Hooptober 9 from Outer Space
#6: 2 1970s regional US films (1)
Tubi

SQUIRM breaks the golden rule of "show don't tell" with an intro text explaining that a major thunderstorm cut power and sent electricity into the ground, stirring up the worms. And then proceeded to SHOW that happening in the very first scene. I can understand if they need that intro text to explain some kind of worldbuilding, something that happened off-camera or something outside of budget constraints, but the fact that Jeff Lieberman goes ahead and shows it happening anyway is a real head scratcher.

The film itself is pretty dry for the most part. For a killer worm movie, there are surprisingly few scenes of worms killing people. Our main characters discover the skeleton of a person we think might have been a worm victim. Another guy gets a bunch of worms on his face, runs into the woods and for the rest of the film just acts like a lunatic while the worms are just chilling on his face (?).

The end builds up to a goopy climax where there are so many worms they form into this giant wormy blob, but even then we only see a few people die from them. Maybe this didn't have the budget of SLUGS but it doesn't come close to showing the kind of carnage the killer slugs create.

The real-life worms in this film are much creepier than your typical earthworms because they have little legs and pincers. Showing close-up footage of sand worms and adding pig-like noises was an interesting and effective choice.