Mosquito (Gary Jones, 1994) Review

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“My God – this looks like a proboscis!” Your common or garden mozzies have sucked the blood of an alien lifeform that has crashed to earth, and now they've mutated into giant man-killers and they've got a mad thirst on for some juicy human haemoglobin. So who's gonna save the world? A park ranger, a meteor hunter, and a chainsaw-wielding bank robber, that's who!...

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“I don't think this is a bird, Ray. I think it's some kind of bug!” Gary Jones' monster movie wastes no time in getting underway. Within three minutes we've seen an alien spaceship crash land on Earth, a mosquito suck the blood from a dead alien, and the resulting giant bug get splattered across the front of a car. Out steps newbie park ranger Megan (Rachel Loiselle) and her generic hero boyfriend Ray (Tim Lovelace) – who is entirely too casual about having just smashed into what is clearly a gargantuan mosquito – not that he has any intention of admitting what's right there in front of him! Not wanting to get icky sticky goo all over his car boot (Megan, quite rightly, wants to rescue the remains for further study), he nudges the carcass aside with a stick and on their merry way they go.

“Only the females suck blood.” // “That figures.” Naturally, the appearance of any giant creature that is determined to munch on some unsuspecting folks coincides with a busy holiday season – and it's going to take more than pervy voyeur/layabout park ranger Hendricks (Ron Asheton) wafting some toxic spray across people's BBQs and tents to halt the buzzing masses looming on the horizon. Throw into the mix USAF meteor hunter Parks (Steven Dixon), and a gang of bank robbers on-the-run (headed up by Gunnar Hansen of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame), and we've got our motley crew of unwitting bug bashers assembled.

“It's aliens and they're everywhere and that guy's obviously been zapped.” Many low budget monster flicks might begin with good intentions, hooking you in with a spirited start, only to then wither under the spotlight – but not so with Mosquito (not to be confused with 1993's Skeeters). The movie may have modest aspirations, but it maintains a pretty relentless pace throughout, cramming as much gore and action as possible into its slick running time – something that is all-the-more impressive considering the original budget was slashed, necessitating a severely compromised opening and large scale aspirations to be shrunk down.

Sure, the characters might be thinly sketched, but they all have a clear part to play and each actor brings unique charm and style to their roles. Hendricks is the comic relief and a bit of a reluctant whiner who still knows how to put the 2^nd Amendment to good use, taking a little bit of inspiration from Hudson in 1986's Aliens. Bank robbing gang leader Earl (Hansen) is a no-nonsense hulk, who goes from a selfish brute to a would-be hero over the course of the movie. And then Ray is, well, an unusual case. His early appearance suggests he'll be the male hero of the piece, with his dirty white vest and classic hero look, but the character isn't exactly the sharpest tool in the box and is often out-done in the hero stakes by others.

A clear influence on Mosquito are both the 1968 and 1990 versions of Night of the Living Dead. On the one hand you've got Megan, who is akin to the 1990 version of Barbara, smart and resourceful (and without all the pandering politics of today's era), and then on the other hand you've got Parks. He's a man of science who has survived three tours of Vietnam, and the influence of Ben from the 1968 version of George A. Romero's zombie classic stands tall in the background. Indeed, more often than not, it is Parks who is leading the charge and not Ray, which is a nice little inversion of expectations. Even the smaller roles get memorable moments, such as the mosquito-hating Chief Morrow (Guy Sanville), or the goofy bank robbing sidekicks of Junior (Mike Hard) and Rex (Kenny Mugwump).

“It's not a who we're dealing with, it's a what.” To be sure, we're not witnessing well-toned material that churns up layers of meaty subtext and backstory – indeed, Megan is surprisingly slow to put two-and-two together to come up with the most thuddingly obvious answer as to how an entire camp ground of holidaying weenie roasters have been massacred and what is the likely culprit – but it's all in good fun.

Then again, Tom Chaney, Steve Hodge, and Gary Jones have only set out to write an enjoyable monster movie filled to the brim with gleefully gooey scenes of giant mosquitoes sucking people dry – thrusting one oozing proboscis after another into eye sockets and butt cheeks alike – while a desperate band of strangers fend them off with guns, fire, and chainsaws. After only twenty minutes the audience has already been treated to several juicy kills accompanied by a selection of (mostly) impressive effects. The practical bugs look good in close combat, while a handful of stop motion shots carry a lot of charm and detail, and so it's only a couple of composite shots that don't hold up.

“The only thing I'm obligated to do is cover my ass.” From a fishing boat attack, replete with a blood-gushing eye-skewering that would give Lucio Fulci a devious giggle, to an all-guns-blazing sequence inside an RV weaving about on a country road as the blood sucking beasties lay siege (the model shots are excellent) and beyond, Mosquito is loaded with impressive action set pieces and memorable moments that raise the movie above standard low budget schlock towards the realm of genre greats … or at least to be a Rocky-like contender. It may not reach the heights of one of its key influences – Night of the Living Dead (there were even plans for the victims to transform into zombies) – but Mosquito never lets-up on the accelerator, always seeking to deliver bang for your buck, from a claustrophobic sewer battle to the inevitable sanctuary of a boarded-up farm house besieged by bloodthirsty monsters (wink, nod, nudge).

“Hey, Doc – that's science fiction bullshit.” It has been a quarter-century since I last saw this movie, but it always stuck with me, successfully imprinting itself on my formative genre movie experiences. In 1997 Britain we had a mere four terrestrial television channels, and few had the pleasure of cable TV through Sky at the time, so it was a big deal when along came Channel 5. It was a modest start, certainly, what with the broadcast signal being so weak that most people only got a grainy image with which to view its less-than-stellar line-up of programming. However, this did mean that it was an ideal place to find cheap genre fare amidst all the softcore movies they would use to fill-up their schedule – and this is where I stumbled across Mosquito.

Would it be possible today, with all this on-demand access and gluttony of choice, for a quirky genre gem like this to burrow its way into the forming horror movie-mad psyche of an impressionable teen? Scenes like the woman in the tent – lounging around starkers after a bit of midnight rumpy-pumpy – fighting off an man-sized mozzie only to get skewered in the bare behind, or how the terror of being sucked dry causes one character's eyeballs to pop out of their skull and then explode in a gooey blast of grossness are exactly what lodged this charming little giant bug movie in my mind. It's all-the-more heart-warming to this genre fiend as, even all these years later, it still delivers the goods, entertaining from start to finish.