An entertaining low-budgeter with an agreeably goofy sense of humor, BUGGED puts a comic spin on the insects-amok subgenre.
Thanks to a van accident, some canisters of a genetic mutating agent get mixed up with pesticide being delivered to Dead and Buried Exterminators. Two of the company's workers, Dave (Ronald K. Armstrong) and Steve (Jeff Lee), are called to the suburban mansion of wealthy poet Divine Hill
(Priscilla K. Basque) to deal with her cricket problem. While accidentally spraying the bugs with the DNA chemical, Steve puts the moves on Divine, who is more attracted to the lower-key Dave. After the pair leave, Divine is confronted by the now two-foot insects, and frantically calls Dead and
Buried for help.
Dave and Steve return, joined by coworkers Sam (Derek C. Johnson) and Lance (David McKay) and their boss, Gunther (Billy Graham). The group soon find themselves under siege by the bugs, and Sam, Lance, Gunther, and Steve are killed by either the crickets or their own backfired attempts to destroy
them. Dave and Divine are able to escape and set off an explosion that incinerates the insects, but Dave himself has been infected and threatens to mutate into a bug-man.
The opening 10 minutes of BUGGED aren't promising, detailing the creation of the mutating agent in the overexaggerated, ham-handed manner of much of Troma's product. But after that, the movie (released but not directly produced by Troma) finds its own, more relaxed style and significantly
improves. While the monsters themselves are generally played straight, their mayhem seems influenced by the sensibility of old Warner Bros. cartoons. When the heroes attempt to lure the bugs into a trap by tossing a decoy into the woods, for example, the insects respond by throwing back a lure of
their own--a whole roasting chicken on a string. The ensemble cast of exterminators has an easygoing, likable camaraderie, and Basque is a lovely and hardly defenseless presence in the midst of the craziness.
Refreshingly, although writer-director-star Armstrong and almost all of his cast are black, the movie never wears race on its sleeve or makes it an issue at any point. It's concerned solely with giggly, unpretentious entertainment--with special effects that are no better than they should be nor
worse than one might expect--and as such serves as a promising calling card for Armstrong. (Violence, extreme profanity.) leave a comment
