Alicia I love this movie so much

GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

thelastblogontheleft Oh, Squirm. I don't care what anyone says… this was a great movie. It was featured on one of the very last episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the director, Jeff Lieberman, was not happy about it… but perhaps not for the reason you'd expect: "Mystery Science Fiction was really invented by Zacherly, and Elvira called herself Zacherly with T*ts. The movies they would get, they would get them because the owners of the films would go, 'Oh well, a little bit is better than nothing' because nobody was booking these movies to play in their entirety. But Squirm was playing all over the world in its entirety on its own, so why would you make a cheap sale like that? Once you do that you can't sell it to stations at the same time. Of course the fandom thought I was being sensitive about them goofing on it, like it was Gone With the Wind or Citizen Kane. I was furious about the financial aspect. I didn't give a s**t what anybody says. It's a movie about worms."I think it makes me love the movie more to know that Lieberman doesn't take it, or himself, too seriously. It would be hard to do so with a movie about worms — not huge, monster worms or poisonous worms or even worms crawling out of dead bodies. Just regular ol' worms wriggling their way up out of the ground. It's not that scary of a movie, really — though it tries, with its closeups of the worms with these monster screams that I guess we're supposed to assume they're making — but what it lacks in horror it makes up for in charm. And okay, a handful of creepy scenes, like finding the old man whose insides have been entirely replaced by worms, or when they find Mrs. Sanders as just a vaguely human-shaped pile of worms, or poor Roger pulling his way up the stairs in a last attempt to take them down with him."I like a good thunderstorm. It makes you feel… helpless."It also does a great job at toeing the line with lots of great, dark humor. The scene where they are pleading for the sleazy sheriff's help while he's on a date at an Italian restaurant and they just keep panning back and forth between closeups of him and his ladyfriend slurping down spaghetti I MEAN COME ON, so good.This movie also showcases some early makeup effects by Rick Baker (before his American Werewolf in London days) — I particularly enjoyed what he did with Roger's face to make it look as though worms were burrowing under his skin.Ultimately, while not much of a scare, this movie is worth it for some icky worm scenes and some pretty commendable dialogue (heavy on the Southern accent).

krycek19 And that about sums up how bad this 40 year old movie really is. It starts out OK with these nasty Southerners living in a small rural town in Georgia. It has that horror-feel to it, but then it just becomes really bad.Mick from New York, who is visiting his sad looking girlfriend Geri, finds a skeleton and try to tell the sheriff. But the moronic hill billy sheriff sees him as a big city troublemaker and instead of doing his job he keeps threatening to throw Mick in prison. Without ever doing it. When this joke of a sheriff and his girlfriend are eaten by worms, they get what they deserve.This movies biggest problem is not the extremely bad effects and that these ordinary size worms growl like lions when they attack and eat people (ridicoulus) it's that there isn't a single likable character in the movie. And it takes about 50 minutes before we see the first worm attack. And even by that time the movie remains boring for the remaining 40 minutes.As far as the whole town apparently has been eaten by the worms, the budget was early too small to actually show it. Which makes the ending when the power comes back on all the less believable. As far as gore goes, it's also really badly made.Don't believe the hype. This is bad. Really bad.

Mr_Ectoplasma Jeff Lieberman's debut film "Squirm" has a rural Georgia town inundated with flesh- eating worms who have been summoned by electrical currents from fallen power lines in the aftermath of a storm. Down-home Southern girl Geri (Patricia Pearcy) is meanwhile being visited by her New Yorker boyfriend, Mick (Don Scardino), and needless to say, things in Fly Creek run amok.I've read multiple comments about this film essentially being a rendition of Hitchcock's "The Birds," rather with worms, and they couldn't be any more correct— Lieberman takes the template and runs with it by all means, but "Squirm" still retains so much charm and doses of wormy nastiness that I find it impossible not to love it.Admirable special effects on a shoestring budget are one noteworthy aspect of this film (early work by Rick Baker, who has went on to become a majorly successful makeup designer in Hollywood, is on display here), but perhaps its greatest achievement is the sense of unease that pervades even in spite of the inherent silliness of the plot. By some unidentifiable stroke of genius (or perhaps accident), "Squirm" never works its way into any sort of cornball hysteria— despite the fact that the film's antagonists are thousands of worms (and a worm-infested redneck), it still never manages to fall into the "so bad it's good" category that one might expect it to.The innocuous exposition of the film may have a great part in this in that it builds a certain kind of dread, but no matter the cause, the film maintains a healthy level of self- awareness and seriousness that really elevate it from standard low-budget creature fare. Don Scardino (who later appeared in another genre favorite of mine, "He Knows You're Alone") takes on the Tippi Hedren role as the borderline martyr figure— the New York stranger in town— and does it remarkably well. Patricia Pearcy, R.A. Dow, and stage actress Jean Sullivan all amp up their inner Southerner without falling too far into caricature, and each of the characters are memorable. The film's finale has all the worms you could ask for, and the entire event is just plain fun.Despite what preconceptions you may about "Squirm" (I had many), it is definitely a film that is worth the time for anyone who is a fan of '70s horror or creature features in general. The direction is classy and the production is remarkably sophisticated given the minuscule budget, and lends the film a Southern Gothic dread that coexists nicely with our ground-dwelling villains. Is it cheesy? Well, it's a film about flesh-eating worms, so, yes, in content, sure— but it's just got enough elegance to really pull itself off. 8/10.

gavin6942 At the beginning of the film, we learn from one of the characters that earthworms can be called to the surface with electricity, but somehow it turns them into vicious flesh-eaters. Sure enough, a storm that night causes some power lines to break and touch the ground, drawing millions of man-eating worms out of the earth, and into town where they quickly start munching on the locals.Something about the idea of millions of flesh-eating worms taking over a small town just indicates that it must be a fun movie. And in many ways this is a fun movie, with some quirky characters and humorous moments. But it never really gets in high gear. The good parts are surrounded by too much blah and lackluster scenes.The film is fun to ponder "what if", as such stars as Kim Basinger, Martin Sheen and Sylvester Stallone were allegedly all possible contenders for the roles. Somehow rather than three great actors, they ended up getting almost no one of note (Don Scardino has his merits). How did this happen, and would casting changes have made any difference in the overall picture?