I recently rewatched this 1993 Brian Yuzna produced campy B movie with my wife, and once again I did not regret seeing this animal attack/normally small animal becomes huge film. And I won't be the first to point out that if it had been named Killer Insect for good, the title would've been wrong as Ticks aren't insects. But, whatever dude.
Seth Green stars in this movie as one of several problem kids that are sent to a summer camp to get better. Apparently, all it takes is spending some time outside with other problem kids, doing activities such as camping, fishing, hiking, etc, and all the problems just melt away. That's the idea behind this movie anyway, and the problem kids don't put up too much of a fight so maybe they're right. While they're at this retreat, marijuana growers are simultaneously giving steroids to their plants to make them grow bigger, the steroids infect some ticks, and the ticks grow bigger. It's your classic setup to a genuinely fun monster movie.
As I've stated numerous times, I love Brian Yuzna and I don't know why his films aren't better known. He didn't direct, only produced, but this movie has a lot of his sort of elements in it. There's the creature effects first of all; super good, everything is slimy and wet and gross looking. There's Clint Howard in a small role, there's a couple minor tensions that come up beside the whole ticks thing, it's a movie that is really well paced and exciting even without the giant ticks thing going on.
Another thing I love that always makes me happy is when a movie that could've easily, EASILY been PG-13 goes for and gets and R rating. It's like saying "fuck you" to all the little kiddies out there, Like, we could've easily trimmed out a couple parts of bad language and then you would've been able to watch this movie also, but, nope, we're keeping it, you don't get to see our movie. I imagine it's rated R for the drug references, the language, maybe the blood. But the drug languages are very minimal, they only swear like 10 times, and the blood is surprisingly low for this type of movie. So they could've done it PG-13 with no real effort, I think.
Seth Green, Clint Howard, the other actors had all and have all been in real movies, this movie picked it's cast well. The actors do a good job of having fun and putting this movie over. Then there's the effects, as I mentioned earlier. The little ticks are awesome looking. Disgusting, real looking, slimy and deadly. They look tremendously awesome. When a dude or two gets fucked up, the makeup effects and prosthesis work is great, and it makes you feel both grossed out and it makes you laugh to see these guys go through the suffering they do. There's a black guy that gets bit like 60 times by these things, and he just looks super messed up. It's great.
Ticks is one of these that has a cult following, but not as strong as some of those other movies out there. It's well paced, shot, directed, and executed, and deserves it's spot. But ultimately, like so many projects which Yuzna was involved with, it just doesn't seem to have the awareness I think it deserves. Cause I think it gets 4 stars.
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