I saw this movie as an episode of the cult television show Mystery Science Theater 3000; however, I also saw this movies years before it aired on the show as a kid. Suffice to say, it is one of the better films riffed on Mystery Science Theater as it features some very good practical effects and good gore. What it does not feature is a good story or characters. That is this film's downfall and why I can only manage to give this film a score of five. The makers of this film did a wonderful job with the worms here as they actually seem to be overrunning the town in horrific numbers! The deaths are cool too and the makeup done on Roger's character is superb, but you are going to have to sit through a lot of plot points that make no sense and a premise that will have one scratching their head to get to the finale which is pretty cool.The story has a person from New York coming to a small Georgia town to do some antiquing and he is going to be staying with a girl, her sister and their mother. I only assume he is from New York, another reviewer said he was from Atlanta, but Roger makes a joke about New York, the sister says something about New York, and Mick himself says something that suggests that he is in fact from New York. Of course, if this is the case, how in the heck did he ever meet Geri in the first place? It isn't like there was Facebook back then. This is a absurd plot point and one of many. Another is the town's power going out and a line electrifying the ground causing worms to go crazy in the first place. I know this is a horror and you have to suspend your belief, but I am pretty sure a line going down in a way depicted in the film has occurred more than a couple of times and there have never been killer worms so they really needed to come up with a better means of turning the average worm into a flesh eating creature of death. Well, things get off on the wrong foot as Mick just cannot wait in a truck for five minutes and goes into a cafe and gets on the wrong side of the law and the truck that Geri borrowed from Roger had worms and they all escaped during the day and this also makes no sense because why would the worms in the truck feel the effects of electricity going into the ground and go rouge? I mean it is clearly established at the end that when the power is repaired the worms went back to normal so worms not in contact with the ground should not have been affected! Long story short, Mick and Geri try to figure out what is going on, Geri's mom seems to be losing it, Roger seems to be turning into something of a worm after a face biting incident and we finally get to see the worms overrun the town! This made for a great episode of MST3K as they mainly did poke fun at the absurd story and characters. A lot of the awesome effects were cut from the show, but those effects did not need to be riffed because they were good! A saw in the message board where some were saying the score for this was too low and suggested it was just those of us who enjoy MST3K bringing it down and we follow whatever they say is bad, but MST3K did not create the plot holes and idiotic story arcs that are featured in this film. Why would Mick, leave the house and go running through the woods to get plywood? He could only haul one piece, I don't think that would have made much difference. I've already mentioned what is wrong with the electricity being the cause and I could probably go on and on about what is wrong with the plot. The good effects and pretty decent attack scenes cannot cover up all the holes in this thing. MST3K mainly focused on just these issues, just because you have a great makeup artist on your team and you have conjured up a few good scenes does not excuse you if you sport a bad story.So there you have it, it is worth a look and it is a film that I could watch without Mike and the bots and have done so before. I would like to watch it again though just so I can see the parts they had to leave out because they were too graphic. People who have only seen the MST3K version are missing some of the most awesome scenes such as Roger falling in the boat, Mick finding Geri's mom covered in worms and some claim that you can see her still sewing and Roger coming back for one more round after being tossed to the worms. Still, you have to sit through a lot of bizarre story to get there. Is Geri's mother secretly having an affair with Roger, whose skull is it in back of Roger's truck and why would a woman ever want to sleep with that sheriff? Of course, as annoying as most of the characters are, it will make you cheer on the worms as they finally get to have their revenge!

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.

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.

When Seventies Elton John goes to visit his girl way down somewhere in Virginia, he's all expecting some passionate loving (wait, that doesn't sound like Elton John at all), but instead gets surrounded by pink, wriggling slimy things instead (that sounds more like Elton John).What's happened, right, is that there was some sort of storm and the some electricity hit the ground and then all these worms (who were residing in a worm farm) all went a bit mental and start chowing down on the locals, none of whom in the slightest belief Elton John's theories (or even like him in the least, especially that sheriff with the simply bizarre haircut. You know, it's one of those nature on the loose deals, only this one manages to pick a pretty harmless creature. It's far too slow as well, what with Elton and his girl doing exciting things like checking dental records, going fishing and trying to convince the sheriff that something's wrong over and over and over again.The video cover to this one scared that crap out of me when I was young (when video shops existed), but sadly it didn't live up to it all. The wormface bit was good though, but that's it!