Now...you
gon’ be da worm face!
 |
| This movie ranks an 8/10 on the Grody Scale |
Ah,
the South; banjos, racism, inbreeding...what doesn’t it have? Not much,
according to MST3K, and it’s one those Minnesotan’s favorite, easiest, and most
productive punching bags. If the 70s is their favorite decade to riff on, the
South may be their favorite geographic area, or at least in the top three (see:
Boggy Creek II, Attack of the Giant Leeches). But, does an
episode featuring one of their favorite targets mean the episode will be a
non-stop, laugh filled classic?
I
should also mention I’m from Texas (which is really the west, but to Yankees is
practically the south with more horses) so I joke on the South with love.
Squirm is a movie
about killer worms. An electrical storm tears up a small town in Georgia,
trashing buildings and downing power lines. Unfortunately, the power lines
continue spewing electricity into the ground, mutating the worms...somehow! Bad
timing for local girl Geri, who has invited her friend Mick out to visit, after
meeting him at an antiquing event in New York. Can they wander around town
looking for people killed offscreen by the worms and fill up the run time
before realizing it’s worms?
A
lesson for filmmakers, television show writers, and storytellers in general: if
your main characters pend the majority of a movie trying to uncover something
you’ve already revealed early on, that’s not a mystery: that’s the audience
waiting for the characters to catch up to them. And that’s pretty much what Squirm
is, sprinkled with heavy dashes of southern spice. There really aren’t any
scary scenes or a building sense mystery or anything, mainly characters
wandering around, trying to figure out what we already know after finding some
human bones here and there, and in the last 30 minutes some worm attacks
happen.
 |
| The Lord of the Rings has less walking around. |
But
like I said, it’s set in the South, and Mike and the Bots latch onto that like
lampreys. When a bus driver is telling Yankee Mick what he’ll need to make it
to town, Mike adds, “Oh, and you’ll need a conical hate with eye-holes cut into
it.” When Geri and Mick come up to a person’s house and see a pile of junk,
Crow notices, “He’s got fewer rusty appliances in his yard than most southern
people.” And after Geri has a long scene of accent-thick dialogue, Tom just
says, “C’mon, no one’s that southern!” Then there’s the scene where it’s a
bunch of country folk in a diner, and the three of them just start yelling out
country gibberish for a solid minute. It’s glorious.
There
are also doofy characters they have fun with. Mike gets plenty of use of his
weakling whiny sound effects for the scrawny antiquing main character, and then
there’s Roger, a dim-witted and kind of creepy local who has an eye for Geri. That
means plenty of backwoods killer jokes, like when Mick invites Roger to join he
and Geri for fishing, Crow says, “I’ll pack a picnic of hands and skins!” And
of course, they do make a few worm themed jokes, like when Mick finds a worm in
his drink, Tom says, “I ordered a millipede!” There’s some solid, workmanlike
riffing throughout, but nothing consistently hilarious. It takes them a while
to get into it, and they have fun for about the middle hour, but by the end
their mood is generally ours: ready for the movie to be over.
Then,
there’s the short.
The
Sci-Fi Channel era of the show had far fewer shorts than the Comedy Central
years, so when they popped up, it was noticeable. And when the short is
something like A Case of Spring Fever,
it becomes an all-time classic. Spring Fever is about Gilbert, a
middle-aged fart who hates having to repair his couch, and curses the invention
of springs. “I hope I never see another spring as long as I live!” he
complains. But, this summons Coily the Spring Sprite from the ether of the
unreal, a dark being as old as time who alters the very fabric of reality for
it’s own sick, twisted concept of spiteful retribution centered around coiled
pieces of metal. He makes all springs disappear, so now the poor sap has to
experience what everyday objects, like rotary phones, are without them:
useless! Thankfully, Coily is also a forgiving eldritch being, and the second
poor Gilbert repents, springs are returned to this realm of reality. And so,
Gilbert becomes a devoted acolyte of Coily’s, spreading the good news of coils
and coil mechanics to his beleaguered golf buddies.
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| Based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft |
Few
shorts are as perfectly odd and weird as Spring Fever is. Coily is a
weird little cartoon spring that torments a guy for like half a minute and then
we watch the guy become a vocal proponent of springs. They have a ball with
this little bit of madness, getting to be dark, weird, and just plain goofy.
“I’ll fix it so you get that wish!” Coily says after hearing Gilbert’s
complaint, to which Crow adds, “In Hell!” After Coily leaves, Mike says, “From
then on, Coily visited him nightly, driving him mad.” And when Coily laughs,
Tom says, “You’ll be the first to die!” It’s 8 minutes of riffing bliss.
The
host segments are also representative of the disparity between the short and
the movie (lotta big words in that sentence for some reason). Crow and Tom wish
Mike wasn’t around, summoning Mikey the Mike Sprite. Mike disappears, and the
Bots don’t care. It’s gold. But the Squirm inspired shorts are just okay. Tom
is acting way, way too Southern in one, and in another Mike tries to create a
race of super worms using electricity, and ends up making a tasty snack
instead. They’re fine, but it feels like the writers are just going with what
they can for the episode.
 |
| Mikey, reflecting the universe's general antipathy toward Mike |
This
was the penultimate episode of the show’s original run. It had already been
canceled, so the Best Brains new the next episode would be the last. And while
the final episode (at the time), Diabolik, is a lot of fun, this one is
just okay. I wish the episodes leading up to it had been better, and had more
riff-able movies to use. And maybe my inner fanboy is just really nitpicking. This
is far from a bad episode. But there are better episodes like it, such as Boggy
Creek II, where the movie gives them more to work with and they’re far more
invested. That said, this one’s worth a revisit if you haven’t sen it in a
while. But it’s mainly great because of the short, and the SOL gives out
southern hospitality better in other episodes.
Episode
in a Riff:
Y’know,
this movie deftly proves one unshakable principle: never go to the South for
any reason. -Crow, beginning his unhinged rant against the South.
Random
Asides
-Considering
this movie is also made in the 70s, it’s surprising they don’t have more 70s
themed riffs for this one. I guess the South trumps the 70s, and the movie does
have that weird late 70s / early 80s feel movies around that time did, so it
does feel just slightly more 80s.
-Squirm
is a bit of a flip to The Incredible Melting Man, which was turned from
a comedy spoof of horror movies half-way through into a straight one. Only
here, the movie is an almost too-straight horror film that seems intended to
have been a spoof, or at least tongue-in-cheek salute to. They also both
feature special effects by Rick Baker.
“There,
the Satellite of Love is completely unsafe!” What a shock, said nobody.
-Mike:
“We have a silage?”
Crow:
“...you’re not very observant are you, Miike?”
-“Come
to the Fair!” I love Pearl.
-Brain
Guy: “Our grandstand act is this cardboard cutout of Mr. Ben Murphy himself!”
What an act!
-I
love how extremely fine with their choice Tom and Crow are with ‘no mike’
-About
15 minutes in, I remember why I haven’t rewatched this episode a lot: worms are
gross. This ranks an 8 out of 10 on the grody meter.
-Crow
may dress up a lot, but Tom makes the cutest girls of them all.
-The
main nerdy guy’s reaction to worms is mine
- If
your movie ends with characters just waiting things out, with a random person
showing up to explain away an unseen resolution….yeah, no.
-They
never say what happens to Geri’s mom. Guess she got et up.
-The
hell is up with the sad romantic movie music at the end?
“Copyright
1976 by the Squirm Company” Yes, really.
-Pearl
throwing Brain Guy off a short step as a bungie jump is great!
 |
| "Come to the fair!" |
-I
like Mike using spice to make his fried “rice of verms” tastier. Yum!
-According
to the DVD, this is the only movie MST watched that Joel paid to see in a
theater.
-In
an exchange Mike has with Roger, the deranged local boy wonders about the
killer worms, “Mayybe they come from New York,”, which he pronounces “Yew-ork”
in a real thick accent. Tom replies, “Or Mass-ass-chusats.” I have never
pronounced that state the same way since.
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