Bursting with Joy: Ticks (1993)
My dear readers, I cannot be certain if I’ve given any impression to the contrary in my writings so far and so I feel it is appropriate to clarify that I am by no means an accomplished outdoorsman. A roof and a permanent hearth are of considerable comfort to me and I am not the type to be found coaxing fire from the basest of tools, identifying edible fungi or hollowing out a freshly killed beast to make a refuge of their warm innards. Nevertheless, I realize that never venturing outside an estate known for its lack of ventilation and semi-sentient mildew can have a dampening effects on the old wind sacks and that every once in a while it can do all sorts of good to get out in the open air and take in a lung-full or two of the fresh stuff.
Marveling at nature's initially tiny bounty
This is precisely why an extended stay in the woods is prescribed as a remedy for the a variety of maladies plaguing a group of urban youths. Chief among these rattled youngsters is Tyler Burns (Seth Green), who is hoping to conquer a woods-induced anxiety. It is hard to say whether this exposure therapy would have been an effective exercise, as any hopes of objectively evaluating his mental progress are dashed when the the whole retreat becomes overrun by a brood of overgrown ticks.
These feisty, fist-sized parasites are the byproduct of a scientific zeal demonstrated by local marijuana farmers. Whilst pursuing a more profitable form of the “devil’s reefer,” barrel enthusiast and presumed chemist Jarvis Tanner (Clint Howard) leaks a variety of unidentified chemicals into his immediate environs. The effects on the marijuana crop are unreported but his experiments accidentally turn the average arachnid into a grotesque monstrosity. Rather than banding together with the youths to fight off this growing wave of bloodsuckers, the illicit horticulturists let their paranoid self-interest get the better of them and they become additional opponents for the already beleaguered retreat members.
Clint Howard's less than classically handsome features are not improved by infestation
While some creature features focus on the hubris of man, dwarfed in stature against the awesome sight of untethered nature, others seek nothing more than to lighten the daily burden of existence with a frothy burst of adventure. Ticks is very much the latter. The tone is set rather clearly by the very reason for the titular pest’s sudden growth spurt. Instead of the shadowy corporations, government entities and overconfident scientists that regularly flood our cinematic woodlands with genetically volatile goo, the blame for this particular lot of aberrations is laid at the feet of a trio of leering goons, hillbilly drug dealers whose faces seem lifted from a children’s cartoon. This lighthearted spirit is reinforced by several hallucinogenic sequences, countless gory tick explosions and multiple Clint Howard sightings.
But perhaps the greatest indication that Ticks is merely in it for a chuckle or two is the decision to cast Alfonso Ribeiro as Darrel “Panic” Lumley. Mr. Panic is a street tough whose masculine posturing is a titter-inducing match with Riberio’s reputation as one of television’s most infamous milquetoasts. Seeing the man who played Carlton Banks on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air attempting to intimidate Seth Green, who himself is hardly a monument to brawny machismo, establishes early on that the audience should not be overly analytical in their evaluation of the content before them. Like a jaunt through the great outdoors, Ticks is an enlivening breather for anyone who has spent too much time in the didactic confines of purpose-minded cinema.
Ticks runs 85 minutes and is rated R for sci-fi gore, violence and language.
