You are currently viewing Ticks (1993) – Baby Seth Green and mega grossout

Ticks (1993) – Baby Seth Green and mega grossout

What happens if you mix steroids with marijuana and ticks? You get grossly oversized ticks wanting to eat Seth Greens face in the most terrifying manner. Ticks is one of the first movies in a good while that made my skin crawl.

The premise is nothing too advanced. A coupled duo of social workers take inner city trouble kids to a forest retreat to… Get them not to be troublemakers? It’s not really explained or explored any further than that. But as with any horror forest retreat there be marijuana-growing rednecks in the woods that just so happens to be using steroids. These steroids then mutate the local tick wildlife into horrible fist sized bloodsuckers.

What makes this movie as skin crawling as it is are the practical effects. The gore is gooey, pulsating and looks rubbery. The ticks themselves look real enough and really goopy and gross. Combine that with the idea of hundreds of giant ticks charging at you to bite you and you got yourself one hell of a terrifying prospect. With a cast of big shots of today such as Seth Green, Ami Dolenz and Alfonso Ribeiro you get quite the high production value. The acting is spot on and just goofy enough to make you smile at times. It is a rather absurd film idea after all.

Ticks is not the kind of movie you watch in order to get a great cinema experience. You rather watch it to be utterly grossed out, enjoy a lot of goofy dialogue. Fun sidenote is that this movie was made by the same director as Hellraiser 2 and with all the love for practical effects that’s in this, it really shows. The biggest knitpick I have is that there were way too many survivors. I wanted more grossout scenes than what we were treated to. But I guess I am just being a spoiled gore brat at this point. I genuinely think anyone who loves practical gore will love this movie. And hey, it’s readily available on Prime! Enjoy

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