An alien invades a small town where not much happens. He looks like a needle and he shoots himself inside a car dealer named Grant and takes over his body. Grant's wife, Starla, notices that he is acting weird and he looks like he has a disease which concerns her. Grant injects hundreds of his offspring inside a woman’s stomach and feeds her the pets he has been killing. Sheriff Bill Pardy shows up at Starla’s house informing her a girl disappeared and that they suspect Grant had something to do with it after people saw him go into her house. Starla doesn’t know anything. Grant has been hiding something in the basement and Starla breaks the lock on the door to see what he has been doing. She finds all these dead pets down there. She calls Bill to come back to her house. Grant shows up out of nowhere and tries to strangle Starla. Bill shows up with other police officers and point their guns at Grant. They are freaked out when Grant’s arm becomes something like a tentacle. Grant runs outside and disappears. Bill and the officers go on a man hunt for Grant. Starla goes with them hoping she can try and reason with Grant. Grant has become a hideous monster when they find him. Grant flees into the woods. Bill and the others find the missing girl, Brenda, and she is as big as a house. Brenda explodes and these alien slugs come out. These slugs are putting themselves in people’s mouths to get inside and take over their mind. They are all being controlled by Grant as mind slaves.
Blaine: James Gunn is a big fan of the 1980s horror flicks and he wrote “Slither” to honor those movies. During the first half of his career, James Gunn wrote a lot of screenplays, including the live action “Scooby-Doo” movies, but he was more into directing. James wanted his first directorial debut to be “Super”, which he didn’t get to do until a few years later. He wrote “Slither” just to sell and make some money off of. He never thought he would direct it. Universal Pictures bought the rights to the script. James Gunn’s friend, Paul Brooks, thought that he should direct “Slither”. James thought about it and decided to do it.
Starla is married to Grant, but she is not in love with him. She loves someone else, Bill Pardy, who she has known since they were kids. But Bill made a mistake by shunning her. Starla’s mother had left her, the father was a drinker and they were poor. Then Grant moved into town and provided Starla with an education so she could have a future and she payed him back by marrying him. Starla was named after a waitress James had met once at a Denny’s. James Gunn thought of Starla as the blonde girl from a Hitchcock film, but also a heroine. James watched movies like “Seabiscuit” and “Wet Hot American Summer” with Elizabeth Banks in both of them and he thought she was the right person to play Starla. James tracked Elizabeth down and begged her to do this part. Elizabeth Banks thought that James Gunn and her were friends, but they weren’t and they had never met each other before. However they did become close friends after that and she took a liking to him.
James Gunn was a fan of Michael Rooker for years and loved his work, so he thought he should play Grant, the husband who becomes this outer space squid. James sent the script to Michael and during his audition, James Gunn would laugh, clap for him and bow down to him because he loved his acting so much. Michael Rooker would show up to set everyday full of energy and ready to work. The prosthetics Michael had to wear when he is a monster were heavy and it would injure his back. Michael would have to see a masseuse everyday after work. James is good friends with filmmaker Joss Whedon (The Avengers) and Joss recommended that Nathan Fillon play Bill after working with him a few times. James agreed that Nathan was a good fit for Bill. It wasn’t till they were shooting a scene for “Slither" that James Gunn was very happy that he hired Nathan.
It took a while to find the right actor to play the mayor, Jack MacReady, and it was a difficult role to cast. 50 to 60 people auditioned for that role, but they were acting like they were in a sitcom. James wanted an actor who could make it feel real. Gregg Henry was the last person of the day to audition for the part and James Gunn’s prayers were answered because Gregg put so much into his performance. Mayor Jack MacReady is my favorite character in the film because he makes me laugh with his reactions and all those words that come out of his mouth. My favorite scene of him is after the worms explode out of Brenda and flee out into the woods, he is freaking out not knowing what the hell is going on and he says "I watch Animal Planet all the fucking time!”
A lot of young women auditioned for the role of Kylie, the teenager who knows what the alien is and what he plans to do with the human race. James Gunn and his casting director auditioned a lot of women in the United States, but they didn’t seem good enough to play Kylie. While they were scouting spots in Canada to shoot the movie, they auditioned girls there. Tania Saulnier was 21 at the time and when she went in to audition everyone in the room thought she was beautiful. During her audition she made everyone in the room believe she was Kylie and that’s how she got the part. The problem I have with “Slither” is Bill doesn’t want anyone to know Kylie saved him from a crazy deer that was one of Grant’s mind slaves. Instead he wants to lie and say he saved her from the deer. You gotta give the girl some credit for being a bad ass. Plus she is the only character in the film who thinks fast and pulls that alien slug out of her mouth before it goes inside and takes full control of her mind and body.
There were two scenes in the movie that the studio wanted to be pulled out or for James Gunn to change. They didn’t like seeing Jack MacReady vomit in the bushes after being grossed out by Brenda as a blob. So that had to go. Another thing James Gunn had to get rid of was a scene showing an X-ray of the worm getting into the brain of a victim just like when it shows the needle going through Grant’s body to get to his brain. James Gunn wanted there to be shots do by a crane, but a lot of the budget went into the creature effects so they only could afford it for two shots. One of the shots they did with the crane was when Kylie escapes her sisters’ bedroom through the window and onto the porch where the slugs are trying to get her.
The concept artists had a hard time understanding what James Gunn wanted for the look of the Brenda blob. They drew several designs, but none of them were what James wanted. Finally, James shouted out to them that she is this giant boob and her head is the nipple and they all thought that was weird, but it’s what James wanted. It was hard to find someone who would want to play Brenda because it required her to wear prosthetics and be in a fat suit. No one wanted the part. Brenda James said yes to the project after reading the first part of the script. It wasn’t till after she was cast that she learned she would have to be this blob. The first time I saw Brenda as a blob was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before in a movie. It’s weird to see her like that, but at the same time I like it because of the characters’ reactions when they see her all big. Another reaction I love is when Bill and Kylie are seeing Starla get all wild by putting something sharp through one of the mind slave’s neck. It makes me laugh all the time I watch it.
Universal Pictures knew that “Slither” would be a movie critics wouldn’t like and they didn’t want to screen it for them. They made “Slither” for people who love horror comedies. What worried James Gunn about “Slither” was that it might not make any money at the box office and that made him think making a horror comedy wasn’t a good idea because a lot of classic horror comedies didn’t make that much at the box office. James Gunn then decided to show “Slither” to critics because he had a feeling that it might get good reviews and even though it wouldn’t be a box office hit, still it would be nice if it got something good. Universal agreed to do it and James Gunn’s prediction came true. It wasn’t a box office hit, but the reviews were good. There’s an after credit ending showing a cat going to Grant’s brain after he has been blown up. The cat licks it and the needle that was controlling Grant comes out and goes into the cat. James Gunn said there won’t be a sequel to “Slither” even though there’s an after credit ending that looks like it could lead to one. People ask James if there will be a sequel to “Slither”, but his answer is always no. The worms from “Slither” got to be a Easter egg in “Guardians of the Galaxy”. They are apart of the Collector’s collection.
My rating on “Slither” is four and a half out of five stars.
