Having been rounded up for a getaway to the wilderness far outside of Los Angeles, California, a host of teens find it difficult to appreciate the wonders of mother nature, no matter what their leaders may say. For starters, there seems to be an uneasy feeling between the "tourists" and the locals, who certainly don't seem like the welcoming type. Even worse, the residents and farmers have been using steroids to accelerate the growth of their marijuana patches. However, perhaps the greatest obstacle that the assortment of outsiders will have to deal with are some of the nasty side effects on the wildlife surrounding the area, particularly the smaller parasitic creatures that we refer to as "ticks."
Okay, I'll confess that isn't my first viewing of 1993's straight-to-video schlockfest Ticks, a.k.a. Infested. However, much like last year's review of Rodan, I hadn't touched this one since I was very young, though I vividly remember seeing this a couple of times on channels like the USA Network and the original Showtime Network. Whatever the case, a rather large chunk of my memory was fuzzy at best, and I happened to catch a replay of Ticks on the latter station (I wish I was making this up) less than a month ago, and hey, that's an easy entry out of the way. Plus, I really had minimal interest in revisiting Leprechaun for the first time since my childhood.
Initially unknown to me, the background to this picture apparently began nearly two decades earlier under a different title, but with presumably the same basic "nature gone wild" theme that proved to be all the rage during that decade (most likely due to some little film about a killer shark). Does this mean that the film feels dated? Not at all. In fact, its dialogue, tone, and even color schemes SCREAM of early 1990s home video releases. Heck, it even has a brief appearance from resident C-lister Clint Howard (Carnosaur, Apollo 13), and for the most part, his entire career's purpose past a certain point was to die on screen. He's like the American equivalent of Sean Bean, though perhaps more distinctive-looking, and I'm not too sure if that's a compliment or not.
There is a surprising amount of recognizable names and faces in Ticks, including Seth Green (Family Guy, Robot Chicken, Buffy The Vampire Slayer) and Alfonso Ribiero (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Silver Spoons). I'm well aware that the former looks back at this film as more of a learning experience and rather silly time in his acting career, but before more hardcore horror fans can spit venom his way for seemingly mocking their childhood memories, I ask you this: can you honestly blame him? Consider that before completion, most of the production was focused on making this into a serious scary picture. Instead, director Tony Randel (Hellbound: Hellraiser II) and his crew realized halfway through that the film was going to be a dud no matter what happened, so Green and company just decided to go all out and try to have as much fun as they can amidst the fairly terrible dialogue and absurdly goofy final act.
That isn't to say that Ticks is an awful movie....well, okay, there's certainly a large chunk of the picture that is. While sporting a surprisingly lower body count than I recalled, I was disappointed that what kills we had, be they fully realized or teased, were either derivative of similar films from around the time (Critters 3 and Alien 3 immediately came to mind) or just fairly poor in general. True, there is a lot of goo and gross-out moments to be had that can get under the skin of the more easily squeamish viewers (another thing that I completely forgot about), but outside of one sequence involving the metamorphosis of a giant arachnid, I found myself wanting a little more blood. After all, that's what these little buggers are known for feasting on, are they not? One can't help but chuckle when they crawl and skitter across the walls though, as it sounds eerily similar to the wind-up toys that you would buy as prank gifts when you were younger.
I don't think there's any easy way to say it, but Ticks is a fairly bad movie. It's dumb, somewhat boring whenever the creatures aren't on screen, and full of some hilariously inept or vibrantly stupid performances. But hey, I knew all of this before I had even reached the age of ten when I first saw segments of it on afternoon television blocks. Hence, I can't bring myself to hate this piece of nostalgic cheese, especially since there were far more idiotic and absurd concepts being released to VHS around this time. Sadly, Ticks is currently out of print on both DVD and Blu-Ray, meaning that it goes for a rather high amount of money if you want to buy it. Still, one can always hope to catch a random showing on cable TV, or seek out rips on torrent and streaming sites.
Tomorrow, we dabble with a sequel to one of my favorite Unseen Terror picks of all time...
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