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Best movie of this year hands down!

Good concept, poorly executed.

The acting in this movie is really good.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Squirm (1976) *** (out of 4) A storm comes through and knocks various power lines down in the woods of Georgia. This electrical force is causing the worms in the ground to come up and before long they start attacking people. New Yorker Mick (Don Scardino) is visiting his girl Geri (Patricia Pearcy) and soon the two of them are trying to survive.Director Jeff Lieberman's SQUIRM is pure Southern drive-in horror that manages to work even though it has a rather silly story and very little of what you'd call a budget. The first time I watched this film I thought it was somewhat overrated because there's really not too much that happens throughout the running time. With the second viewing I really noticed a lot more things that I had overlooked and I really thought this was a rather well-made little film that accomplishes a lot considering the budget.I think what I enjoyed most this time around was the fact that the director perfectly captures the atmosphere of this small redneck town out in the middle of nowhere. The main star of this picture isn't the actors or the worms but instead it's the location, which is pure low-economy madness out where everyone knows everyone. I really loved that Lieberman was able to milk this Southern setting for everything that it was worth and you just really could feel the locations and their creepy nature. When the characters are out fishing you can just smell the stink. When they're walking through the woods you can just feel the sweat.Another plus is that some of the performances are actually pretty good. Scardino is really good in the role of the boyfriend. He perfectly fits that "city boy" images but at the same time he makes the character one you like and you really do feel as if he can turn into the hero. I also really liked R.A. Dow who plays one of the rednecks. You've also got Jean Sullivan turning in a fine if short performance and Peter MacLean is a blast as the Sheriff.The special effects are fairly good for what they are and the editing helps make several scenes quite effective including the notorious one with the worms digging into one man's face. SQUIRM isn't a masterpiece and there are certainly some flaws but there's no much going right here that you can't help but enjoy it.

And that about sums up how bad this 40 year old movie really is. It starts out OK with these nasty Southerners living in a small rural town in Georgia. It has that horror-feel to it, but then it just becomes really bad.Mick from New York, who is visiting his sad looking girlfriend Geri, finds a skeleton and try to tell the sheriff. But the moronic hill billy sheriff sees him as a big city troublemaker and instead of doing his job he keeps threatening to throw Mick in prison. Without ever doing it. When this joke of a sheriff and his girlfriend are eaten by worms, they get what they deserve.This movies biggest problem is not the extremely bad effects and that these ordinary size worms growl like lions when they attack and eat people (ridicoulus) it's that there isn't a single likable character in the movie. And it takes about 50 minutes before we see the first worm attack. And even by that time the movie remains boring for the remaining 40 minutes.As far as the whole town apparently has been eaten by the worms, the budget was early too small to actually show it. Which makes the ending when the power comes back on all the less believable. As far as gore goes, it's also really badly made.Don't believe the hype. This is bad. Really bad.

An electrical storm downs power lines in a small Georgia town. The live wires hitting the ground cause billions of worms to rise up hungry for flesh. Mick (Scardino) has come to town to visit his girlfriend Geri (Pearcy) on the wrong day. It takes half the running time of the film to have the worms begin their attack. What sounds really stupid isn't, thanks to the talents of Writer / Director Jeff Lieberman who delivers some graphic and brutal scenes in this PG rated film. All of this comes in the second half of the film unfortunately. The first half is spent getting to know the characters and the small town which isn't very interesting quite frankly. Early make up by future Academy award winner Rick Baker is a film highlight as worms burrow under the flesh of one unsuspecting man in a lake. Another memorable scene has a grown man disappearing into a sea of worms slithering around. The ending is quite unnerving as an entire house is under siege by the crawlers. The slow beginning and thrilling conclusion makes the film very lopsided which is a shame because when it's good, it's real good.

Starting in the late 60s and through the mid-80s, horror directors really came up with some ingenious plots. Case in point: this little killer worm movie filmed in Georgia. Based on the premise that a violent electric storm sent millions of volts into the ground, causing literally thousands of worms to turn into zombie-like killers. To best describe this movie, imagine a Tennessee Williams play gone berserk and you've got an inkling.The story: a red-haired New Yorker named Mick has come down to visit a red-haired southern belle named Geri. However, the creepy country boy next door, named Roger, doesn't like Mick making moves on her. And as if that wasn't bad enough, a pervy borderline vigilante sheriff sets his sights on Mick as a troublemaker. Almost immediately, we get a sense that something's rotten in the state of Georgia. And all the main characters, save Mick, seem to be a little nutty. Oh and did I mention the rampaging worms?! Yes, there's a lot of underlying tension brewing and the movie's plot deftly handles every development. The special effects and make-up is chilling to say the least. My two favorite scenes are when the worms attack Roger and he turns into a loony worm guy, and when we find a man who's been hollowed out by worms. I challenge even a die-hard horror fan not to flinch and feel a tiny wriggle of apprehension! As I said earlier, the 70s was ripe with imaginative horror flicks and this one qualifies as one of the most under-appreciated. So hunt it down and get ready to squirm with thrills and chills!