aka Some Things Never Die

• Directed by Lorenzo Doumani
• Written by Malick Khoury
• Starring
  • Katherine Heigl
  • Randy Quaid
  • Brenda Doumani
  • James Doohan
  • George Takei
• Produced by Lorenzo Doumani and Steven R. Stevens

I have a reputation as a story Nazi, but I’m really a pussycat. I don’t expect all movies to fulfill some lofty measure of film art; all I hope for is a movie that achieves what it set out to do. In the case of Bug Buster, then, I went into it with the expectation that it would round the bases of a derivative and cheap but fun B-movie, and in this I wasn’t disappointed, so I judge the movie as a success. That metric puts me in the minority of online reviewers on this one, but I’ve never shied away from being a loner and a rebel.

“Only $2.99/minute to fulfilling all your ass-kicked fantasies!”

Bug Buster takes place in the remote California town of Mountview, where Gil Griffin (Bernie Kopell!) has just bought a vacation lodge as sour-grapes career change after he was downsized. His wife Cammie (Anne Lockhart) is supportive and upbeat; their twentyish daughter Shannon (Katherine Heigl, well before TV’s Roswell and Grey’s Anatomy) is a little hesitant, but at least she doesn’t go on a full-bore whiny tirade about being uprooted from the city, like most movie offspring. Shannon doesn’t seem to have much to characterize her in terms of hobbies or interests or career aspirations; her only defining trait we see is her fear of insects — yeah, we’re sure THAT won’t come up — and the related recurring nightmare of her in bed, covered by cockroaches. (This is realized by shooting the actress in a nightie with, yes, live cockroaches crawling all over her bare skin. I can just imagine the casting call on this one.)

Mountview seems like an idyllic vacation town, but all is perhaps not well. Just before the Griffins arrive, local couple Steve and Veronica (David Lipper and Meredith Salenger) go for a moonlit skinny-dip in the lake on which the town business centers. (All right, a “skivvy-dip” — gotta keep that PG-13 rating.) Something ominously brushes by Steve and nips Veronica’s leg. They manage to make it to shore, where old Sheriff Carlton (James Doohan!) and his young deputy Bo (Ty O’Neal) take it very seriously — as Carlton pointedly says later, he doesn’t want to be like the sheriff in Jaws who refused to close the beaches.

ew ew ew ew EW ew ew

So this is the situation that Shannon Griffin, our passive protagonist, lands in. Mysterious insect-related deaths multiply, including the male lead of the country-music ensemble that plays at the lodge (Johnny Legend! How sad is it that I recognize him from his bit role in Bride of Re-Animator?). A deep-water fish called a scarfish is found near the surface, and assumed to be a single anomaly that caused the “attacks,” but when local vet Laurie Casey (Brenda Doumani — do I detect a hint of nepotism?) cuts it open, what initially looks like an egg sac is instead filled with a mature cockroach and thousand larvae. Shannon also finds herself in the middle of a love-triangle between decent blue-collar Steve, and Veronica, who thinks that all local men should be hers by virtue of her being the small-town sexpot.

Our Trek quotient is upped when Laurie calls her old professor, Dr. Fujimoto (George Takei), who thirteen years ago warned the governor against using an experimental pesticide on a widespread medfly infestation. When she sends him the roach she took from the scarfish, his suspicions are confirmed: what appears to be an ordinary cockroach is instead a mutant which gestates inside living flesh. (Unlike Doohan, who’s a major player in the action, Takei’s scenes are all shot separate from the rest of the cast on a lab set, with his only interaction with the other characters taking place over the phone. Pity; I would have liked to see Doohan and Takei share the screen.)

“Where’s the ’stun’ setting on this thing?!”

Now with all the tourists scared away, a quarantine in place around the town, and Shannon’s dad’s investment in the lodge about to go belly-up, who can they turn to for help?

Well, there have been these over-the-top exterminator ads showing on every TV featuring the overcaffeinated, fatigues-clad General George (Randy Quaid), proclaiming himself to be the end-all be-all “pest eliminator.” So you know that eventually, a single phone call is going to bring his Humvee to Mountview, where he can light a cigarillo and fix the mutant roach problem with his steely glare…

Beakers? Of colored liquids?  But that must mean — there’s SCIENCE going on here!

As usual, this is a movie which doesn’t bear thinking about after the fact. Aside from the standard logistical problems that seem to show up in every horror movie set in a small town (no doctor closer than an hour for 11,000 residents, but a full-time sheriff and deputy?), it seems that someone couldn’t decide on exactly what bug we were dealing with; the dialog only mentioned mutated roaches, but almost every time we see more than one insect, it’s a mix of roaches and finger-sized millipedes. And it makes no sense for an insect with a parasitic life cycle to also be revealed in the end to by hive-based, complete with a “mother bug.” And then there’s the abortive attempt to tack on a theme of some sort; twice in the first twenty minutes, characters portentiously say, “Things happen for a reason” — then nary a peep or a corroborating event through the closing credits.

There are some things the Clearasil just won’t clear up.

On the other hand, anyone renting a movie about mutated bugs versus Randy Quaid in fatigues with a flamethrower shouldn’t be looking for verisimilitude. So what if there’s an ominous thunderstorm every night? So what if the sheriff turns to the vet for impromptu autopsies to save time? So what if crazy old Judediah (Dennis Fimple, one of Hollywood’s designated Homeless Person Actors) wanders around muttering apocalyptic warnings and peeping in Shannon’s window for no reason that relates to anything? It’s a quickly-made B-movie, with a lot of professionals showing up for a paycheck. I didn’t expect much but a mostly-cliched diversion out of it, any by that standard, it succeeds.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 10
• breasts: 1 (through bubble bath)
• explosions: 2
• dream sequences: 2
• ominous thunderstorms: 6
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 2
  • James Doohan and George Takei, obviously