This wonderfully silly late 80's gigantic lethal bug on the loose creature feature manages to be good, brisk, dopey fun if one catches it in a properly childish state of mind. The crazy plot, cooked up with lotsa choice tried'n'true fright flick clichés by hack screenwriter George Goldsmith (the guy to blame for stretching "Children of the Corn"'s laboriously drawn-out plot to a clunky 90 minute length), has a giant, deadly, mutated insect stalking and killing people in a hospital, a plague caused by the bug infecting several patients so the building has to be quarantined (leading to your standard beat-the-clock tension and, better still, providing as good an excuse as any to keep folks trapped in the hospital so the bug can off 'em), likable take-charge macho cop Steve Railsback standing up to the slimy sucker, and SCTV veterans Joe Flaherty and Robin Duke supplying hilariously tasteless low-brow comic relief as a histrionic doofus and his equally hysterical pregnant wife, respectively. Helping out the stalwart Railsback are gutsy doctor Gwynth Walsh and nerdy bespectacled entomologist Don Lake, while Susan Anspach as another brave physician looks concerned on the sidelines and crusty hospital administrator John Vernon sourly grumbles his disapproval of the whole nutty mess throughout. Future star watchers will want to keep their eyes peeled for a very young and girlish Sarah Polley as a wee tyke the bug tries to snack on (the drooling fiend feeds on calcium, you see); at one point Railsback runs down a hallway carrying Polley in his arms while the bug chases after them!
Yeah, as one could surmise from the above synopsis this is a seriously goofy and ridiculous affair, but the spirited direction by seasoned Canadian horror pic helmer William Fruet (his other credits include the savagely effective "The Last House on the Left" cash-in copy "Death Weekend," the spooky "Funeral Home," and the laughably lousy giant killer snake stinker "Spasms"), the surprisingly sound and straight performances from the admirably earnest cast (save Duke and Flaherty, who both mug it up gleefully with often sidesplitting results), the fiercely energetic and unflagging narrative momentum, a genuinely cool creature, a reasonable amount of gooey gore, and the inspired blending of 80's type gunky splatter with an endearingly hokey 50's style over-sized mankind-noshing killer bug premise make this thoroughly inane nonsense quite entertaining just the same.
Yeah, as one could surmise from the above synopsis this is a seriously goofy and ridiculous affair, but the spirited direction by seasoned Canadian horror pic helmer William Fruet (his other credits include the savagely effective "The Last House on the Left" cash-in copy "Death Weekend," the spooky "Funeral Home," and the laughably lousy giant killer snake stinker "Spasms"), the surprisingly sound and straight performances from the admirably earnest cast (save Duke and Flaherty, who both mug it up gleefully with often sidesplitting results), the fiercely energetic and unflagging narrative momentum, a genuinely cool creature, a reasonable amount of gooey gore, and the inspired blending of 80's type gunky splatter with an endearingly hokey 50's style over-sized mankind-noshing killer bug premise make this thoroughly inane nonsense quite entertaining just the same.