"They Hunt... They Feed... They Kill... You're Next!"	Year of Release: 1993 Directed by: Fabrizzio Laurenti Running Time: Approx. 92 minutes Rating: Rated R Listing on the A.K.A. Page: YES! Click Here! A Second Opinion: Dante's Inferno Buy it on VHS at: Amazon.com. My Rating:

Susan- Probably the only decent actress in this movie! Sadly this busty young girl is the first victim of the voracious crawlers. Man how could they kill off the most promising character in the movie?!

Josie- (A.k.a. Murmur Girl! Damn it speak up!) This girl simply cannot act! You want to know what's worse? She's the movie's heroine! ARRRGH!

Josie's Mom and Davie- Josie's mom almost always has those rollers in her hair (you know, the pink things that make a woman's hair curly). She gathers up a mob of hicks to do battle with the crawlers. Davie is Josie's annoying little brother (who's a piss poor actor to boot). Sadly he's saved from death by ...

Paula- The local flabby prostitute! YECH! Who'd want to have sex with her? Drunk guys! Yep those are her only customers, and apparently she doesn't charge for her services either. Luckily she's killed by the crawlers.

Matt- Josie's boyfriend. He helps bring the crawlers' reign of terror to a halt with his fellow backwoods brethren. Apparently he gets Josie pregnant (you find this out when you see the end of the movie, if you see the end of this movie!).

Jack and Chester- An old man who runs a gas station in the middle of nowhere and his faithful dog. Both become crawler fodder.

Dr. Krueger- With a name like that he's gotta be evil! He's the head of the nearby nuclear power plant, and responsible for the mutant killer tree roots. Near the end of the movie, he realizes the bad career move he's made and commits suicide.

Dr. Quincy- Nuclear scientist that's around every now and then to look sneaky and evil, and to provide the audience with some expository feedback.

Dr. Taylor- Drunken scientist who works at the nuclear power plant (man this guy was terribly miscast!). He knows something is up and tries to stop the evil vegetation and Dr. Krueger. Thankfully, he is whipped and strangled to death my rubber vines.

The Sheriff and his Deputy- ARRRRGH! I HATE THIS GUY'S VOICE! Imagine the narrator's voice of those Motel 6_tm commercials, but really annoying. This guy shows absolutely no emotion when he gives his lines! As luck may have it, a mutant killer tree root gets sick of his voice and goes in through his mouth and out his eye! YAY! The Deputy is dragged into an empty grave to his demise.

Matt's Dad and Grandmother- Grandma is found hanging from the rafters in the basement (simply hilarious scene I tell you). Matt's Dad dies in THE WORST HELICOPTER CRASH/EXPLOSION SCENE EVER!"

Brian- Investigative reporter and Jack's grandson. He ditches everyone before the final battle. I thought he was just being smart and bailing out on the rest of the movie, but it turns out he went to get the EPA's bulldozer division to come save the day. Oh and he's not gay (but it's hinted as so much, you might as well assume that he is) and he is happily married to a woman (so he says).

The Local Townsfolk and Two Henchmen- Crawler fertilizer.

The Crawlers- The evil Dr. Krueger has embezzled the money needed to properly dispose of his nuclear power plant's radioactive waste. To solve this problem he has it dumped into the nearby forest, creating a strain of mutant killer tree roots. When it seems that these lame ass vines of doom are about to win, Brian and an army of bulldozers arrive to defeat the (you ready for this?) roots of all evil!

Once again, the Italian film industry rapes my ass, brutally! If you're a regular visitor to my site, you've probably noticed that out of the handful of movies that receive one radioactive symbol, a majority of them were made by Italians. I'm speaking of course about Night of the Zombies, Revenge of the Dead, Troll II, and The Crawlers. I have no doubt, that if I watched all of these "movies" in a row (along with a few other detestable films) I would be left in a coma. Anyway, what was my point? Oh yeah, this movie is skin-peelingly bad! You want to hear a frightening story of my first viewing of this film (man I'm really digressing here)? Well I made it halfway into the movie, when suddenly I snapped out of a daze. For about ten or fifteen minutes, I had been repeatedly hitting myself in the head with the palm of my hand! I didn't even realize I was doing it at the time. (Seriously, it's a true story!) Now, this cinematic rat dropping (man that's not even detrimental enough for this movie) starts with some footage of a truck leaving a nuclear power plant.
Said truck is one of several that has been dumping radioactive waste into the nearby forest. Soon me meet Susan and Josie, who are having a conversation on a bus (well Susan's being friendly, Josie seems more interested in watching the dotted yellow line zip by). The bus driver parks at a gas station to make a quick pit stop, and I mean quick. He runs into the station's bathroom (what, no key necessary?!) right before Josie decides to run into the mini-mart. As soon as she goes inside, the driver's off the porcelain seat and back into the driver's seat. Cya later Susan!
So for a good chunk of movie, Susan waits for a ride! Meanwhile, Josie arrives in her hometown and walks home. Later on, Josie's past/future boyfriend Matt swings by. At this point, Susan has finally found a ride. She must have been desperate because her common sense didn't kick in. A pretty girl should never hitchhike alone in the presence of a drunken Irishman (or maybe he was Scottish). Naturally the guy tries to rape her so she hits him in the crotch and rushes out of the vehicle. He chases her for a bit but leaves her alone in the forest where she dies. Back at the power plant, Dr. Taylor is worried about the increasingly large amounts of radiation outside of the plant. Though he persists in giving his views on things, his superior, Dr. Krueger, tells Taylor to leave well enough alone.
Naturally Taylor continues his studies and finds out that the nuclear waste never reached it's actual destination. In the meantime, Josie and Matt are all lovey dovey and having a "romantic" walk in the woods. But wouldn't you know it, they stumble across Susan's corpse. They immediately go see the Sheriff (ARRRGH!) who gives them a hard time. Eventually they go to where they saw Susan's body, only to find that it's gone. The dialogue from this scene is so stupid! Look below in the Memorable Lines section to read it! So Josie is mad at Matt after he makes a few snide remarks about her "big city boyfriends" (she slaps him across the face so hard that his hat falls off). Matt is saddened by this so he gets drunk and has sex with Paula (BLECH!), from whom he acquires the maps of Dr. Taylor, Paula's previous customer (DOUBLE BLECH!).
Back at the power plant, Dr. Krueger has sent two goofy looking henchmen to silence Dr. Taylor permanently. They slowly jog through part of the plant and have a car chase (driving at the speed limit of course). Taylor gets out of his car and runs into the nearby woods (how he's never discovered is beyond me!) with his two pursuers in ... umm ... hot pursuit (damn wrote myself into a corner there). The henchmen are soon besieged by killer roots and die dishonorable deaths (man I thought that one guy would never die). Doc Taylor then goes to the Sheriff where he is arrested at the request of Dr. Krueger. It really sucks to be Taylor doesn't it? The poor guy can't get a break anywhere!
Meanwhile, Brian has arrived in town, inquiring about the death of his grandfather, Jack. He joins Josie, Matt, and Davie to solve the local mystery (kind of like a low budget Italian Scooby Doo Mystery, minus the dog). They soon discover that Jack's grave is empty, and take off just as the Sheriff and his Deputy arrive. The Sheriff leaves as the Deputy fills in Jack's grave, only to be dragged in by several vines! Guess that grave isn't vacant anymore (hee hee). The Sheriff soon catches up with Josie, Brian, Matt, and Davie.
Just as the moronic law enforcer is about to say some more stupid dialogue, the "Crawlers" arrive on the scene and kill him. What struck me as funny about his death is that a vine goes in through his mouth and up out of his eye. It was like the director suddenly realized that this guy's voice was horribly annoying, what better way to kill him?
Everyone else escapes and begins warning the local yokels, hicks, and rednecks. Brian is sent out to the more rural section of town (what town is this set in anyways?) and is continuously threatened and/or shot at. Brian gives up and goes to the rendezvous point as the others are all attacked by the killer tree roots. Everyone regroups (Dr. Taylor, Matt's Dad, and Josie's Mom have joined in) and they go the nuclear power plant to confont Dr. Krueger. He seems suprisingly calm as he's being grilled, mostly because he has a gun. So he shoots them all then he causes a nuclear meltdown at the plant and takes the killer tree roots down with him. Just kidding, that would've been a good ending. Instead, Krueger puts the gun to his head and pulls the trigger.
Our heroes then formulate a plan, or rather a suicide mission. Brian leaves, saying he's gonna do things his way (he's a genius!) so things look rather bleak. That is until an army of hicks arrives armed with shovels ... wait what?! SHOVELS?! Ok not everyone had one (one or two people weren't completely retarded and brought a chainsaw or an axe) but the majority of them did. Matt's Dad and Dr. Taylor find the main dump site via a helicopter and land nearby. Dr. Taylor is quickly dispatched of and Matt's Dad is trapped, barely hovering over the waste site (several roots have grabbed the helicopter and it just can't go up). What follows is some of the worst editing and the worst helicopter crash ever recorded on film. What do I mean? Well half the time you see Matt's Dad piloting the chopper, he's on the ground (though they try to hide it with quick cuts, it's blatantly obvious).
When the chopper's in the air, you can plainly see that Matt's Dad isn't flying it, but a younger man is! And the helicopter crash? A toy chopper falls to the ground just before footage of a huge explosion cuts over it. BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD! Before dying though, Matt's Dad managed to shoot off a flare. Matt and his hillbilly army then rush to the scene and begin digging up barrels of nuclear waste. Surpisingly no one suffers any ill effects from touching the barrels with their bare hands. This half-assed assault quickly turns sour as more and more people fall victim to the carnivorous crawlers. Things look hopeless, when suddenly the steel cavalry arrives! To end the movie quickly, the army of bulldozers led by Brian dig up all the barrels and roots thus defeating the mutant killer tree roots (getting to the root of the problem you might say).
About seven months later (I assumed this since Josie is visibly pregnant) Josie's sitting at home talking on the phone. Suddenly the ugly, nearly dead, miniature pine she calls a Christmas Tree begins sprouting mutant killer tree roots. She turns around, sees the roots, screams, and the movie is over, leaving room for a possible sequel (which better NOT get made!). This godforsaken movie has taken hours of my time that I'll never get back (don't let it happen to you too). The acting, special effects, and editing were terribly shoddy! Though the makeup was decent in some instances, and despite several funny (intentional and unintentional) scenes, this movie has no true redeeming qualities. There aren't many copies of this left in the world, so if you see it, destroy it (unless it's a rental or someone else's copy)!

Davie: "Are you going to marry Matt?!"
Josie: "Just shut up and play with your carnivorous plant."

Josie: "Maybe it was over here Matt."
Matt: "No it was here. Somebody moved it."
The Sherriff: "Or uh, maybe it moseyed down to the soda shop, for a spot of Coke. Eh kids? Ah, you kids. You get my goat!"

Brian: "G degrees ... you don't know what that means?!"
Davie: "I know what it means! It measures nuc .. ular ... radioactivity!"
Brian: "You're damn right kid!"