Review of Squirm (1976) by Robert B — 20 May 2012

"Squirm', Jeff Lieberman's debut feature is a fun, little horror film about a small southern town that is terrorized by aggressive, blood-thirsty worms who've become hostile becomes of downed power lines disrupting them, after a massive storm.

Being a film about Killer worms, the story builds very slowly, details about the worms being a real threat to the town are discovered by Geri and her out of town New-Yorker boyfriend, Mick. The film uses this outsider-trope to it's advantage as the two are quite isolated in their discoveries about the worms, mostly because of the town's folks unwillingness to/distrust towards Mick because of he's from the big city.

This is a pretty fun little undercurrent of the film-the differences/prejudices which exist between the Southerners and Northerners. This is definitely Lieberman's least interesting film, but being his first, there are still a lot of nice indicators of the director he was capable of becoming, particularly with Blue Sunshine.

For once, Lieberman's use of music and sound to instill horror and fear in the image is used to good effect throughout this film, with music often being instrumental in adding to the horror of the imagery.

The very beginning of this film is a great example-an opening montage of lightning, strong winds and insects becoming increasingly hostile is a really strong merging of sight and sound. It's not a particularly scary film but considering what it's about, it could be considering how many extreme close-ups of slimey worms exist.

I particularly was a fan of the boat sequence and the stuff towards the end where Lieberman shoots some sequences essentially from the worm's POV.