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The Mud Monster of Venice, or...
Spawn of the Slithis (1977)
Written and Directed by Stephen Traxler
Details at the IMDB, US.IMDB
No, he skid like a skate and berthed on her byrnie
and never a fear but they'll land him yet, slitheryscales on
liffeybank, times and times and halve a time with a pillow of sand to
polster him.
James Joyce (1882-1941)
During the late '70's, Venice, California, picked up a reputation for superficiality. Natives of this area would probably disagree with this stereotype.
But here's this movie and another instance of superficiality. According to legend, this movie had a freebie ad campaign. That is, you go to the movie and you get free stuff. In this case, you'd get a Slithis Survival Kit, which included a barf bag and a photograph of the monster. The picture was to ward off the monster.
We suspect that for the average viewer, the picture found a home on a dartboard. And the barf bag? If you stuck your head into it, the movie would look better..
Contents
The Plot
How Many Sheets Would a Sheet Slithis Slit....
We open with the credits . Superimposed over a long sequence aerial shots of Venice, CA, we get yellow letters. Individual cards are given a long period of time. (This also should serve as a warning. It appears they're trying to pad the movie's runtime by extending the credit sequence. What else will they pad?) Finally, we cut to two boys paying Frisbee in slow motion with cutesy chamber music. (Damn! Padding! We were warned.) They pass it back and forth at this pace for a while. (Jeez! Two minutes into this movie and I'm already contemplating eating my revolver.)
One of the boys chases the Frisbee in slow motion, which lands in slow motion next to a canal. He shouts to his friend, "Come quick!" His friend runs over in slow motion. (Gag! Hereafter, we will be referring to the abuse of slow motion and other offensive padding in this movie as motion At a Slithis's Pace™.) On the banks of the canal, there are two dead dogs, very messy. The boys get on their bikes and take off.
Elsewhere, our designated hero Wayne Connors (Alan Blanchard) is reading an article about the dog mutilations to his girlfriend or wife (Judy Motulsky). (The relationship is never clearly defined. Neither is the girl's name. According to the IMDB, this character's name is Jeff. We'd rather call her Mrs. Kotter, for reasons that will make sense as we go along.)
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| Just
sit right back And you'll hear a tale, A tale of a simple slith.... |
Wayne reads the morning paper. ("Oh, look! Richard Simmons is having a yard sale!") |
Wayne took some pictures of an earlier dog mutilation. While discussing this, he claims there are similarities to cattle mutilations. (Perhaps someone has been tipping dogs, too.) But he also says it looked like a piranha attack. While he's busy tangenting, Mrs. Kotter tells him that he's late. He responds to his own tardiness by complaining that his students don't do well in class.
Cut to night at a canal with the sound of bubbling water. From a monster's eye view, we understand that something with problematic corneas is approaching a dog. Then something human shaped goes through a screen door and starts knocking things over. A couple in bed hears the noise. The man doesn't want to get out of bed to go check. He insists it's the dog. The woman turns on a light. Finally (after this scene has moved At a Slithis's Pace™), he agrees to get up and check. He puts on his trousers while still bickering with his wife.
He goes into the kitchen. All he sees is a disordered mess. Then something growls and he screams. The woman comes out of the bedroom with a revolver. She turns on a light, sees something, and starts shooting. All we get to see is a finned shadow on the walls. Cut to an exterior shot with the sound of the woman screaming, followed by a quick shot of the couple's messy bodies.
And now, jump cut to a marching band on a playing field. Not only do they refuse to yield (to the movie), but they also form the letters PHS. (We suspect the filmmakers are celebrating the first human attack. There seems to be no other reason for showing this, other than as a product placement for PHS, whatever the heck that is. Pacific High School? Maybe. Please Halt Slithis? Why not.)
The scene shifts to a nearby school. Inside, Wayne complains about his students and the system. Near the end of this tirade, two students run to him with a radio. There's a news story about the two dead people. After the students leave, Mr. Kotter, er, Connors decides to go check out the scene. His associate reminds him he's a high school journalism teacher, not a real journalist. (We're not even convinced he's a real teacher.)
Wayne goes to the house where the couple was killed. He knocks on door, but no one answers. The door is unlocked, so he goes inside. He sees the jumbled belongings, plus some mud and red stuff on the floor. Then he hears a creak and calls out to whoever is there. No answer. (We suspect most of the audience has left at this point, too.) He bends down over the red mess and picks up something. Just then, a helmeted policeman grabs him. Wayne shows the perturbed policeman his ID. The cautious cop explains to Wayne that he shouldn't be there. The effusive educator tries to get more info out of the policeman; he asks about the mud, but the open officer of the law says that the investigators don't seem worried about it. Then the cop reminds Wayne to leave.
Later, Wayne goes to see someone called Dr. John. (Voodoo piano not included. We assume he's on the same staff as Wayne, but this is never clearly defined, either.) Wayne gives Dr. John the mud he picked up, and the self-styled scientist says the thing is some odd substance, not organic, not inorganic. (Gee, he got all that from just looking at it. Maybe for an encore, he'll determine its pH value with a dousing rod.)
Two days later, Dr. John visits Wayne and Mrs. Kotter at home. He tells them that the mud sample is slightly radioactive. (No doubt this was divined with a ouija board.) And now we get some exposition. Dr. John tells them about a power plant in Wisconsin that was leaking tiny amounts of radiation. Some of the irradiated silt picked up the ability to absorb the properties of the organic materials around it. It mutated into a life form. The discovery was kept secret. (Oh, sure, and a high school science teacher is going to know about this?) The substance was called (dramatic pause) Slithis, but no one knows why. (I'll concede this mystery; we're watching this piece o' junk, and we don't know why, either. Besides, ask yourself why subatomic particles are called quarks.)
But wait, there's more. One of the scientists who discovered the Slithis effect started working for an oil company. Why? Instant life could be used to make natural petroleum. Dr. John concludes his presentation by saying that Slithis is like the mud sample.
After Dr. John leaves, Wayne and Mrs. Kotter debate the plausibility of Slithis. They agree it's silly, so the movie ends. Nah, just kidding. Wayne decides that there's a story here and he could make it big, so he wants to check into it some more. Mrs. Kotter wants nothing to do with it.
Muckraking in Action
That night, a couple of dropouts are boozing by a canal. They make the kind of witty chitchat you'd expect from a couple liquored loafers (or any other character in this movie). After the movie entertains us At a Slithis's Pace™ with these antics, one of them eventual leaves to get some more fermented fortitude. He travels to his stash At a Slithis's Pace™, claims his prize equally slowly, but is interrupted by bubbles on the water. The intoxic avenger assumes it's his friend swimming and offers his bottle. Unfortunately, it's not his friend. It's a walking Creature from the Black Lagoon wannabe with a few attachments (Win Condict).
The next day, the radio reports the death of a thirty-two year old stewardess. During this news story, we are shown various shots of street people. The police are questioning members of cults. The Chief of Police says that the investigation is underway, and they have plenty of leads. Finally, the reporter on the radio describes the streets as deserted (What? Who were all those street people?), and says, "The smell of fear hangs like a stench over the canals." (Oh, is THAT what that smell is? We thought it was the movie itself.)
Sure, everyone may be hiding, but not our designated hero Wayne. He's walking along the canals looking for clues, and pauses at the place where the dropout duo was cultivating their cirrhoses. One of the liver losers jumps out at Wayne. (Ooooh! Scary-scary!) With nothing better to do in this scene, Wayne interviews the indigent gent. When the cut-rate columnist asks him if he saw or heard anything last night, the beleaguered bum claims he didn't hear anything. (Apparently, the soundman was concerned that he wasn't hearing anything after that last line. There's a long pause, and the boom mike dips into the top of the frame.) After some more Q & A that runs At a Slithis's Pace™, Wayne learns that there was another one there last night called Bunkie. Our never-wrong hero decides that if anyone knows anything, it'd be Bunkie.
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| The Mud Monster. He's a Heap of fun. | "I didn't hear nothin', man." |
Go to several uninteresting shots of street people with Wayne talking to them. (Somewhere in this sequence there is a sign that proclaims "Venice Lives!" This is living?) Wayne finally finds a group of nowhere men who know where Bunkie is.
Wayne goes into a nice house looking for Bunkie. (Winos in Venice seem to live better than most.) Bunkie is there. After another more questions that move At a Slithis's Pace™, Wayne eventually asks him what he saw. Bunkie said it looked weird, like a lizard. Wayne tries to get Bunkie to go to the police, but the irritated informant wants nothing to do with that.
Later, Wayne and Mrs. Kotter get a chance to talk to one of the scientists who discovered the Slithis effect. He just happens to live nearby, so they visit him at home. The secretive scientist hides in the shadows during the conversation, and tells them that a reactor near Venice had a leak. However, he hasn't seen any Slithis. Finally, to prove his sincerity (or to throw in a cheap prosthetic), the reserved researcher comes into the light. We're shown that the top and side of his head looks like a potato chip bubble, which our exposition emitter explains was due to exposure to radiation. (Uh, sure.) He tells them if there is Slithis, they'll have to find the source of the radioactivity to prove it. (We don't see the logic in that. To prove that there is Slithis means gathering some of it, which they already have.)
And so Wayne goes to hire a boat, which means we meet Chris Alexander. Chris uses the first couple of minutes of his introduction to Wayne by hiding while hurling some overly dramatic lines. Wayne says he needs a diver. Chris comes out of hiding and the conversation continues. Wayne explains that he needs samples from the soil at the local nuclear plant. Chris will do it for a price. ("I'll catch yer soil samples for ye, but it'll cost ye...." Not quite. Chris is deeply Jamaican and spends a lot of time reminding the other characters that he's black.)
Next morning, they go out on the boat Creation. (And this trip runs At a Slithis's Pace™. We get lots of footage of the boat on the water accompanied by dialogue as voiceover.) After they arrive, Chris goes in to get the samples. (And we get more footage of the Creation on the water.) Later, when Chris comes out of the water, he comments on how odd it is there are no fish down there.
That night (we assume) Wayne talks to Dr. John. The soil samples have been checked. There's Slithis, but no radioactivity. This means there was a reactor leak once. (Actually, it doesn't, but we're in a movie universe where everything is the fault of radiation.) After the call, Wayne tells Mrs. Kotter that he has decided to go to the police. The scene closes with cutesy dialogue between Wayne and Mrs. Kotter while they snuggle and the shot irises out. (What would the Freudians make of that editing choice?)
The next day, Wayne tells Dr. John that the police didn't buy his
Slithis story. (Huh? Given how this story moves At a Slithis's Pace™,
you'd think they'd find time to include this crucial scene and pad less on
the others. But nooo!) Wayne puts together three things.
Most of the
attacks happen along the canals at night. The killer is probably coming in from the
ocean. The locks for the canals are usually opened at night. Therefore, if
they cut off ocean access to the canals, they may be able to stop the
killings along the canals. That evening Wayne and Dr. John go to the lock
controls and shut them off, closing off the canals from the ocean.
The (Thankfully) Last Days of Disco
That night, at a bar, it's turtle racing. (And if these little shellbacks weren't moving so quickly, this would sum up the tempo of this movie.) The bar patrons are excited by this spectacle, but one couple decides to leave. Outside, they get into a car and make small talk while driving away. And they continue the small talk while traveling for another five minutes. (Yes, the conversation moves At a Slithis's Pace™.) We eventually learn that the girl is visiting the big city from a factory town, and the guy, Doug, is a "wild, swinging guy" picking her up.
They arrive at a marina. The creepy ladies' man lives on a boat. He points it out to her while he excuses himself. She walks down the pier while the movie attempts to creep us out At a Slithis's Pace™. (We'd be worried for her safety if it weren't for the certain creep who'll be joining her later.) She gets to the boat, tries to open the door, and something jumps out. (Ooooh, scary, scary.) It's Rex, the guy who lives next door. He dropped by for a visit. Doug returns and encourages Rex to leave.
The pickup couple go inside and start to make out. The Doug lights a couple of candles and pours a couple of wines into chilled glasses. (They're red wines in chilled glasses on a cold night. Cripes, what a jerk!) He flicks a switch to turn on a red light. They resume making out, but he pauses again to lock the cabin door.
That's when the monster jumps him. The girl gets up to find out what happened and sees the monster. The film suddenly moves slower than its current Slithis's Pace™ by going to slow motion. Then monster rips off her top and kills her. (This is supposed to get us guys excited? First of all, watching a monster forcibly disrobe a woman is questionable titillation at best. Second, there's not enough titillation under that top to go around.)
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| You'll never forget the thrilling turtle racing scene. (Come to think of it, it is a highpoint.) | Slithis-Cam. Like many other monsters, Slithis has a problem with inverted contact lenses. |
Cut to a police station interior (with a very bad microphone) for the following scene. Wayne talks to Lt. Prentice (who is furiously overacting, but given the general level of ineptitude in this film, we can't tell if this is intentional comedy). They talk about last night's marina maulings. (Love these smooth, atmospheric time transitions.) Then Wayne explains that he shut off the locks yesterday afternoon and badgers Prentice because the police are not doing their work. (Despite being a designated hero, Wayne should work on his people skills when dealing with authority figures.) Prentice is still not buying the Slithis story, and now he's hacked at Wayne for tampering with the locks. However, he gets a "police scientist" to talk to Wayne.
After a revolving turn cut (we don't know why - might've been on sale), Wayne recounts our plot so far to the "police scientist." (And, yes, this extraneous exposition contributes to the film's Slithis's Pace™.) The "police scientist" asks some good questions, but his biology trivia (therefore, the screenwriter's) is inaccurate. Meanwhile, Prentice calls the nuclear facility. They tell him there's never been a leak, and he relays this information to the others. Wayne castigates Prentice for believing it. (A master of diplomacy this Wayne is not.) Prentice tells Wayne to get out. (Good thing for Wayne, too. Had our designated hero stayed there much longer, someone might've figured out that he may be ethically responsible and legally liable (per reckless disregard for human life) for the double manslaughter at the marina.
Cut to Wayne, Mrs. Kotter, Dr. John, and Chris standing on a silly looking piece of art. They make plans for what they will do about the recent weirdness. First of all, do they believe there is a mud monster? Dr. John says, "Stranger things have come to pass, like the existence of Slithis itself." (Insert your own joke here. I'm having trouble staying awake.) Chris says they found some odd things in the water near the nuclear plant, and asks why it doesn't return to its original spawning grounds. Although there's no more fish in the area, they suspect that it may.
They make plans to hunt down the Slithis. Chris announces, "I'll catch yer Slithis for ye. Kill it, too. But it'll cost ye." (Yeah, sure, I used that reference already. So sue me.) While the gang of four walks and talks At a Slithis's Pace™, they stop to deliver their dialogue in front of the occasional landmark. They eventually decide to put Chris and Wayne out of our misery. No, sorry, that's not it. They decide to put Chris and Wayne out on the water, while Dr. John and Mrs. Kotter take the canal locks.
What to Do if You Catch Slithis
And they're off, which means we get more footage of the Creation on the water delivered At a Slithis's Pace™. That night, Chris uses sonar to find the monster and shows Wayne his shotgun. They also acknowledge the existence of two hired hands on this trip. (They're called Mike and Nicholas, but since their fate on this trip is rather obvious, we'll be referring to them as Mr. Ballast and Mr. Fodder.)
That night, Wayne and Chris get bored and start comparing old scars. Nah, just kidding. But they do recap the plot again At a Slithis's Pace™. After a few more shots of the boat on the water, it's 1:30 AM. The sonar starts pinging something off the bow at about twenty feet. ("Twenty five. Three tons by the size o' him." OK, I'll cut it out.) They wake Ballast and Fodder. Whatever is out there, it's heading for the marina. They radio the others on shore.
On the canal lock, Mrs. Kotter wakes up Dr. John and tells him to close the lock. (And, you guessed it, they have to show the whole "entering the fenced in area and going to the controls" sequence again. Never mind the sucker was heading for the marina, maybe not the locks.) They hear something, so they go check it out. (This would be a good time to note that neither of these monster hunters is bearing arms - not even a pointed stick.)
Something comes out of the water. They beat feet for the car. Surprise! It doesn't start. The reject from the Black Lagoon arrives and starts beating up the car. It knocks a door off, but the idiot menace doesn't bother reaching inside. The other idiots (inside the car) finally get the engine started. Dr. John tells Mrs. Kotter to get out of the car. She falls out while the car (no pun) fishtails and moves forward. The car goes flying off the road. (This was, no doubt, a big money shot.)
Mrs. Kotter helps Dr. John out of water. They don't know what happened to the monster, but they think they've killed it. (Whoa! Time out! Was that thing supposed to be in the front of the car when it flew into the water? We didn't see it.) The Death Race 2000 (1975) wannabes radio the boat.
Over at the boat, Chris has it on sonar again and says he's got some chum on the boat. They're going to lure the beastie away from the marina. Chris tells Wayne to dispense the chum to attract the killing machine. Wayne does so, pouring the foul smelling stuff from a can. He wants to call in some help, but Chris says no. (Gee, it's déjà vu all over again, except this movie sucks.)
Chris tries to start boat, but no go. He calls Mr. Ballast to wheel. Chris and Wayne go check out engine. It's overheated. Chris tells Wayne to get a bucket of water. (Yes, we've also seen this in That Other Fishing Movie We've Been Referencing (1975).) They close the door so Misters Ballast and Fodder won't know what's happening. (They really do say that in the dialogue.) Back on the deck, the monster jumps out the water and jack-slaps Mr. Fodder with his claws. Then it and goes after Mr. Ballast, who is remarkably easy to catch. (Frankly, I've seen real ballast move faster.)
Chris and Wayne come out of the engine room and realize the payroll is shorter by two. Wayne shoots the critter with a shotgun a couple of times, but no go. Then Chris tries to walk by it and it savages him. (Well, duh!) Wayne grabs a screwdriver and stabs the interloper in the back in slow motion -- At a Slithis's Pace™. Then he picks up a shot of chain and hits it At a Slithis's Pace™. This buys him enough time to reload the shotgun and pump a couple more shots. (Yes, that didn't work before. Wayne is apparently not very quick on the uptake. That or he mistakenly assumes that the monster has recently swallowed a scuba tank.)
But wait! Chris, whose maimed midsection resembles a spilled quart of strawberry jam, is still active enough to hit the critter At a Slithis's Pace™ in the back with an axe. While the annoyed monster reaches back to pull this annoyance out, Chris hits it At a Slithis's Pace™ with a small anchor, apparently driving a fluke into its shoulder. OK, this, for some reason, does the trick. We are treated to a negative image, which means either the editor has finally flipped out from the banality or this is some kind of moment of truth. The mighty Slithis spawn falls At a…oh, you know. It drops to the deck, and the moment is preserved for eternity as a freeze frame. (No, that's not flowery speech in the last sentence. It really does seem like an eternity.)
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| "Much beauty in the canals if you know where to look." | Reasons why people fail number 2: Negative thinking. |
Afterwards, Wayne and Chris discuss what to do with the dead mud
monster. Wayne wants to keep it as proof, but Chris wants to throw
it back to
the sea where it belongs. (Nope. Sorry. Did not make that up.)
Wayne kicks
it over the side. (We must've missed the part where the monster knocked
Wayne's brains out.) The spiritually attuned (for this movie's universe)
journalist gets up and walks tall. But the critter reaches up out of water
and grabs Wayne at a friggin' Slithis's Pace™! The end.
No end
credits, but we do get an end title card reminding us that this was a
FabTrax production in 1977. Be sure to show 'em your appreciation someday,
won't you?
The Good Stuff
Old Fashioned Monster Story
The best thing you can say about this movie - nay, the only good thing you can say about this movie on the whole, is that it follows the established B monster movie conventions. Don't show the monster too early in the story. Let the characters eventually discover the nature of the monster as the story progresses. Show the characters trying to find and stop the monster.
Unfortunately, this leads to….
The Bad Stuff
Bad B Movieness
Unfortunately, the filmmakers managed to follow not only the basic B
monster movie formula, they also recreated everything bad about such
movies. This thing's got every cliché in the book. Follow….
Designated Zero
I've seen straight men in comedy routines show greater depth than the main character in this time waster. (Actually, given some of the better sitcoms, that's not much of an underachievement.)
Our main character is built using the designated hero model. He's always right. Anyone who disagrees with him is an ineffectual jerk.
Even when he's wrong, he's right. For example, Wayne closes the canal locks at night, which keeps the monster out of the canals but causes it to attack a couple in the marina. Therefore, he is probably liable for those deaths. Any guilt there? Hell, no. He doesn't show any, and others seem to have no concept of responsibility for reckless disregard for human life.
The stereotypical southwestern Californian has no concept of accepting
personal responsibility because the culture doesn't support it. [Begin
hypercritical social rant.] Rob a bank? Blame your economic situation; it's not your fault.
Rape a woman? Blame the sexual norms, hire a lawyer, and sue the victim;
it's not your fault. Homeless? Hire the same lawyer and sue a college
because they wouldn't give you a degree; it's not your fault. Lead
some policemen on a high speed pursuit, attack them when they stop you, shrug off a taser, and keep moving while they subdue you?
Have
a social advocate come in and start a riot; it's not your fault. Murder
your ex-wife and leave ample evidence behind? Obviously, it was a
frame-up; it's not your fault. Upset with the way a verdict went?
Become a
pompous ass on national television, call the defendant an evil man, and
sue him for a ridiculously huge amount; you'd be wrong for slandering
him, and since it's not your fault, it must be his. [End hypercritical
social rant.] OK,
there's the stereotype. This movie fosters that view.
(Non-)Character (Non-)Development
A large proportion of this movie's runtime is devoted to character dialogues. This would not be so bad if the characters were saying something worth our attention. In a good movie, characters are given lots of dialogue to show their development. But nobody develops in this story. Our time is wasted further.
The primary supporting characters are astonishingly flat. Wayne's wife or girlfriend or whatever serves no useful function in the entire script. Dr. John is an exposition machine and little more. (Obscure Hint: Don't name a bland science geek after a master R&B craftsman unless he's "Qualified," because that won't even put you in the "Right Place, Wrong Time.") On the other hand, Chris is an interesting, lively, albeit irrational character. Wish the movie had been about him instead of these other dull, boring, and irrational characters.
Furthermore, this movie wastes too much time on the designated victims
and other nonpersons. We get victims number 1 and 2 bickering in bed
before they get mauled. Do we care? We might've, if it didn't sound like
the writer composed the scene in his sleep. And we get winos 1 and 2
bickering before one of them sees the critter. Do we care? We might've, if
it didn't sound like the writer composed their dialogue while under the
influence. And we get a protracted pickup scene for victims 3 and 4 before
they get lacerated. Man, I hope the screenwriter got laid while making
this movie; at least somebody would've gotten something out of that scene.
Slug Motion
Various scenes in this movie go to slow motion. We suppose this is to increase the dramatic effect in a given sequence. And to be fair, the scenes selected for slow motion are important events in the film. However, one man's meat is another man's tofu curd; important events in this film are not important when compared to other stories. In fact, said scenes are not even well staged, so we get mediocrity extended over a long period of time.
Ironically, this also distracts viewers from the monster suit.
It's a surprisingly good suit. But when you show this thing fighting
in slow motion in the dark, there's a strong urge to want to turn away
from the screen and do something else.
At a Slithis's Pace™
Given the time wasted on character non-dynamics, plus the questionable
use of slow motion, plus various scenes with characters recounting the
plot-thus-far, this movie stalls more than a '53 Buick on a cold day.
This is one of the most boring pieces of crap every committed to
celluloid. Security camera footage has more interesting events.
Special Defects
In addition to the abuse of slow motion mentioned above, the postproduction group added effects that were questionable at best. For scene transitions, we get an iris out and a tilt wipe. All this does for the movie is distract us with proof that they could do it; it adds nothing to the scene transitions. In fact, an old fashioned, modest cross fade would've done better. There should've been more of those, too, because there are scene transitions representing a change in place and many hours later that were done with a simple splice, and this non-standard choice isn't an artsy move here because this is obviously not an artsy movie.
Another questionable postproduction addition is a negative effect on
the film when the deathblow is struck at the story's climax. This is a
(surprisingly) good, creative choice, but they hold the effect for about
four seconds. That would be about three and a half seconds longer than
needed. (We suspect they held it for too long to make sure the
audience would see it. If that was the case, then they should've put
it at the beginning, while people were still watching.)
Miseries of Science
Credibility for the story depends on acceptance of a living mud man. For the average Southern Californian, this is not a difficult concept to accept. We see moving mud every winter when it rains heavily.
They do try to get us to buy the living mud idea by having a scientifically inclined skeptic (a "police scientist") debate against the notion. His mainline for his argument is that Louis Pasteur proved that life is not spontaneously created. Actually, this is not quite true. What Pasteur showed was that bacteria were not spontaneously generated in a sealed bottle, but once the bottle was opened, bacteria began to develop. The conclusion was that bacteria were airborne critters.
In other words, this is a misapplication of an impressive piece of science trivia. It had been previously explained that Slithis "borrowed and converted" life from other sources; therefore, the precedent the "police scientist" cited cannot be properly applied here. A real scientist would know this. A screenwriter who might've passed high school biology probably wouldn't. At best, we suspect the writer heard about the theoretical organic soup at the dawn of life on this planet and ran with what little he knew about it.
Ironically, a better precedent for argument by analogy would've been Einstein's special formula for matter-energy transitions. You know the formula. It's that one most people misquote as, "E equals m c two." Until this theory was accepted, it was a given that matter could not be created nor destroyed, and you could say the same for energy. Einstein showed in an elegant little formula (with an elegant set of equations) a relationship between matter and energy; that is, there was a definite conversion factor for starting out with matter and yielding energy. The energy is not spontaneously generated, but it doesn't come from a traditional source, like another form of energy, either.
Likewise, this could've been used as an analogy for Slithis, which,
given the premise "as is" in the story, is
no more a spontaneous creation of life than a nuclear reaction is a
spontaneous creation of energy. It's still not a purely logical
argument, but it might've lessened incredulity to a degree if they phrased
the science fiction double-talk properly. Of course, people who are
superstitious about anything nuclear wouldn't see this because they refuse
to understand it. And so it seems to go for the screenwriter. And therein
lies the irony mentioned above.
The Who Cares Stuff
Notes on the Cast and Crew
There's probably only one real star in this movie. Venice, California, was envisioned to become the Coney Island of the West at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. This goal was achieved, but many of the tourist attractions fell into ruin or disaster during the early 1920's, and the town was annexed by Los Angeles. (Denizens of Venice maintain this was not a cause-effect set of events.) Oil was discovered shortly thereafter, and the area became an industrial town. During the '60's, the area was occupied by Beats and later Hippies, reestablishing it as resort of sorts. By the '70's, outdoor roller skating became popular, and Venice became the roller skating capitol of the world - or as one social critic put it, a land of eyeless, earless, wheeled people. It was at this time that Venice, CA, became synonymous with trendy superficiality.
Also in the cast, we have Hy Pike. Viewers of exploitation fare
may remember him as the mayor in Dolomite (1975), while obsessed fans of
Blade Runner (1982) can see him as Taffey the bar owner. Since we don't
have proper cast credits for Slithis, we don't know who he was in this
movie. We suspect he played mutated scientist, but he could equally
have been the bickering husband victim (near the beginning of the movie)
or the hyperactive, overacting Lt. Prentice.
Roots, Shoots, and Other Compares
Here's Mud in Your Eye. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it. Here's a short list of stories with mud monsters and their kin. (Monster trucks not included.)
The Golem (1915) - The legend of this ultimately violent claymation had been around for a very long time when it was (pardon the pun) brought to life on the big screen. Here, of course, the story emphasizes its mystic aspect instead of its inherent messiness.
"IT!" by Theodore Sturgeon (1940) - The concept of a mud man would've been original in Spawn of the Slithis were it not done so many times before in pulp science fiction and comic books. In the Sturgeon story, the remains of a man plays host to a plant/mud monster. The concept of a living mud/plant man was later done as the character Heap as early as 1945, and this was parodied in 1952 as a "garbage man" in Mad magazine. See also, The Horror of Party Beach (1964).
X The Unknown (1956) - Radioactive rampaging mud in Scotland. Given the premise, this one isn't so bad.
Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (1971, a.k.a. Gojira tai Hedora) - The Big G goes mano a mano with a kaiju sized toxic terror.
Swamp Thing (1982) - Based on a comic book character that first appeared in 1971. During the '70's, DC had Swamp Thing while Marvel had Man-Thing (which bore an uncanny resemblance to Heap.)
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987) - They came from green mud oozing from a trashcan. Actually, they came from a set of collector's stickers, but the movie didn't sell as well as those.
Goosebumps (1995 ff) - The series based on R. L. Stein's children's monster stories also included a mud monster - on a dirt bike?
Note - Special thanks to Daza for compiling the comic book muck monster into a single work.
See also the roots and shoots on fishmen in the B-Note on Humanoids from the Deep.
The Bottom Line
Radioactive mud man goes on a rampage in Venice, CA. Dull, boring, painfully inept. Uses the conventional B monster movie formula from the '50's, but has no sense of inventiveness nor creativity. Eventually borrows plot devices from Jaws (1975). Long stretches of useless dialogue. Not recommended for anyone, anywhere, anytime, except maybe local historians looking for images of places that may not be around anymore.
Originally published 22 July 2000.
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