Rubber Monster Reviews Is Infested With 'Ticks'
Plus: Junk World, the new Monster Girl Beach Party, and more on KS!
Hello, all you wonderful Bad Bugs! With temperatures warming up, it’s time once again to instill a healthy fear of the outside world into all of you with this month’s…
TICKS (1993)
Ticks came out early enough in the nineties that it still had all the earmarks of good eighties horror shlock:
Moderate actor recognition? Check! We’ve got Seth Green (Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Idle Hands), still a pimply-faced teen at this point, Peter Scolari (you may remember him as “the guy who wasn’t Tom Hanks” in Bosom Buddies), and Alfonso Ribeiro (Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air). The fact that they cast Alfonso as the inner city tough kid versus just letting him do the Carlton Dance through the whole flick is beyond me, though…
But wait, don’t you still need an A-List C-Lister to have a gory cameo? Oh, have no fear - Clint Howard is here!
Is he an inner city tough kid, too? No, he has a glorious death scene, all gooey and gross, when the tick eggs in his face start to hatch. “Ah’m infested!” will be the line that you take away from this movie. Believe it.
Still, is the plot unbelievable enough? Oh, don’t you worry. I’ll summarize: Inner city kids go to the country for a retreat to nature. Clint Howard, a bumpkin marijuana farmer, doesn’t notice random steroid chemical X is leaking onto those cute baby ticks…cue shot of giant egg sacs everywhere. Other yokels with guns are protecting the drug crop…and yes, one of them has a switchblade comb that was all the rage back in the day. Kid conflict, exposition, yadda-yadda…Alfonso gets hurt in the woods, gets a mutant tick attached… and FOR SOME STUPID REASON STARTS EATING STEROIDS FROM A BAGGY. Blah-blah, Clint Howard is infested. Alfonso is still not doing The Carlton, and instead morphs into a giant tick made of steroids and mutagen. Cue stage hands dropping giant rubber ticks from the ceiling. Seth Green pretends he’s an action star and eventually sets everything on fire. Yay, we learned to work together as a team! Oh crap, there’s still a giant fucking egg sack. Roll credits.
Rating: 4 out of 5 (REALLY) Bad Bugs - This thing was junk…but it was our kind of junk! You really don’t see enough practical F/X anymore, and the rubber creatures in this were a horribly horrible delight. Not a lick of common sense in any of these folks, but dang if I wasn’t rooting for these idiots. Clint Howard always adds that extra touch of shmutz to any production he’s in. Gooey chef’s kiss!
Junk World #1 - Don’t miss these early backer deals on our newest book - from writer Scott Wilke, with art by Vinz El Tabanas.
Xenogeist #3 - Izzy’s back and kicking more cybernetically-enhanced booty!
Charlotte and the Clockwork Heart #1 - We’re in the last few days to get in on this sexy gothic, steampunk fairytale!
That’s all for this time, folks!
Bugs and Kisses,
John and the Bad Bug crew
