Ticks (1993)

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Even as a kid who pretty much watched anything that was on TV, I fondly remember watching “Ticks” when I was ten, and couldn’t get over how delightfully bad it was. Today, it’s still bad, but more in the so bad its good arena. It pretty much is a monster movie centered on giant ticks that act a lot like the face huggers from “Aliens.” In fact “Ticks” really is “Attack of the Facehuggers,” except these face huggers suck on human blood and don’t really have a queen of their very own. They do however spend the majority of their time chasing around Seth Green and Alfonso Ribiero, so you can’t call it a waste of time. Plus, anything featuring the gorgeous Rosalind Allen is worth a watch.

Clint Howard garners one of his trademark walk on roles, playing a marijuana grower whose plant steroids begin leaking in to the ground. They so happen to also drip on to the eggs of a nasty blood sucking tick producing giant man eating offspring. Don’t you hate when that happens? Now the ticks are breeding all over the woods and wreaking havoc on local wildlife. This accidental mutation occurs just as two social workers are preparing for a weekend getaway in a cabin with a bunch of wayward youths. They hope to rehabilitate them by forcing them to bond in the wilderness. Soon enough, the nasty giant ticks are running around the woods, implanting themselves on to hapless victims, all of whom experience horrible deaths before being drained of their blood.

While “Ticks” is one of the goofier horror movies of the decade, it entertains mainly because it has a sense of humor about itself and embraces its silliness. The ticks are also gnarly little monsters brought to life by some pretty wicked special effects and stop motion work. They snap when released from their victims, and mercilessly suck the blood from their human hosts, which is easy considering they can numb individuals before latching on to them. There’s some solid performances to go around, with folks like Ami Dolenz, and Peter Scolari giving it their all. There’s even two evil marijuana growers that enter the film mid-way who make our heroes’ lives so much more difficult. “Ticks” may not be a top notch monster movie, but it surely gets the job done for folks interested in nature run amok films with some grue added in for good measure.

Paired with 1995’s “Mosquito,” you have a darn fun double feature for monster buffs.