This is an updated version of a review that was originally published in Bleeding Skull! A 1990s Trash-Horror Odyssey.
My co-worker’s sister graduated from college last year. I can’t remember what her degree was in, but it was good enough to land her a job as a cricket farmer. What is a cricket farmer? I asked the same question! A cricket farmer is a person who cares for crickets in a climate-controlled atmosphere until the insects are ready to be processed into a flour alternative. My co-worker said that her sister comes home every day with crickets in her hair, shoes, purse, shirt, and pants. That should have grossed me out, but it didn’t. Because crickets are the cutest bugs on the planet, even when they’re the size of a Smart car and flatten people like pancakes in Bugged.
Dr. Craig is a genius scientist who has been given a government grant to study the evolution of insect DNA. But, just like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, Craig has ants in his pants and jumps the gun by experimenting on himself. This leads to three things:
1. Craig grows what looks like shredded parmesan cheese on his face.
2. A beastoid resembling a bootleg Gremlins toy from Mexico storms the lab.
3. Craig’s assistant is forced to shoot him in the face.
Fin.
Just kidding! That’s only the first 10 minutes of the movie.
There’s a mix-up after a car accident, and Dr. Craig’s chemicals are delivered to the Dead and Buried Exterminator company. The exterminators decide that the chemicals must be their new insecticide order. So, they fill up their canisters and respond to a call from Divine, a poet who lives in an octagon-shaped house. Steve and Dave (director Ronald Armstrong) spray the house, mack on Divine, and return to headquarters. But, oh shit! Instead of stopping Divine’s infestation, Dr. Craig’s formula turns the crickets into flesh-lusting monsters. Steve and Dave return to Divine’s house with the whole Dead and Buried crew. From there, it’s Night of the Living Dead meets The Three Stooges, but with giant cricket toys from Big Lots that might have been altered with Play-Doh. The crickets mutilate the humans—including an unbelievable scene where Steve gets flattened like Wile E. Coyote—while Dave and Divine fall in love in front of a raging fireplace.
Bugged is what happens when good things happen to good people. Armstrong was a longtime fan of Troma Entertainment. After graduating from film school, he sought out Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman and pitched a movie about killer crickets that would be told from a Black person’s perspective. Troma gave Armstrong a bag of money and (probably) a few cheeseburgers, and bingo! The next in a short line of American trash-horror movies that were created by people of color was unleashed. But that’s only one reason why Bugged should be appreciated.
For a no-budget movie, the concept of Bugged was ambitious. And the direction of the movie could have gone anywhere. Luckily, Armstrong and friends avoided irony and embarrassing comedy. In other words, they didn’t make another exhausting 1990s Troma movie like Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. Bugged is a sincere horror-comedy with a likeable cast, an intelligent script, and a mood that has more in common with Ghostbusters than Evil Dead II. This is wholesome, fun-loving entertainment that just happens to have a scene where a giant cricket uses a handgun to blow someone’s head off. And also, a scene where the crickets try to bait the humans with a chicken on a fishing line.
Bugged could have moved twice as fast, since characters spend a lot of time making plans, talking about plans, and then discussing what happened after plans were made. But when this much sincerity and joy is staring you in the face, it’s hard to complain about anything.
