1993
Starring: Tracy Griffith, Jim Youngs, Charles Napier, Jay Robinson
I picked this VHS up a couple days after I bought Ticks and I was super excited that it would create a nice theme of enlarged killer inects. We waiting awhile to watch it and I was super excited. I guess I expected too much because this was terrible.
It begins with a bunch of construction workers dumping toxic waste into a mine shaft, it reminded me a little of the beginning of Jurassic Park. Cut to our hero, Roy (Jim Youngs) welding a sculpture without a shirt on. It turns out he is an officer on the local county police squad. He heads to work on his motorcycle, still shirtless, but by the time he gets there he finally puts his uniform on.
We then see a empty hill that suddenly fills with mourners, like it's a ghost funeral. No, it's a real funeral for Sarah's mom. Sarah (Tracy Griffith) moved away awhile ago and is only back for this sad event. It turns out that Roy and Sarah used to be a couple in high school. Nothing like the death of a parent to rekindle an old romance.
Roy and his partner get called out to some strange cases where people seem to have been attacked by something unknown. Two teens on motorcycles go missing. All the pieces of the plot do come together. This is a small farming town has been bought up and turned into a suburban home development. Most of the inhabitants got bought out except for Sarah's dad. There is apparently a lot of toxic waste left over from building homes, and the developers have been illegally dumping it in the area abandoned mines. Even though this town seems real dry, there is enough stagnant water for mutant mosquitoes to breed. I haven't mentioned the mosquitoes yet because it takes a long time for them to show up in the movie and they're all I want to see.
Roy begins to put together that giant mosquitoes are killing people, but then he is kidnapped. He manages to escape and it turns out that the sheriff has been orchestrating this whole thing all along. He's been making money off the real estate development and dumping the chemicals. There is the epic conclusion in the mosquito mine, Sarah barely escapes with the help of Roy and the sheriff is burnt up in the mine.
The end is super weird where it seems like Sarah and Roy have reconnected but then she leaves because she hates this town and he feels obligated to stay and save it. There is a super gross sex scene between Sarah and Roy that I could have done without. This falls into the strange category of barely a horror movie in my book. It's more like a drama with a light supernatural element because it really doesn't deliver on the mosquito attacks. At least in Ticks, they show you how and why the ticks become giant mutants. This movie was very slow and dull, even the giant mosquitoes couldn't save it.
