B-MOVIE BLOCKBUSTER: Spawn Of The Slithis
BACK OF THE VHS BLURB:
In the canals of Venice beach, people and dogs are being mutilated. The police suspect a mutilation cult, but a lone high school journalism teacher suspects it is something more ludicrous. To his mild amazement, he is correct, as the culprit is a giant humanoid from the dee...depths. As the monster wreaks havoc on the local homeless population and ship based swinging singles, our fearless journalism instructor changes outfits and looks to find the truth about the slithis.
So...WTF did I just watch?
MOVIE: Spawn of the Slithis
YEAR: 1978
DIRECTOR: Stephen Traxler
CAST: Alan Blanchard, Judy Motulsky, J.C. Claire, Dennis Falt, Mello Alexandria
B-MOVIE HIGHLIGHTS:
Holy shit. This movie is something special. When we talk about b-movies, and why they are so fun to watch, this film is all that and more. It's hard to pick out the examples of how this movie hits on all the classic low budget horror cylinders, so let's just take a ride down this masterpiece.
The movie's opening shots lead us to a couple of kids who are failing pretty bad at playing frisbee, but dammit, they do look the part. After an errant throw, they find mutilated dogs. If you have that issue with films and dogs dying, this one is gnarly right at the start but its only people after that, so it’s okay.
Anyway we jump into the into the intro for our hero, the always slightly annoyed and kind of a dick to everyone around him Wayne Connors (Alan Blanchard) and his wife, Jeff Connors (Judy Motulsky). Yes, her name is Jeff. We find Wayne looking over the media talking about the dog mutilations being a possible cult, but he saw another one earlier in the week, and says it must have been an animal.
Later that night, a couple living off one of the canals is attacked by the creature. We get a shot from the creature's perspective, and it seems to be looking through a plastic bottle with a hole in it. Pollution, man. It gets everywhere. He breaks into the people's house and reveals how fucking buff he is. He must lift weights or some shit, he is like the Scott Steiner of fishmen.
After killing the couple and leaving their bodies torn to pieces, the news reaches our intrepid Wayne, and he is barley interested, but he'll look into it for us. The plan? Simple as fuck. Go to an active crime scene late and night and just walk the fuck in and snoop around. After looking over the carnage, Wayne get's snuck up on by a motorcycle cop who apparently drives the most silent motorcycle ever made. After finding a man wandering a crime scene the night after a double homicide, the officer has a sneezing attack. Through the sneezes, he figures this Wayne guy is alright and divulges case details right then and there. Solid police work my man.
Wayne finds a strange muddy substance, and takes it to his nerdy doctor friend with a foreign sounding name, Dr. John (J.C. Claire). After analysis, he comes to tell Wayne the old fairy-tale of the slithis. How it was found to be a radioactive organic mud that could create life, and the scientist who discovered it never figured out why the fuck they didn't win any awards for finding living, life making mud. Anyway, Jeff thinks it’s all bullshit but Wayne is all in because now he isn't teaching journalism, he is journalism now.
The slithis then starts attacking the homeless because they are easy prey, because as you know, being shit faced on the pier is just making yourself a target to mud-born fishmen on steroids. The police keep thinking it’s a cult, and we get a great interview with a homeless guy in front of a roller skate rink. He tells us how he sleeps in the johns down by the beach, and how they got no door locks. You just need to know this scene is in the film.
Wayne is now dressed as if he is bringing Dennis Nedry the shaving cream can for embryo stealing, and he talks to the homeless man who was attacked. He gets like no info. JOURNALISM AT ITS FINEST. He then gets in touch with the original slithis scientist, Dr. Erin Burick (Dennis Falt). Wayne and Jeff, his wife, go to meet the doctor. Now, what we get here is an eclectic domed beach house, with a bald man with a half mutated face. He his wearing riding boots, a dapper tan suit, and is smoking from a pipe while holding a glass of what I can only assume is expensive wine. I've never seen something so bad look so damn aristocratic in my life.
The doctor talks about how to check the soil for slithis, and Wayne goes out the next day to look for a diver while dressed in his Big Lebowski cosplay. We meet Christopher Columbus Alexander (Mello Alexandria), a black fisherman who promptly makes fun of the white boy but takes the job. Slithis hunt commence.
They initially don't find shit, but they come up with a theory. They found no fish in the dive, so this slithis has been eating fish non-stop, hence it's domineering physique. So they cut off the canals and hope it will swim away. BIG FUCKING NO THERE PAL. Instead, it preys upon an older due who picks up a barely legal girl at the turtle races. YES THIS IS ACCURATE. After a long drive to the docks in his sweet VW Bug, they get on his ship, which has a bistro set for two, with A FUCKING FRAMED HEADSHOT OF THE DUDE ON THE TABLE. HIS SWAG IS PALPABLE. Well, it's all for not, because slithis has come to join in, and the threesome quickly becomes just a heavyweight fish man eating two people on a boat. A side note that the framed headshot becomes a caricature mid-attack and then back to photographic headshot after. It's just so fucking funny to see.
Well now we get the best police chief of all time losing his fucking mind with Wayne and his slithis antics. This police chief acts like he is in a Shakespeare theater performance and his life depends on the amount of acting he can plug into every second. It's so out of place that it makes you feel like you suddenly started a different film.
Well, with everything going to shit, the hunt for the slithis falls into the hands of a shitty journalist, his wife named Jeff, a nerdy doctor, and a fisherman. They are not the team for the job, but they are the team at the end of this film. The slithis attacks Jeff and the doctor on the shore, where the doctor fends him off by driving his car into the ocean, and then swimming back to shore. It's called a pro gamer move, or so I've heard. But alas, the slithis is still alive.
It heads out to the boat where Wayne, Chris, and two white guys whose only job on the boat is to add to the kill count, are searching the night waters. As Wayne and Chris work on the engine, one dude is looking at the water, constantly, and then turns around to say like three words. As he turns back, a big fish palm smacks him in the face and brutalizes him. WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU LOOKING AT BRO? IT WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU THE WHOLE TIME!
The other dude is strung up and disemboweled by slithis, and then a large fight ensues. Now, this slithis creature in some shots has a burned off hand, and in others is doesn't. It seems there is a deleted scene that is sorely needed to be put into a collector's edition of this film, but now we can only deal with it as a mystery. After several shotgun blasts, ax chops, and a swinging dropkick, the slithis is staggered. Both Wayne and Chris are bleeding, but who cares, right? Turns out just a small anchor slightly piercing the chest of the slithis is enough to kill it. If they had only known earlier...
Well, as they push it back into the sea for absolutely no good reason whatsoever, they try to get back to the front of the boat and head in, but then Wayne's foot is gripped by the slithis. The numbers don't lie, and they spell disaster for Wayne at Sacrifice. I mean, uh, never mind.
That's how the film ends. Is the slithis dead? Is Wayne a good journalist? Is the police chief still over acting? We may never know the answers but what we do know is this is a must watch B-MOVIE BLOCKBUSTER.
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