Written by George Goldsmith
Directed by William Fruet
Starring Steve Railsback, Gwynyth Walsh, Don Lake, Sandy Webster and Helen Slayton-Hughes
Canada, 1987
The second film of the Hollywood Theater's 2023 All night Horror Movie Marathon was INSECT! (also known as BLUE MONKEY). You've gotta admire a movie with an exclamation point in the title, right? Turns out, not always.
INSECT! is a creature feature that takes place mostly in a hospital where an elderly handyman is admitted with an injury on his finger from touching an exotic plant. Somewhat inexplicably these leads directly to him vomiting up an insect larva which, after being dosed with some growth hormone by a gang of abandoned child patients (one of whom is future Oscar winner Sarah Polley!) roaming freely in the hospital, grows to enormous size and starts killing people.
Luckily, there's a hardboiled cop in the hospital who's keen to figure this whole thing out. Double luckily the hospital also houses a giant laser. I'll give you one guess what they're gonna end up using the kill the giant bug. It's Chekhov's laser, you guys.
There's a race against time as the authorities outside the hospital weigh the pros and cons of just blowing up the whole place as a solution. It's a weird movie.
The question is not whether or not INSECT! is good -- it's not. The question is, is it so bad it's good? Hard to say. It definitely has plenty of head scratching moments, and Steve Railsback as a grumpy detective with a heart of gold is pretty great, but the monster effects are so bad they're bad and the movie's worst sin is that ultimately, it's pretty boring.
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