The Night is Crawling with Killers

I just finished watching Squirm, and after never seeing this film before I have to say it was awful. This film about bloodsucking worms was directed by Jeff Liberman (Blue Sunshine, Just before Dawn) and released in 1976.

The first hour and ten minutes is excruciating to watch because it is painfully slow and is filled with scenes and events that later on are completely forgotten, basically just a time filler until you get to the reveal of the worms.

The inspiration for the film came from a childhood experiment between director Jeff Lieberman and his brother. One evening the two hooked up a train transformer to wet soil and used the electricity to drive hundreds of worms out of the ground. Young Lieberman noticed that the worms tried to get away from the glare of the flashlight that the boys were using to see by because worms are light-sensitive. It became the scientific basis behind this film and the story of the experiment is re-told by the character of Roger Grimes.

The last twenty minutes is interesting only due to how many worms they used in the scenes, it's really unbelievable. Infact, the amount of sea worms used in the film was countless, as the production would order shipments of 250,000 Glycera worms at a time. The production would end up wiping out New England's supply of Glycera fishing worms that year.

My favorite scene would have to be when the unsuspecting sister opens a door and an insane amount of worms come pouring out. If worms scare you than the last half of this film may just be your worst nightmare. Squirm is a product of it's time and money, and follows the steps of one of my most hated pet-peeves in movies, saving all the action and in this case anything redeeming at all for the very end, making the rest of the film an utter waste of time.

Apparently the old farm house used in the film is known as one of the most infamous haunted houses in Georgia, which is far more interesting than anything in the actual film. The unearthly screeching sounds used for the worms are actually the electronically processed sounds of screaming pigs in slaughterhouses.

If things had worked out for the actors, we could have seen Kim Basinger, Silvester Stallone and Martin Sheen in Squirm, who all pursued roles for this film.

Jeff Liberman says he got his inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, which is a masterpiece compared to this film and many others. Apparently it is better to watch Squirm in black and white because that's the way Liberman intended it to be, I personally think, unless you are really interested in seeing a horrible movie with millions of worms than you should just pass this one up. If you do decide to watch it skip the first hour or so, you won't be missing much.

Rating: D- (the only reason I did not give it an F is because of the amazing amount of worms...pretty impressive)

Review by Jason