Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Rosie Searle 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.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

krycek19 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.

BA_Harrison The year after Spielberg gave us his classic blockbuster Jaws, director Jeff Lieberman (Just Before Dawn, Satan's Little Helper) brought us a very different kind of killer animal/eco-horror movie—Squirm—which saw a small Southern community under attack from flesh-eating worms drawn to the surface by electricity surging from a fallen power line.Now worms aren't exactly renowned for being unpredictably violent, or indeed threatening in any way, shape, or form, meaning that Squirm is right up there with Slugs (1988) as far as silly killer invertebrate flicks are concerned. And try as he might, Lieberman simply cannot make his slimy pink critters the least bit frightening; indeed, showing them in extreme close up and having them screech and growl like wild animals only makes them funnier.With a very gradual build up, the first half of the film is almost completely devoid of worm action, and matters prove rather tedious until the final act. After much worm-less action, in which Southern gal Geri Sanders (Patricia Pearcy) and her boyfriend Mick (Don Scardino) try to discover what the hell is going on, Lieberman goes for goes for broke, offering quantity over quality, chucking in as many worms as his meager budget will allow. But unless you're seriously wormophobic (made up word), even the sight of thousands of the things wriggling in a heaving mass is unlikely to cause shivers of fear.The film's best moment comes when Fly Creek hick Roger Grimes (R.A. Dow) falls over whilst fishing, allowing a few of the ravenous worms to latch onto his face and burrow under the skin: the effects in this scene—by make-up legend Rick Baker—are actually rather nauseating. If the film had featured a lot less Nancy Drew/Hardy boys amateur detective work from Geri and Mick, and much more people being munched on by worms, this could have been great. Instead, it's barely mediocre.

Mr_Ectoplasma Jeff Lieberman's debut film "Squirm" has a rural Georgia town inundated with flesh- eating worms who have been summoned by electrical currents from fallen power lines in the aftermath of a storm. Down-home Southern girl Geri (Patricia Pearcy) is meanwhile being visited by her New Yorker boyfriend, Mick (Don Scardino), and needless to say, things in Fly Creek run amok.I've read multiple comments about this film essentially being a rendition of Hitchcock's "The Birds," rather with worms, and they couldn't be any more correct— Lieberman takes the template and runs with it by all means, but "Squirm" still retains so much charm and doses of wormy nastiness that I find it impossible not to love it.Admirable special effects on a shoestring budget are one noteworthy aspect of this film (early work by Rick Baker, who has went on to become a majorly successful makeup designer in Hollywood, is on display here), but perhaps its greatest achievement is the sense of unease that pervades even in spite of the inherent silliness of the plot. By some unidentifiable stroke of genius (or perhaps accident), "Squirm" never works its way into any sort of cornball hysteria— despite the fact that the film's antagonists are thousands of worms (and a worm-infested redneck), it still never manages to fall into the "so bad it's good" category that one might expect it to.The innocuous exposition of the film may have a great part in this in that it builds a certain kind of dread, but no matter the cause, the film maintains a healthy level of self- awareness and seriousness that really elevate it from standard low-budget creature fare. Don Scardino (who later appeared in another genre favorite of mine, "He Knows You're Alone") takes on the Tippi Hedren role as the borderline martyr figure— the New York stranger in town— and does it remarkably well. Patricia Pearcy, R.A. Dow, and stage actress Jean Sullivan all amp up their inner Southerner without falling too far into caricature, and each of the characters are memorable. The film's finale has all the worms you could ask for, and the entire event is just plain fun.Despite what preconceptions you may about "Squirm" (I had many), it is definitely a film that is worth the time for anyone who is a fan of '70s horror or creature features in general. The direction is classy and the production is remarkably sophisticated given the minuscule budget, and lends the film a Southern Gothic dread that coexists nicely with our ground-dwelling villains. Is it cheesy? Well, it's a film about flesh-eating worms, so, yes, in content, sure— but it's just got enough elegance to really pull itself off. 8/10.

trashgang Jeff Liebermann, the director of this movie really made a name in the genre, this flick Sqiurm is known for his juicy worms, but 5 years later he will make a classic Just Before Dawn, later on he made Satan's Little Helper. But back to the movie. The actors in it all are believable and really had to act into the worms itself. Most of them made it into the world of television series only Barbara Quinn (the girl making love with the sheriff) really made it in the horror genre, as seen in He Knows You Are Alone and Jaws 3 and others. It's made just before the start of the slasher era and wasn't a big success due being a creature feature, not done then, except for Jaws. It takes a while before the worms attack and when they do you only have one 'wormface'. There is no blood in it to mention but still you will be watching to the end just to see the real worms. And that's what made this movie a cult movie. There are really no effects used for the creatures, just some close up of the worms making creepy noises. It really was a low budget flick but it worked out fine. As said, don't expect gore or blood, just watch how many worms they used.