William Newman | Through the Shattered Lens

Andy Farmer (Chevy Chase) is a New York sports writer who leaves the city and moves to the small town of Rosebud, Vermont so that he can work on his novel. He and his wife, Elizabeth (Madolyn Smith), struggle to adjust to living in a small town. The delivery of their furniture is delayed by the collapse of a covered bridge. When they try to make a phone call from inside their own house, the local operator tells them to deposit ten cents. They were expecting a Norman Rockwell-type town and instead, they find themselves having to pay for the funeral of a man who was buried on their property long before they moved in. When Elizabeth makes more progress writing a children’s book than Andy does with his heist novel, their marriage starts to feel the strain.

Chevy Chase is now so much better known for the stories of his unprofessional and diva-like behavior on film and television sets that it’s easy to forget that he was, at his peak, a very funny actor. Chase may be playing a variation of his put-upon everyman but, compared to the first two Vacation movies, most of the humor in Funny Farm is very mild. George Roy Hill was a classy director who had been making movies since the 50s and Funny Farm feels like a throwback to the type of family-friendly comedies that Disney would make in the 60s. That I laughed as much as I did was largely due to Chase’s performance. Whether he was tripping over a Dutch door, reacting to his wife’s dislike of the first few chapters of his new novel, or offering to pay the townspeople $50 to pretend to be nice for a weekend, Chase was consistently funny and even likable. I don’t know if this is the type of performance that Chevy Chase could give today. There’s a bitterness that’s now integral to screen persona and it’s made him into someone who audience want to laugh at instead of with. It’s too bad because Funny Farm is a reminder of the type of comedic actor that Chevy Chase used to be and who he probably still could be if not for the failed talk show and the infamous Friar’s Club roast.

As for Funny Farm, it’s an amusing and likable comedy and it still holds up well today. Chase is the key to the film’s success but he’s not the only reason that the film works. I liked the scene where Mike Starr and Glenn Plummer, as the two movers, watch as the bridge they tried to drive over collapses. I even liked the running joke about the two ducks who refused to leave the Farmers’s property. Funny Farm may not have been a hit when it was first released but it’s since built up a cult following. There will always be a place for a funny comedy that leaves you in a good mood.

Worms are creepy and you don’t want to get them in your hair.

I think that, more than anything, explains the continuing appeal of this lightly satirical Southern shocker from 1976. The film’s plot is a simple one, as the plots of the best horror films often are. There’s a storm. The power lines over Fly Creek, Georgia get knocked down. The power line lands in the mud and soon, you’ve got thousands of electrified worms crawling all over the place. These worms are angry and noisy and they like to eat people’s faces and take control of their bodies. Of course, since the power lines are all down, you’re can/t exactly call for help and even worse, you’re thrown into darkness once the sun goes down. Squirm gets at some very basic fears.

Squirm has a welcome sense of humor, as any film about killer worms should. It’s obvious that Lieberman knew that the audience would be demanding that the worms get revenge on at least a few fisherman and those scenes are tossed in there. The film’s nominal hero is Mick (Don Scardino), a visitor from New York City, and he’s so out-of-place in rural Georgia that it becomes funny watching him try to do simple things like order food or have a simple conversation. Even when he tries to warn people about the worms, you can tell they’re thinking, “He might be right but do I want to listen to a yankee?” As we say down here in Texas, you can always spot the yankee because they’re the ones sweating profusely and talking about killer worms. The scenes of Mick trying to order something at the local diner reminded me of the great “We don’t got no goddamn trout” scene from Hell or High Water.

Mick is in Georgia to visit his girlfriend, Geri (Patricia Pearcy). Almost everyone who Mick meets seems like they could have come out of an overheated first draft of a Tennessee Williams play. Once the worm attack starts in earnest, Geri’s mother sinks into a state of denial that would have impressed Blanche DuBois. Meanwhile, Squirm has its own wannaba Stanley Kowalski in the form of Roger (R.A. Dow), who obviously can’t understand why Geri would want a boyfriend from New York when she could have him. Roger is a creep but he’s a familiar creep. Anyone who has ever lived in the country will immediately recognize Roger and know everything that they need to know about him.

That said, the worms are the real stars of Squirm and they certainly do manage to get everywhere. On the one hand, it’s funny to see the worms emerging from a shower head but, on the other hand, it’s actually really terrifying because, when you’re standing naked in a shower, the last thing you want is to get about a thousand worms dumped on your head. Seriously, that would freak me out even more than threat of getting killed by Norman Bates’s mother. The film is also full of close-ups of the worms and, to be honest, worms are really freaky to look at. The opening and closing of that little mouth is like pure nightmare fuel.

Squirm is a classic of Southern horror. You’ll never look at a worm the same way again.