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Ticks (1993) - Tony Randall


Ticks is a low-budget, sci-fi, monster movie that had buckets of guts and gore. It starred a really young Seth Green among some big names like Clint Howard and the one and only, Carlton himself Alfonso Ribeiro. It is really cheaply made, but holds up well as a Cult Classic. 

Seth Green and Carlton are members of an inner-city youth program with three other "teens". They are escorted on a camping trip to Big Bear where giant ticks, unintentionally mutated from marijuana growers, attack the group. These ticks are especially nasty. They can bite you, releasing venom making their hosts, trip balls. The ticks also infest their victims, filling their body cavity with other monster arachnids. It doesn't help that the kids are angsty and virtually out of control. It also doesn't help that the "adults" chaperoning, are dicks and have secret motives. Oh, and it also doesn't help that racist, redneck weirdos are running around terrorizing the kids.



I remember watching this movie when I was about fourteen on Sci-Fi Channel... Yup, they used to call it Sci-Fi. The production is actually better than current movies that they show on SyFy, The giant mutated bugs, giant being the size of a baseball and later the size of a lazy-boy. Chow down on their victims quite viciously. These scenes are all gory but not scary. The movie is too laughable to be scary. 

I recommend this movie to anyone that wants to see Carlton say "fuck" and use a switch-blade. It's actually entertaining and worked as one of my 31 Movies of Halloween. Don't watch this movie and expect an Oscar worthy film. No. Just get drunk and make fun of this one with some friends. You won't have a bad time. 

Director: Tony Randall
Country: USA

Did ya know...
"I've killed about as many people as you've boned." Seth Green poked fun at the film during an appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman in 1999. During a Q&A at Dragon*Con in 2008, Ami Dolenz said that one of her main memories of making the film is the fake blood, which would stick to her skin and hair. David Gale had originally been cast as the heavy, but died a year before production started.

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Anonymous said…
They ought to make twenty or twenty hundred more of the new insects body mutation, special makeup effects horror movies. Maybe they should even make ten or thirty new "THE TICKS" as Sequels, but I think they should a few or several Physical Body Inflating to Creature Bulging Transformation special makeup effects.

I hope that other film makers will make new 'The Ticks' movies really soon and make other different Bug Mutation horror movies also.
December 3, 2013 at 1:44 PM
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