything that I require from these films- violence, ridiculousness, shoddy acting, excellent dialogue, laughs aplenty and a good bit of tension as well. If they’d managed to find a way to work in some gratuitous nudity and a midget then this could possibly have been the greatest schlock film ever made.

That’s a bit hyperbolic, given that it is still a low-budget creature feature, but it is really, really top drawer.

The film opens with veteran character actor Clint Howard working away tending his cannabis plants and listening to the radio. What poor old Cliff doesn’t know is that just behind him there are several oozing pustulous eggs preparing to hatch. Inevitably, they do and infect him, which leads to much hilarious Stooges inspired clowning about before he eventually steps in a bear trap and fucks himself up good and proper.

We then cut to an inner city underpass where Seth Green is being sent to adventure camp with a group of troubled teens- it turns out that his dad left him in the wilderness and now he suffers panic attacks. In the parental tradition of “throw the cunt in the water and see if he learns to swim” his father has decided that the best way for him to conquer his fears is to send him off with a quack therapist and a group of fuck-ups to the arse end of nowhere. Said fuck-ups include: a spoilt brat and her steroid addled boyfriend, a rape victim, the douche doctor’s daughter and, hilariously, Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air dressed in MC Hammer’s hand me downs as the world’s least convincing Compton gangsta. He even loves his dog.

Camp turns out to be a complete shithole, the ticks break loose, and kill Carlton’s dog. Intrepid Dr. Douchebag and Seth decide that the thing to do with the dog is to take it for an autopsy- in reality, they needed to find someone to explain the cod science that underpins the monster ticks- which she does, brilliantly. Carlton chucks a wobbly and legs it into the countryside- while everyone else is completely unconcerned about the potential catastrophe heading their way.

It turns out that a pair of comedy criminals called “Sir” and “Jerry” (it must have taken all of 15 seconds to think those up) have been using some sort of super steroid on the marijuana to increase crop yield. Those dastardly swine. This has in turn infected the ticks who are now on the rampage.

Anyhow, to cut a long story short, everyone gets holed up in the house while the ticks run rampant, before they detonate the place get back to civilisation having killed all of the evil insects, or (in true B-movie style) have they……

The thing about this film, is that it’s highly competent. I don’t have a clue what the budget was, but I’ll take a large bet that it wasn’t high. Having said that, the direction is tight, the script is hilarious, the acting is as to be expected and the special effects (with one exception that I’ll come to in a minute) are better than average- with no CGI whatsoever. It lacks a bit of polish, but I find the roughness of it appealing. It’s enjoyable and unpretentious in the most amusing way.

However, what stops it being a 4 Chang movie (and I did consider it) is that it’s just so preposterous. I don’t normally mind this, suspending disbelief in these movies is to be expected. Except you aren’t suspending disbelief, rather this disbelief is London Underground suspended (permanently cancelled).

Let me put it this way: they establish that the ticks are basically unkillable. No problems with that. They then realise that they’ve painted their characters into a corner, and they now have literally no chance of survival: they’re fucked. Nevertheless, everyone knows that you kill ticks with fire. Again, I’m fine with this- this is a perfectly satisfactory horror movie weapon. However, where they screw the pooch is that you’ve only got to go near to the ticks with a flaming torch and they explode like water balloons on a fat kid’s head. Not only is this against the film’s own internal rules, but it looks fucking silly on camera.

Secondly, for some reason, Carlton decides to rob the steroid freak’s steroids. He’s wandering around in the wood in a bit of pain from a tick bite, so decides to take the steroids. What? Why?

I can live with this as well- I’d buy it a bit more if it was speed, but it isn’t exactly life threatening. Steroid addled Carlton runs into Jerry and Sir who shoot him and leave him for dead. He isn’t quite though- he manages to drag his shattered carcass back to the homestead. Where it’s revealed, (for some inexplicable reason) that the tick that’s inside him becomes juiced up on the steroids and grows internally before shedding him like a used Carlton condom and revealing giant SUPER TICK to the prisoners. I suspect that they did this so that there would be a sizable big bad monster at the end, but this is my real problem with the film- it dilutes the effectiveness.

I’m not nit-picking (no pun intended) with this, up to this point there had been hundreds of little ticks running riot around the camp, and god damn it if even looking at them didn’t make me itch. They scurried all over the place and picked their victims at will- they were, in short, a brilliant horror movie monster.

However, giant SUPER TICK isn’t. For a start, it looks shit, and if that wasn’t enough it’s a useless lumbering twat that can barely move. It stops being effective, and starts being, well, even more daft.

A real shame, because it was a superb little movie before this point. I suspect that they did it so they could up the gore by having the tick unpeel dead Carlton. A huge mistake.

Nevertheless- these are only really minor quibbles, and in this case forewarned is forearmed. As I’d forgotten about both problems with the film, they slightly took the shine off it for me. However, now that I know about them, I suspect that next time I watch it, I’ll giggle from start to finish.

There’s certainly plenty to giggle at here.

Overall, would I recommend it? Unquestionably yes. It’s a stonking little film, marred only slightly by overambition. Even if you’re not scared of insects (and I’m not), it manages to be sufficiently scary for long periods, and completely entertaining in others. It’s a film to watch with a loud and noisy group of mates, a shit load of beer and a sense of irony.

Superb.