Top 5 Creepy, Creepy Crawly Horror Movies

Hi it’s me again your favourite new contributor Wolfman with another one of my series of bad animals in horror movies. This one concentrates on masses of nasty creepy crawly things in my Top 5… well ok Top 4 Creepy Crawly horror movies as one isn’t really a horror film but I feel warrants inclusion here.

In My Top 5 Creepy Crawly Horror Movies I am just including creatures of more or less normal size not the giant insects of the 1950′s sci-fi films or any of the flying variety ( which will have their own section later in the series ). So here we go in the usual reverse order:-

5. The Naked Jungle (1954)

We kick off our Top 5 Creepy Crawly horror films  with the film that isn’t really a horror film , it’s more of a romantic adventure but it has some of the most ferocious soldier ants shown on screen. In 1901, a plantation owner sends for a mail order bride and she arrives just as a mass of Marabunta ( soldier ) ants are devouring everything in their path and heading for the plantation.

It has been ages since I’ve seen this film but I have watched it multiple times and the first time I was quite young and I remember how terrified I was of the scenes with the ants swarming all over running, screaming people. The Naked Jungle features highly disturbing scenes that must have been strong for their time. In particularly a scene featuring a drunk being reduced to a skeleton and scenes of ants going for victims eyes in a frenzy resonate with me. The Naked Jungle is worth seeing and sitting through despite the romantic nonsense just to see the ant scenes. Star Charlton Heston, later had bigger things to worry about in later roles such as Mummies, Vampires, and most of Azathoth’s relations in ” Planet Of The Apes”. ( inside joke Azatoth is a long time site member who is an ape masquerading as a man )

4.Bug! (1975)

Bug is another film that used to turn up regularly on T.V in days of my youth. It is a scifi horror produced by William Castle that concerns a strain of mutant cockroaches released by an earthquake. The creepy crawlies have a strange ability to start fires and set living flesh alight and they cause death and destruction in a small town. They also have another trick up their sleeve, they are intelligent and can communicate with an investigating geologist.

It has been years since I have seen this, but it has some great scenes of horror e.g a bug attaching itself to a woman speaking on the phone to her ear and setting her hair alight and a disturbing scene where a cat is overrun and set ablaze by the fiery critters! The cat seems to be in distress and should be complimented for its acting ( well I hope it’s acting). The film gets silly towards the end when the cockroaches start spelling messages but it’s a good yarn. Bug stars Bradford Dillman, later to face more ravenous creatures in Joe Dante’s original classic ” Piranha” (1978)

3. Slugs ( 1988)

This is not a good film but somehow I still felt the need to put it on my list. I’ve only seen it once and that was enough but you must give it credit for sheer grossness and carnage. A sanitation worker discovers that what is responsible for a series of gruesome deaths are a breed of slug, mutated by pollution that now have a craving for human flesh.

Cue lots of scenes of gruesome and often repulsive carnage as thousands of the slimy molluscs attack people most memorably and repulsively in a restaurant where a customer eats some lettuce with slugs on it and they quickly reproduce inside his body and come teeming out his nose and eyes!

This film was supposedly based on Shaun Hutson’s novel but apparently when he saw the film he didn’t recognise it although he did think it was a lot of fun. I don’t share his view, I think SLUGS is cheap, repugnant and daft but it deserves a mention here.

2.Kingdom Of The Spiders ( 1977)

With Kingdom of the spiders we are talking about a classic in the genre! A Small town lies in the path of a horde of migrating tarantula spiders who take a liking to living flesh. A vet ( William Shatner) looking into the deaths of some animals tries to save the town. ( Seriously can you ever go wrong with William Shatner? )

If you don’t like spiders this film is not for you, some great scenes of chaos here again featuring hapless townsfolk running around with hordes of spiders all over them and injecting deadly poison into them.

A scene where a pilot of a bi plane is attacked in mid flight is particularly memorable as is the ending which features a rather nice twist to it.

1. Squirm (1976)

Squirm has the distinction of being the first 18 rated film I saw in the cinema and it has had a lasting effect on me. I am not keen on worms and this film has millions of the squirming critters and Robert Prince’s theme is really ominous and chilling over the credits.

The only thing scarier then worm’s is a creepy child’s voice singing a creepy ditty   ”…I can hear the dark, coming up the stairs, when you hear us scream you will know it’s there….” brrrrrr creepy!

An electrical storm sends millions of worms crazy and ravenous in a small South Georgia town and they attack the town’s population. This is one of the most effective of the genre to me, scary, cheesy, funny and repulsive but in a much more well thought out way then SLUGS was. The films share a similar scene, in Squirm a Sherriff in a restaurant is eating Spaghetti but guess what he ends up eating uuuugghhhh… you guessed it! Squirm has many memorable scene of worms one in particular featuring worms drilling into a man’s face which is very effective.

Well that’s the creepy crawlies done in my ongoing saga of Top Creature Features What will I feature next? You will just have to wait and see! Bye for now ghouls and ghoulies. Be sure to follow us on Facebook or join the community and chat me up ( I am wolfman1959 on the boards )