Ticks (85 minutes) - by Amanda Kusek
After an unfortunate event wherein I thought Showgirls was 90 minutes long and insisted Frank watch it with me, only to realize it is over 2 hours long… I’m reconsidering my habit of Googling runtimes and not double-checking them before getting halfway through a martini. But! I’m not reconsidering my habit of getting y’all to subscribe, so:
Summer is here! Which means the weather in New York has immediately turned into an unpleasant combination of overcast skies, rain, and consistent humidity. But, more positively, it also means that summer movies are back! Blockbusters are hitting theaters and buying houses in Malibu, people everywhere are rewatching Wet Hot American Summer for the fiftieth time, and I am delightfully stumbling onto B-movie gold. So, campers, tuck your pants into your socks because this week, I’m writing about Ticks (1993, 85 minutes).
I have to give credit where credit is due so for this one I have to thank my writing and life partner, Frank, for finding this incredible monster/eco horror. Frank was shopping the ye olde Vinegar Syndrome sale and threw Ticks into his cart to achieve free shipping. (Usually I’m throwing in something like lip gloss into a cart, but Frank and I have different hobbies.)
Ticks follows Tyler Burns (Seth Green) as he joins an inner-city wilderness group that takes kids out of LA and into the woods. Led by adults Holly (Rosalind Allen) and Charles (Peter Scolari), Tyler is led out to a rustic cabin in the woods with five other campers, including Charles’ daughter Melissa. Nearby, Jarvis Tanner (Clint Howard) is growing weed and enhancing it with steroids. So much so that the process has started to mutate the region’s population of ticks. (Oh no!)
I had low expectations for this movie. I really thought it was another direct-to-video headache that people only enjoy because of how terrible it is. (It is neither terrible nor a headache!) The plot doesn’t get caught up in oversharing too many details and each of our characters have simple, but complementary character arcs. Two well meaning adults take city kids out to the wilderness to experience nature, the kids each have their own hang-ups or issues, and the weed growers don’t want them there. Boom. Boom. Boom. I love that out of everyone, Holly and Charles are really the only two people who seem to think being there is a good idea, which makes them ineffectual leaders. It’s fun to watch them bumble around while the kids fend off drug dealers and football sized ticks. In fact, after Tyler and Melissa encounter their first tick egg sac and Holly reminds them bugs only attack when provoked Tyler says, “Great. Classic story. The adults not believing the kids. Thanks.” The self-awareness of this movie is brilliant.
I feel I need to break down the characters further for you. I don’t normally do this, but there’s something equal parts silly and equal parts important about how different each one of these kids are. Their stark differences give the movie a sort of “assembled for after-school TV special” vibe. Tyler is trying to get over trauma from being previously left in the woods by his drunk dad (yikes), Darrel 'Panic' Lumley (Alfonso Ribeiro) is a “troubled” teen with a steroid problem, Melissa is pissed her dad is hooking up with Holly, Dee Dee (Ami Dolenz) is a spoiled rich girl in love with Rome Hernandez (Ray Oriel) and they’re both pretty obsessed with appearances, and Kelly (Dina Dayrit) is… shy. I was expecting Seth Green but I was surprised and delighted to see Riberio outside of Fresh Prince. He plays a very rough around the edges tough guy, but it’s really hard to see through his Carlton-ness. Carlton really does feel like one of those roles that typecasts you for life. His nickname by the way is Panic, “... 'cause I never do”
Cute.
So while we’re meeting the wilderness group, we’re also getting acquainted with, who else, the ticks! We open on Jarvis Tanner’s weed growing operation which appears to be vats of steroids and a pulley system that is powered by a hamster in a wheel. (Yes.) As you can assume it isn’t a very clean way of doing this and the steroids are leaking into the ground and into tick egg sacs. Already at the 15 minute mark (great pacing) we get our first giant tick. This is what I love about a short movie, we’re into the good stuff fast. The ticks are scary and disgusting, sure, but they’re also incredibly interesting to watch. They scuttle across hardwood floors like crabs (great ASMR btw) and when killed, give way to complex insides rather than basic blood.
The special effects on Ticks were directed by Doug Beswick (Aliens, Evil Dead II, Beetlejuice) and look incredible for a DTV movie. In fact, both the death of Panic’s dog and Panic’s own brutal and gruesome death scene was very reminiscent of The Thing, which is a crazy comparison to make because The Thing is known for its wild practical effects. After Panic’s dog succumbs to the ticks, Panic takes off into the woods to head home, he is soon attacked not only by the mutated ticks but also by Sir (Barry Lynch) and Jerry (Michael Medeiros) who I assume are drug dealers working with Tanner (but I’ll admit the script is vague here). Bloody, shot, disoriented from the hallucinogens the ticks use on their prey, and also hopped up on steroids, Panic arrives back to the cabin terrifying his friends and the adults who should be watching him. He dies and soon after his body erupts to reveal our first human sized tick. Why? Well… have you been following the trail of steroids here my dear friend? Exactly.
It’s worth noting here that there are few deaths in this movie, and that Panic and the sheriff (Rance Howard) are the only “good guys” who don’t make it home. I have mixed feelings about Panic’s death. On the one hand, he is one of two people of color in the movie and he starts to fill the age-old trope of Black characters in horror movies. He doesn’t die first, but he certainly experiences a gruesome death. On the other hand, Ribeiro was in his third season of Fresh Prince by now and arguably the biggest name on the call sheet. Highlighting his character and his death makes sense. It’s a fun twist on his typecasting I mentioned earlier. I was desperate to find an interview with him about this role. (Why take a DTV role at the height of your fame? Was that just the 90s?) But found nothing.
After Panic’s death, our gang of city dwellers have to find their way out of a burning cabin. Oh yeah - did I mention there’s a massive forest fire now raging outside? Due to a series of injuries and I guess general incompetence, Tyler is thrust into the spotlight as our hero. Once a sufferer of panic attacks, Tyler overcomes his fears and successfully gets everyone out of the burning cabin and into the van, while the ticks all burn in the fire. I love a tight ending. Tyler’s arc is clear and easy to understand (if simplistic) and we get the nice bow at the end knowing all the steroid ticks are dead. Just kidding, the last shot of the movie is of a tick egg sac falling off of the van-- now in a junkyard in LA. Who is going to make the sequel?! I want to see these things taking over LA!
Friends, I cannot recommend this movie enough for all your summer sleepovers, and late nights after a day at the beach. It’s funny, scary, and weird. A true B-Movie classic. It’s available for free on YouTube if you watch with ads.
Other resources:
https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/chosen-one-of-the-day-darrel-panic-lumley-from-1993s-ticks
https://www.thebigmoviehouse.com/2022/04/Ticks.1994.html
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