1012-Squirm

Film Year:  1976
Genre:  Horror
Director:  Jeff Lieberman
Starring:  Don Scardino, Patricia Pearcy, RA Dow, Jean Sullivan, Peter MacLean
MST Season:  10
Featured Short:  "A Case of Spring Fever"

The Short

Fed up with fixing his couch, a disgruntled man wishes he never sees another spring as long as he lives.  Enter:  Coily, the Spring-Sprite, who grants him his wish to prove just how horrible life would be without springs!

Call it It’s a Wonderful Life…with SPRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINGS!  ::whistles::  I really dig this weird little educational short, with its kooky little Looney Tunes omnipotent character that turns the world upside down.  It gets a bit talky in its second half, as our main character lists the many uses of springs.  I do somewhat wonder who the audience of this short was.  I lean toward kids because of the wacky Coily segment, but I can’t really justify the crotchety old man as a main character if it was targeted at a younger demographic.  I also wonder if questioning the usefulness of springs was really a huge problem back in the day.  Or is it a short meant for adult spring manufacturers?  Probably.  Did they need it to do their job?  Probably not.  It’s not like you need to sell the importance of a spring.

But still, if you didn’t have a great appreciation for the many ways springs are used in your daily life, you will when this short is over.

Note:  A Case of Spring Fever was re-riffed by Rifftrax during their live show of Sharknado 2.  Personally I stick with the MST version.

The Movie

Townsfolk begin to go missing and with the flesh stripped from their bones, and a city slicker tourist tries to investigate, which has the local law enforcement branding him a troublemaker, heeding very little interest in his claims.  Eventually he and a group of local rednecks discover that a legion of worms have gone ballistic in the aftermath of a thunderstorm that sends electricity through the ground.

I remember one of my high school teachers said most of the time when somebody claims their bad movie is a satire, then they are just covering their ass because it turned out to be awful.  Then they can just say “That’s what we were going for.  That was the joke.”

I bring this up because director Jeff Lieberman claims that Squirm should never have been on MST because he intended it to be a parody and you can’t make fun of something that’s making fun of itself.  I’d really hate to break it to Lieberman, but if this was his actual intention for the movie then it’s an even bigger failure than it is if you take it seriously.  The movie isn’t funny.  Tremors is funny.  Starship Troopers is funny.  There’s a humor in those satires that can be deciphered during watching them.  Squirm doesn’t really seem to be doing anything all that humorous, except for a few lame tension breakers, and is just delivering a lame “nature of the week” creature feature that littered the 70s.  If the intent was a parody, then he was mocking these films by imitating them.

Imitation isn’t funny.  It’s lazy.  You’re basically telling a joke without telling a punchline, and then laughing at yourself for doing it.

In minor defense of the film, it looks as if a good half-hour of it was left on the cutting room floor for the MST episode (they edited it so much they had time to add a short onto it).  Any movie would suffer from that.  I’m not entirely sure what the extra content would have added to the film (I haven’t seen it unriffed), but I can’t really picture much.  The movie is coherent enough as seen in the episode, save a few things (the mother going bonkers at the end still perplexes me a bit, though).

While I know I’m not seeing everything here, I know from what I do see that I have little desire to see much more.  It’s a goofy movie, but it kind of just tastes like stale cheese.  There’s a lot of creepy crawlies, vile and unlikable characters, and uneven effects work.  For the most part it just feels like just another killer nature movie that exists for the sake of existing, and worms were just picked randomly out of a hat (at least they weren’t stuck with anteaters ZING WITH THE OVERDRAWN AT THE MEMORY BANK CALLBACK).  The best thing I can say for Squirm is that it executes a few of its horror moments with competent atmosphere.  But the rest doesn’t really do anything likable.

Special Note:  Interesting thing I stumbled upon while looking up Squirm for this, Jeff Lieberman also directed a 1988 movie called Remote Control, which I haven’t seen, but reading the premise made me arch an eyebrow.  Seems it’s about aliens who seek world domination by forcing the world to watch a bad movie from the 1950s.  Sound familiar to anyone else?

Maybe Lieberman isn’t mad at the show for mocking Squirm.  Maybe he’s mad because they stole his idea.

The Episode

“You gonna be da worm face!”

Squirm brings the series back to the tried and true southern atmosphere of Boggy Creek II, and while it’s not nearly as hillbilly as that film was, the small-town redneck vibe is laid on really thick in this movie.   Mike and the ‘bots break out those southern accents again and it is once again pretty hilarious.  They are also given ample wood for their fire by the less-than-studly male lead for the film (“See?  It’s not true that I can’t get wood!”), which they humorously point out is just as wormy as the nightcrawlers that stalk him.  There’s ample searching for the ever elusive “MR. BEARDSLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY!” that the crew rides with to the very end in a fairly solid running gag.  All of this is without even mentioning the short, which is a pretty great ending to the abbreviated shorts run on the Sci-Fi era (though I think Robot Rumpus tops all three).  And it’s great that they finally featured this short on the show to give the Willy the Waffle segment in Viking Women and the Sea Serpent some context.

I feel the host segments of this episode are winners.  The opening safety check is one of my all time favorite segments.  We also get some really funny segments featuring Mikey, the Mike Sprite, Servo as a southern belle, and Mike trying charge his pet worms with electricity, only to create a tasty snack in the process.  On the Mads’ end, Pearl is trying to throw a fair so she can conquer the world one fair at a time.  It seems a bit lame in concept, but I like the execution.  It’s spirited and fun.  Plus the moment where Mike tries to present his pen to Pearl as his contribution to the fair just makes me laugh every single time.

Squirm is a solid rainy day episode that delivers.  While it might not be as distinctive as the best of the series, there are plenty of laughs to be had.  The movie, as lame as it is, doesn’t hurt and the gang is funny at all ends of the episode.  No dry spots here.

Good

The DVD

Squirm was released on Shout Factory’s Volume XXXI, dubbed The Turkey Day Collection.  Audio and video were great, and we got a brand new Turkey Day intro for the episode by Joel himself, who explains that Squirm is the only film of the series he saw in a theater (and he didn’t care for it).  The intro also includes Trace and Josh reprising their roles as Crow and Tom Servo as they try to breed their pet worms into a race of super worms.

The disc also has an interview with star Don Scardino, who tells us stories about how fun the movie was to make and the love it or hate it southern atmosphere.  The interview features some pretty gorgeous anamorphic widescreen footage of the movie, including stuff that was cut from the episode.  Also included is a trailer.

A Case of Spring Fever was released separately as a bonus feature on The Killer Shrews disc on Rhino’s Volume 7.  Also included on the disc were Century 21 Calling and the lost CD-ROM short Assignment:  Venezuela.