Review: Ticks (1993)
Directed by: Tony Randel
Starring: Peter Scolari, Seth Green, Ami Dolenz
Written by: Brent V. Friedman
Music by: Daniel Licht, Christopher L. Stone
Country: United States
Available on: 4K/Blu-ray (Vinegar Syndrome)
IMDb
Tony Randel, after making a name for himself with the somehow-even-more-gory-and-weird sequel to Clive Barker’s original, Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), kicked off the ‘90s with Children of the Night (1991), Amityville: It’s About Time (1992), and Ticks (1993), a trio of odd, somewhat gruesome films before Scream would come along and reshape the genre entirely. Ticks is a throwback to the angry nature films of the ‘70s and early ‘80s, about backwoods parasitic arachnids mutated by a growth agent used by marijuana farmers. It’s up to a wee Seth Green and Carlton of Bel-Air, who are on an outdoor retreat for trouble youths, to stop them.
The casting is what hits you right away. Alfonso Ribeiro — in what, I guess, was an attempt to show he can act against type, since this was released in the midst of the popularity of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air — is a tough hood dude named “Panic” (he’s called that because he never does, you understand). And Seth Green is looking even teenier, tinier, and more adorable and brightly orange-coifed here than he did in the TV adaptation of IT (1990), where he was quite adorable and orange. Then there’s Clint Howard as the pot farmer that sets the craziness in motion, all wide-eyed and talking to himself as the elder Howard does. None of the three actors are good here, but it’s sort of pleasantly surreal to experience them all together in such a goofy, gooey slice of filmmaking.
The second thing that hits you is all the slime. Turns out ticks are fucking disgusting. Accordingly, this flick is filled with slick ickiness, or slickiness if you will; blood and arachnoid goo are splashed everywhere very often. Between the giant bugs, the giant larval sacks, the giant undulating boils caused by giant tick bites, and the violent eruptions of the previously discussed boils, there’s a whole lot of viscous fluid on screen. There’s enough practically realized gore and general body horror madness packed in here to supply the rather bloodless back half of the decade that eventually gave way to the takeover of computer-generated visual effects. Randel heavily infused his previous filmmaking outings in the genre with bodily destruction, so its prevalence here is not entirely surprising, but it’s totally welcome. The last third of the movie really kicks things into gruesome gear, with the appearance of a final monster that’s pretty rad.
Alas, it’s not all swell. The acting is uniformly silly, dragged down by a bunch of silly dialogue and some pretty cringe-y reliance on stereotypes. There’s a noticeable DTV patina that cheapens the outing. As it stands, the movie looks really flat and the direction is pretty blasé. But this is near the top of my list of horror films that could use the pizazz (and increased distribution) of an HD restoration (editor note: days after this review was published, Vinegar Syndrome announced a 4K and Blu-ray release). But anyway, it’s unlikely that a horror consumer who likes large bugs, especially large bugs with a predilection for gnawing human tissue, wouldn’t enjoy this.
Overall rating: 7 out of 10
