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An old man
is bitten by an insect after touching
an exotic plant and falls ill. At the hospital,
a weird parasite emerges from his mouth and
soon develops into a giant, wormlike monster
wreaking havoc and causing chaos at the hospital.
Too bad for staff and patients, they can't get
out since the government has sealed up the
hospital for security reasons.
If your name isn't David Cronenberg, you'd
better leave the Big Monster Bug genre back in
the 50s, something director William Fruet
clearly didn't realize when he did this very
uneven monster flick. You just can't take these
kind of monsters serious anymore, especially
when the special effects are as crummy as in
this one.
Plot tries for a little more than just the old
unexplained giant monster (or in many cases,
giant monster grown large by chemical waste,
etc.) but even when infectious diseases and a
society-ruling government gets involved it just
turns to mumbo jumbo nonsense. The problem is
that you just don't care. The characters are
too vague and too uninteresting and the cast
takes a little too serious.
Steve Railsback is always trustworthy but does
nothing special with his hero cop while the
fabulous John Vernon is shamelessly wasted as
a doctor. The rest of the cast gets great
opportunities for making this camp but plays
it surprisingly straight and it just gets...
dull. A shining light though is lovely Sarah
Polley (18 years pre-"Dawn of the Dead") as a
young patient.
When it comes to special effects they're not
good enough to be remembered, and not bad enough
to laugh at. Enough said. This little monster
flick has a pretty good chance to be Camp
classic but makes the mistake making it right.
It really wants to deliver and to be taken
seriously, but you just can't take a giant
monster bug running around a hospital serious.
Monster eats people. Nothing memorable.
Average 80s suspense score.
Silly premise is handled and acted surprisingly
straight in this forgettable Big Monster Bug
flick where neither plot, effects or cast gets
to be either campy or interesting.
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