Of Unknown Origin (1983)

Compared to Leviathan, the second George P. Cosmatos-directed movie with Peter Weller in the lead role, Of Unknown Origin is a more grounded (and slightly less damp) creature feature, one of those edge cases where the “monster” is a regular, everyday animal that just happens to behave in a way that no real animal ever has. But there are other ways to paint a common vermin, in this case a rat, as monstrous other than exploiting common phobias or pure schlocky exaggeration—this is an urban version of man-against-nature, with the central conflict specifically played to Weller’s character, escalating what should have been a normal pest control problem into an obsessive battle to protect his symbols of upward mobility and masculine success. Given that the movie includes its lead character pulling out a copy of Moby-Dick AND watching a film version of “The Old Man and the Sea”, it’s not exactly subtle about the kind of narrative it’s trying to weave.

Slugs (1988)

Moving from household pests to garden pests, Slugs faces one potential hurdle to its status as horror: slugs are not particularly scary. Some people might find them creepy or gross, but probably not scary. I’m sure that was probably part of the appeal of making a horror story about them, though—they are so common, and so seemingly innocuous, that to turn them into bloodthirsty monsters creates a mildly subversive “horror of the everyday” scenario (they’re also weird enough as animals that actively ignoring their real biology won’t be noticed by most.) That’s all well and good, but you’re still going to need to put in some effort to make slugs come off as menacing, and this movie does try various things to do that—it doesn’t succeed, but it is sort of funny to see it try.

Bug (1975)

I hope you didn’t get your fill of cockroaches from the last entry, because here’s even more of them! Bug comes with two major distinctions off the top: it’s the fourth movie I’ve written about with animal and/or plant photography from Ken Middleham, master of the artful micro-creature shot since at least The Hellstrom Chronicle, and it’s the final film produced (and co-written) by William Castle , master of the gimmick horror movie since at least The Tingler. Middleham’s contributions are front-and-centre, with the same sort of creative creepy crawly camerawork that you saw in Phase IV, which had been released the previous year. The contributions of Castle are maybe not as obvious—when I think of his classic movies, I think of things with a bit more macabre joviality to them than what you see in this; it also lacks one of his signature theatrical gimmicks, although he claimed to have taken out a one million dollar life insurance policy for the movie’s “lead cockroach”, and apparently tried to find some way to give random audience members the sensation of things crawling on their legs. On the other hand, Castle has always had fairly eclectic tastes when it came to thrillers, and this is a very eclectic movie, the sum of many different clashing ideas that produces something truly and memorably strange.