When the first stills of Jeff Lieberman‘s eco-horror Squirm first started to appear in British film magazines (an illustrated synopsis in issue 9 of the much-loved House of Hammer magazine in June 1977 particularly lingers in the memory) it looked like the ghastliest thing in the world. One photograph in particular was thrillingly revolting – a man with a scarred face sinking beneath a sea of worms. What the still was fascinating in its awful implications but it couldn’t convey was just how slyly funny the film was, though there’s no doubt that it had more than its share of grisly moments.

An opening crawl deliberately brings to mind the similarly Southern States-set The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), setting the scene for what we’re about to see (“one of the most bizarre freaks of nature ever recorded”) while just stopping short of claiming that it’s all a true story. It’s September 1975 and young Mick (Don Scardino, later a prolific television director) has arrived from New York to the small town of Fly Creek in rural Georgia to meet his girlfriend Geri Sanders (Patricia Pearcy, who had played Elizabeth in a repertory production of Frankenstein alongside a stage version of Sheridan le Fanu’s Carmilla, Countess Dracula (nothing to do with the 1971 Hammer film of the same name) both in 1974). He finds the area flooded by a powerful storm the night before that has already, unknown to him, brought down local power lines which are repeatedly electrifying the ground and enraging the bloodworms native to the area.

This aspect of the story was inspired by a childhood memory of Lieberman‘s, of his brother luring worms to the surface by zapping the ground with a transformer and terrifying the young Lieberman. He also took inspiration from a real-life account of homes in the small town of Floyds Knobs, Indiana being invaded by migrating millipedes. In Lieberman‘s films, the creepy crawlies are much nastier, transformed by the electricity into angry little monsters all too ready to take bites out of anyone that strays too close.

Mick antagonises the locals simply by being from the big city, particularly Sheriff Jim Reston (Peter MacLean) and Roger Grimes (R.A. Dow) the redneck son of a local worm farmer who has designs on Geri, though Geri’s mother Naomi (Jean Sullivan) and sister Alma (Fran Higgins) are more welcoming. Human skeletons turn up, people go missing and while on a fishing trip, Mick is bitten by one of the worms and Roger is attacked by his own bait, the worms burrowing beneath his skin, the agonised Roger pulling the repulsive creatures from his face. Mick, Geri and her family are soon besieged in the Sanders family home by an ever-growing wave of worms that cause trees to fall – and all the while, an agonised Roger is roaming around outside looking for revenge on Mick.

The pacing of Lieberman‘s debut feature (he’d previously made the short film The Ringer (1972)) might sometimes skew towards the sluggish, appropriately enough perhaps given that worms aren’t exactly the sprightliest of creatures, with a surfeit of “local colour” – business with worm farmers, belligerent sheriffs and grumpy bus drivers – that don’t so much add texture to the story as get in the way when we’re just waiting for the worms to show up. And while some of the performances leave a little to be desired, most of the characters are quirky and likable enough and Squirm actually turns out to be a lot of silly fun. There’s a touch of the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Mysteries about Mick and Alma doggedly doing their research into the series of deaths and disappearing skeletons that make up the first act, and film buffs won’t be able but to smile when a barman whips out a diving helmet that he claims was worn by John Wayne in Reap the Wild Wind (1942).

It doesn’t spare the more squeamish viewer – there are plenty of close-ups of the hideous, writhing bloodworms with their hideous, mandibled maws (enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies) and Rick Baker‘s make-up effects are crude but effective – the boat scene is terrific, culminating in Roger falling into spilled bait and the enraged worms eagerly burrowing into his skin. The worms are the star of the show of course, be they the rubber stand-ins or the hundreds of thousands imported from Main and from the e University of Georgia Oceanographic Institute to boost the thousands already sourced locally in Port Wentworth, Georgia. They get into Mick’s egg cream at a diner, ooze out of shower heads, fall like a tidal wave on Alma after she opens a door to find a whole wall of them piled high on the other side (one of the best shocks in the film) and lay siege to a remote farmhouse.

Those latter two appearances suggest Lieberman‘s debt to Alfred Hitchcock, coming from Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963) respectively, though the out-of-the-way home under siege had become almost de rigueur since Night of the Living Dead (1968). Lieberman had even contracted Psycho composer Bernard Herrmann to score the film, but the composer died before he could start work and Robert Prince and brought his synthesizers to the UK to record alongside a full orchestra.

The result is a film that’s occasional a bit ragged, but which is a huge amount of stomach-churning fun, one of the better of the post-Jaws (1975) ecological horror films. The first reel is a tad staid but once Rick Baker gets to unpack his bag of make-up tricks (Squirm was made a year before Baker provided more facial nastiness for The Incredible Melting Man (1977)) and the worms start to turn up en masse, it really gets into its stride and never lets up. Shot independently but picked up for a successful theatrical release by AIP, it was an impressive debut for Lieberman (it’s become a firm cult favourite in the decades since its first release) who went on to enjoy an interesting if not always successful career with a string of offbeat horrors including the LSD-gone-bad fantasy Blue Sunshine (1978), the television film Doctor Franken (1980), backwoods slasher Just Before Dawn (1981), low budget science fiction film Remote Control (1988) and the comedy Satan’s Little Helper (2004). He’s not worked in film since the latter which is sad as although his work can be patchy, it’s never less than intriguing.

Crew
Directed by: Jeff Lieberman; © 1976 by The Squirm Company; The Edgar Lansbury/Joseph Beruh production of…; Executive Producers: Edgar Lansbury, Joseph Beruh; Producer: George Manasse; Written by: Jeff Lieberman; Director of Photography: Joseph Mangine; Film Editor: Brian Smedley-Aston; Music Composed by: Robert Prince; Costumes by: Dianne Finn Chapman; Makeup: Norman Page; Makeup Design: Rick Baker; Special Effects: Bill Milling, Don Farnsworth, Lee Howard; Art Director: Henry Shrady

Casts
Don Scardino (Mick); Patricia Pearcy (Geri [Sanders]); R.A. Dow (Roger [Grimes]); Jean Sullivan (Naomi [Sanders]); Peter MacLean (Sheriff); Fran Higgins (Alma [Sanders]); William Newman (Quigley); Barbara Quinn (sheriff’s girl); Carl Dagenhart (Willie Grimes); Angel Sande (Millie); Carol Jean Owens (Lizzie); Kim Iocouvozzi (Hank); Walter Dimmick (Danny); Leslie Thorsen (Bonnie); Julia Klopp (Mrs Klopp); Ralph Flanders (1st man at lunch counter); Albert Smith (2nd man at lunch counter); Jim Shirah (3rd man at lunch counter); Harold Mumm (bus driver); W.A. Lindblad (power line repairman)

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