My never-ending mission to find great movies for low low prices took me recently to the used DVDs of a local Movie Gallery.  Sitting on the shelf was a copy of the monster movie Slither for under five dollars.  Score!  As far as plot goes, this movie is nothing special.  An alien creature crashes in a meteor near small town U.S.A. and instantly takes over the mind of the town’s local douche to take over the world.  Seen it, taped it, recorded over it.  Anytime this movie takes itself too seriously, I just rolled my eyes and occupied myself with a book or sandwich for a few minutes.  Fortunately, that doesn’t happen too often.

Where this movie does shine is in the brilliantly written dialogue and over-the-top special effects.  The cast is surprisingly good with the always creepy Michael Rooker as the alien host, Elizabeth Banks as his beautiful wife and target of the alien’s weird affection, and Nathan Fillion as the local cop who has to stop the whole dang alien takeover and rescue the girl.  All of these people are great, but Gregg Henry, as the town mayor, steals the show whenever he’s on screen with some of the best delivered expletives I’ve heard in movies in a long time.  This film also features a lot of practical, and very disgusting, creature effects throughout it’s run time.  Writer/director James Gunn really understands 1980′s style gross-out movies, and Slither feels like his love letter to that whole decade’s worth of horror films.   If, like me, you are a fan of splatter horror and monster movies then I highly recommend you go find this movie and watch it right now.