The Crawlers (1991)

Expected more

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Contamination .7 (1990) * 1/2 (out of 4) D'Amato was a director with many different genres attached to his name and here he once again steps into the horror field but the end results are less than stellar. In the film, a woman (Mary Sellers) returns home to her small town and sees that nothing much has changed. The only thing going on is a nuclear plant in town that is dumping toxic waste in the woods, which is making the tree roots come to life and start attacking people. If you remember, in THE EVIL DEAD there was a pretty graphic and tense scene where a tree comes to life. If you're expecting that same quality here then you're going to be disappointed because this is a pretty poor film from start to finish with very little to recommend. Also released as THE CRAWLERS (its U.S. title) and TROLL III, this movie really seems lost as to what it's trying to do as it's clearly meant for horror fans but it delivers no scares, no violence, no gore and not even any nudity, at least for the first hour. The movie features your typical bad performances but thankfully most are so bad that you're bound to get several laughs out of them including an old man who is constantly throwing out one or two words at bad times just to say he agrees or disagrees with someone. The film contains just about every bad thing you'd expect from a movie like this and that includes (but is not limited to) the score, the cinematography, the editing and the special effects. The one bit of blood is a scene where a man gets a root through the mouth and then eye. The effect is incredibly bad but at least there was some blood. The final thirty-minutes of this movie is where things finally pick up as the redneck town decides to fight back and try to destroy the roots. There are so many logical issues with what happens but at least the entertainment value picks up as there's just one dumb scene after another. I love the fact that they're dealing with toxic waste yet everyone is just rolling around in it and even letting their children mess around with it. We get some incredibly silly stock footage as well as a helicopter crash using the worst toy I've seen in any movie. The final ten-minutes also feature a lot more root attacks than the previous eighty so that is a good thing. Fans of the genre would be best advised to skip this turkey but fans of bad cinema might want to check it out just for the end. I'm really not sure how much D'Amato director or if Laurenti took most of the shots but TROLL 2 looks rather smart compared to this thing. D'Amato's ex leading lady Laura Gemser did the Costume Design here (which is basically just jeans and t-shirts).

Big city girl Josie (Mary Sellers) has just arrived back in her small Alaskan hometown for an extended stay with her mother and kid brother, and decides to possibly reconcile with her former high school boyfriend Matt (Jason Saucier) while she's there. Down at the nearby nuclear power plant, illegal chemical dumping (part of an obligatory and half-assed cover-up subplot) has resulted in animated, super-intelligent, radioactive tree roots that are killing everyone off. Victims include an obnoxious sheriff, a female hitchhiker passing through town, a farmer and his wife, a hooker with a heart of gold and a gas station attendant and his pet dog Chester. The roots mostly just trip or strangle people and make a hilarious whip-cracking noise whenever they attack. They also make a (toy) helicopter explode by pulling it about two feet to the ground. During the film's one and only bloody scene, the roots go into a guy's mouth and then poke the eyeball out of a mannequin head. And that's about all she wrote with this dull-as-dishwater waste of time, which would be totally forgotten by now if not for a misleading title change linking it to the notoriously awful camp classic TROLL 2. So be forewarned, no trolls make an appearance in CONTAMINATION.7 (aka TROLL 3). Hell, there aren't even any goblins.And unfortunately, while TROLL 2 failed in an enjoyable awful way, this one fails to reach that film's same level of redeeming unintentional hilarity. Though thoroughly inept, it's also boring, clichéd, slow-moving and far too tame to really be enjoyable. The fact they used inexperienced local "talent" to fill out the cast, along with providing these laughably bad amateur thesps with truly rotten dialogue throughout the film, is the only point of possible enjoyment, though even that got old quickly.Probably best known as THE CRAWLERS here in the States, though the version I viewed was titled CREEPERS. Don't know if that's a cut version of this film or not, but I highly doubt it. I'm also not sure of Joe D'Amato's actual involvement since his name (or "David Hills" for that matter) is nowhere to be found in the credits. Only one director is listed and that's "Martin Newlin;" the same alias used by Fabrizio Laurenti for the Linda Blair/David Hasselhoff film WITCHERY (1988).

This movie was so ridiculous I had to continuously check the counter on my VCR to see how much time was left. There were barely any good lines in the film. I thought it would at least come close to the masterpiece of Troll 2, but I should have known nothing will ever come close to that A+ piece of work. I believe the cast had more potential to make us laugh but apparently the director tried too hard to be serious. I try not to get caught up in things like logic in these kinds of movies, but I mean come on !!! the helicopter exploded two feet from the ground. Anyway, when I found out there was a sequel to Troll 2, I thought it would be superb, but obviously I was wrong. At least I only paid $1.75 for the VHS copy, and as a friend of mine pointed out, it's really sad when the shipping of a movie out weighs the actual cost. Anyways, don't bother even renting this movie, just watch Troll 2 an excessive amount of times.

The movie that end all bad movies - I could do better with a videocamera and no script. . I've seen a couple of bad films in my life, but I never have seen a movie as bad as this one before. This movie is a HUGE mistake, After I watched The Crawlers, I got sick for the entire week in bed because of it. But you have to rent this movie, trust me folks...the worst effects, and down right horrible acting...but that's what's good about it! I couldnt stop laughing for days. All in all, the best worst movie of all time. Rent and watch it with friends for good laughs.