The Top-10 Best Bugs In Pop Culture
I have a phobia of bugs. I can’t look at cockroaches without squirming. When I see those little shiny-backed creatures scuttling haphazardly across the sidewalk in the middle of the night, going to whatever place cockroaches need to be in such a hurry, I will warily wait for them to finish their idle nighttime journey before I continue on my way. I can handle small black ants and ladybugs. Anything larger than my thumbnail will be fled from. Grasshoppers have featured in several of my most vivid nightmares, and I’m afraid of gardening ever since I came across an awaiting subterranean potato bug in my youth.
But, here’s an odd thing: If a gigantic insect appears in a movie, I squeal in delight. I can’t bring myself to step on a one-inch lock beetle, but when a 30-foot beetle steps on a car, I cheer. I think if an insect is blown into the size of a legitimate movie monster, I can somehow commute my fears; it’s easier to deal with a monster than it is a phobia.
To the giddy fear of the b-movie fanatic, and to the unmitigated glee to the would-be entomologist who actually had bug-making kits as children, I offer the following list of creepy bugs, insects, beetles and crawly critters to come out of movies and TV.
10) The singing cockroaches
from “Joe’s Apartment” (1996)
“Joe’s Apartment” began its life as a short film, shown on late-night MTV in between the videos, back when MTV was good and relevant. The short was about a twentysomething man, Joe, whose hot date is interrupted by the thousands of singing, talking cockroaches who live in his tiny New York apartment. The short was such a hit that MTV, when they first began to branch into feature films, extended it to feature length, cast Jerry O’Connell, and added entire a cappella musical numbers sung by an entire choir of roaches.
I don’t like to think of this too often, but if I were to imagine New York cockroaches developing their own social structure, I imagine it would be kind of like in “Joe’s Apartment.” There are thousands of you, and life is cheap, so you learn to work together, to wisecrack, and develop a kind of group mentality and playful narcissism to survive. That this group mentality was envisioned by a cappella music is kind of brilliant.
The roaches, while all disgusting little buggers, actually have a sense of humor, and eventually begin to help Joe in his endeavors (with mixed results), leading him to bigger and better things. And they’re always ready with a song. Part immature joke and part New Yorker’s fantasy, “Joe’s Apartment” is a weirdly enjoyable oddity.
9) The Evil Queen Pulsating Bloated Festering
Sweaty Pus-Filled Malformed Slug-for-a-Butt
from: “Earthworm Jim” (1995-1996)
“Earthworm Jim,” based on the video game, was one of my favorite cartoons as a teenager. I appreciated its absurdist slant on superhero tropes, and it’s surreal bouts of bizarro humor. It followed the adventures of an intelligent earthworm who had been mentally enhanced by a super suit. Jim was a blowhard, thought like a child, and ranted like a teen. He was fond of mayhem. That he was played by Dan Castellanetta was a boon. His sidekick was a cute li’l puppy named Peter who became a giant violent creature when he got hurt.
And, to match the hero’s weird-ass origins, he was frequently placed opposite a rogues gallery of equally bizarre villains, including a man with a monkey for a head (name: Prof. Money-for-a-Head), a superintelligent goldfish (who was always in his goldfish bowl), and his arch-nemesis, The Evil Queen Pulsating Bloated Festering Sweaty Pus-Filled Malformed Slug-for-a-Butt. The Queen was a giant beetle grub of some kind, who would lurge and ooze disgustingly across her horrible ship, scheming to steal Jim’s super suit. She was supposed to be dark and evil, but came across as cluelessly over-the-top, like a bad stage mom.
The Evil Queen (often referred to as simple “Queen something…something…For-a-Butt”) was played on the show by SCTV veteran Andrea Martin, lending to the role a kind of manic energy. As far as big bloated pus-filled sacs of living ick go, the Queen is one for the books.
8) The Applegates
from “Meet the Applegates” (1990)
On the surface, the Applegate family is a typically boring, white suburban family. Dad Richard (Ed Begley, Jr.) is a businessman. Mom Jane (Stockard Channing) is a well-coiffed housewife. Kids Johnny and Sally (Bobby Jacoby and Cami Cooper) are your average teens with average teen interests. What their neighbors don’t know is that the Applegates are actually a species of shape-shifting giant mantises, sent into the human world to learn their secrets and eventually kill them all.
The joke of the film is that the bug monsters, while disguised as humans, eventually begin to give into human vices. Dad begins having an affair with a human woman. Jr. begins taking copious amounts of drugs. None of them can seem to refrain from occasionally encasing human beings in sticky, sickly cocoons. In a strangely tragic twist, sis is even raped at one point. Is the film funny? Not exactly. In fact, as the film progresses, it becomes increasingly disgusting, as more bugs show up, and more bugs get messily squashed; there’s more bug goo in this film than any I’ve seen. And I’ve seen Cronenberg’s “The Fly.”
As far as memorable movie bugs go, though, I think the Applegates rate highly. Big scary creatures with weird, wicked motives, a horrible taste for garbage, and all-too human weaknesses leading top acts of gooey, gooey violence? Yeah, those are bugs to remember.
7) Mosquitor
from the “Masters of the Universe” toy line (1987)
Mosquitor was a badass. It was a half man, half mosquito that could suck the energy and the blood from his enemies. Of all the toys released by Mattel’s Master of the Universe line, Mosquitor is the most sought-after, as it was one of the last ones made, and, hence, one of the rarest. The doll has a button on its back whicj, when pushed, would cause bloody to flow down the insignia on Mosquitor’s chest. It had a big creepy mosquito head. I think I had one. But, like many of my childhood toys, it went missing. Or perhaps it was sold off at a garage sale, along with my Castle Greyskull and my Omega Supreme.
I talk to kids my age, and they all seem to remember Mosquitor. This is particularly strange, as the bug man never appeared on any of the “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” cartoon shows. This is a curious phenomenon for a show whose sole function was to sell toys. I guess the toy was good looking enough that little boys remember it to this day.
Look around on eBay, and you’ll find a Mosquitor. It will be going for about $30 (US). If it’s in the package, you could be shelling out up to $300. For an obscure doll at the end of a toyline’s run, Mosquitor has stood out in the back corners of a generation’s imagination. He’s earned a spot on this list for sure.
6) The typewriter-faced bug
from “Naked Lunch” (1991)
William Burrough’s Naked Lunch is one of the strangest works of literature from a school of writing already marked by it’s inaccessibility and strangeness. The eldest of the famous Beat authors, Burroughs infamously holed himself up in a hotel room for several days, shot up a near-lethal dose of heroin, and typed incessantly, throwing pages over his head as he completed them. When Kerouac and Ginsburg found him, near death, days later, they compiled the pages as best they could, and published them as Naked Lunch. The book is a phantasmagoic odyssey into the fevered brain of an alien being, involving copious amount of kinky bisexual sex, giant intelligent bug-birds called Mugwumps, and a strange, undefined conspiracy pertaining to an other-realm called Interzone.
And then, in 1991, David Cronenberg thought to film this book. The result deviates from the source material a lot, but it just as, well bugnuts crazy as the original. It’s based partly on the book, but also borrows events from Burrough’s own life. Peter Weller plays Bill Lee, a stone-faced exterminator, who has taken to injecting the power used to kill bugs. When he accidentally kills his wife in a hazy game of William Tell (based on fact), Lee finds himself taking advice from a huge talking insect with a typewriter for a face. The bug is also hooked on the bug powder, and encourages Lee to have gay sex.
I’m afraid of bugs as is. When it is given the surreal typewriter face, and tries to slime its way into my pants, I’m going to be especially terrified. Thank you William Burroughs, and thank you David Cronenberg. You’ve made me eternally weirded out.
5) Mick
from “Sick Girl” (2006)
Part horror film, part mind-control drama, part queer romance parable, Lucky McKee’s “Sick Girl” is one worth seeking out. It was released as part of the “Master of Horror” series in 2006, and is one of the better films from that series. I’m not sure if Lucky McKee (who, at that point had only directed the excellent “May”) could be considered a “master” of horror the same way, say George A. Romero or Dario Argento could be, but his film is still worth a look for it’s buggy nuttiness and weird slimy horror.
Angela Bettis plays Ida, a mousy entomologist who scares off all potential girlfriends with her passion for insects; she keeps them around the house. Creepiest of all is an unidentified species of giant bug she received recently in the mail from an anonymous source. She names this bug Mick, and dotes on it endlessly. Mick, however, is an intelligent little creature, and sneaks out of its cage at night to plug some kind of proboscis into Ida’s ear. Weird.
Ida is also obsessed with the waifish gal who is frequently seen in her lobby, filling her sketchbook with pixies and butterflies. This gal is Misty, and is played by Erin Brown, a.k.a. softcore starlet Misty Mundae. They are both awkward people, and actually have a kind of sweet romance. It’s not long before Misty is living with Ida, and Mick is planting his proboscis in her ear as well. I don’t want to reveal the ending of all this, but there are some terrifying mutations along the way. That Mick is one smooth operator, and can do things to you you can’t imagine. Plus, he’s really awful looking. Eesh.
4) The Brain Bug
from “Starship Troopers” (1997)
Paul Verhoeven’s over-the-top sci-fi flick is a clunky and hugely entertaining film that tells the tale of our continued struggle with giant intelligent insects from space. When it’s not being violent, or subtly glorifying fascism and fetishizing the military, it’s being weirdly campy and soapy. The human characters are all unreasonably good looking (Casper Van Dien, in the lead role, looks like an archetypal Aryan youth), and they’re all appropriately shallow. The film is noisy and dumb and a bloody good time.
The evil insects in the film, a species called The Klendathu, has been pooping meteors at Earth for years (I’m not making that up), and it’s up to the humans to invade their home planet and kill them all. The bugs are equipped with razor-like pincers, and many a head will be severed before this war is over. I wonder if drill instructors call their charges “maggot” in a war against insects. But I digress.
The Klendathu don’t display any sort of organized civilization, but we take for granted that they are indeed intelligent. We are told that the bugs are given orders by something called The Brain Bug, which is a psychic, 40-foot-long maggot living in a cave. The Brain Bug is a big squirming pustule with several eyes and a large, oozing vaginal mouth. It’s pretty gross-looking. One of the most sublimely ridiculous moments in the film come when, near the end, the human soldiers have captured the Brain Bug, and led it out into the sunlight under a net. Neil Patrick Harris, a psychic by trade, puts it’s hand on the Brain Bug and furrows his brow. He looks up with no small mount of gravitas on his face. “It’s scared,” he utters.
That’s why we go to the movies.
3) Them
from “Them!” (1954)
There is a small-kidney shaped neighborhood near Long Beach, just along the cast of the L.A. River, called Frogtown. Frogtown is where the Three Stooges grew up. It’s a quiet little property. It’s one biggest claim to fame, though, is it was where the 1954 classic “Them!” was shot. “Them!” was one of the first in a long series of American kaiju films; that is, a series of giant creatures, mutated by radiation, wreaking havoc on small American towns. Tarantulas, Deadly Mantises and grasshoppers all had their moment in the sun. The single definitive film in the series, though was “Them!”
Often showed on network TV on lazy weekday evenings, “Them!” was about kindly policeman played by James Whitmore and an ambitious scientist played by Edmund Gwenn (Santa from “Miracle on 34th Street”) who discovers that nuclear tests in New Mexico have been mutating the ant population. James Arness is in the film as well. The story is as predictable as you please, as military actions become increasingly desperate, and the numbers of the creatures continues to grow.
Like I said, regular-sized bugs frighten me, but very, very large ones make me wiggle with glee. I saw “Them!” on TV when I was a boy, and it lit up my fantasies like never before. This is the beginning of the giant bug genre, and all films with a giant bug in them owes an enormous debt to “Them!” the special effects are marvelously cheesy, and the action is pleasantly sloppy. This is a B-movie classic for the ages, and the ants are enjoyable to watch.
2) The Fly
from “The Fly” (1958)
Kurt Neuman’s 1958 classic is known for containing one of the most iconic bugs in cinema history. If you haven’t seen the film, you’re no doubt familiar with the slow pan from a park bench over to a spider web where we hear a horrible tiny voice shouting, almost inaudibly “Help me!” Watch the film if you haven’t. That moment is not just a cutesy horror film password. It’s actually a kind of gut-wrenching moment of dread. I had heard the line quoted hundreds of times, but when I finally sat to watch “The Fly,” I was a little scared.
“The Fly” gives us two monsters for our money. Al Hedison plays a mad scientist who has invented a pair of pods that can teleport matter instantly between them. He is so eager to try out his machine on a living being that he tries it out himself. In the teleporter with him, though, is a simple household fly. The teleporter, confused about teleporting two living beings, actidentally jumbles them together, and Dr. Delambre emerges with the head and right arm of a fly. The makeup to make the fly monster is so convincing that you may find yourself a little shocked when he first shows up. Meanwhile, the fly body with the head of a man, confused and dazed, finds itself caught in a spider’s web.
I can imagine the dream-like passage of intelligence out of a human brain. The slow deterioration of consciousness that both beings must feel. “The Fly” is looked on as a campy movie of an era long past (Vincet Price’s presence in the film only compounds that), when it should be considered alongside other classic monster films. The Fly is a scary and tragic and original beast.
1) Mothra
from “Mothra” (1961)
Mothra is 80 meters long. She weighs 25,000 tons. She can breathe fire as a moth, and wrap other monsters in string as a larva. Mothra is the biggest, meanest, toughest insect in all moviedom. She can wreck Japanese cities with the best of them, and has given Godzilla a run for his money on several occasions. Mothra, like many of the kaiju monsters, has had shifting allegiances over the years, sometimes being a horror to be destroyed, sometimes being a benevolent protector against other monsters.
While Godzilla is clearly the reigning king of the monsters, I’d say that Mothra is a worthy queen. Godzilla may have a reputation as a misunderstood beast, he still looks like a horrible destructive creature. Mothra, with her placid face and need to reproduce, strikes me as being more animal. More driven by her instincts, and unconcerned with man. In a way, this makes her more sympathetic. She doesn’t want to bother anyone. She just wants to go about her business, hatching giant moth spawn, and shooting rays at large buildings.
O.k. Maybe Mothra is also a badass who likes destruction as much as the next Ghidorah. As far as killer giant bugs go, Mothra can take them all. As far as movie bug monsters go, Mothra is probably the best. Mothra has been in 10 films from 1961 to 2004. Long may she reign.
Witney Seibold is a bug-phobic living in his bug-free apartment in Los Angeles with his lovely wife. He likes donuts, old books, and record shopping. When he’s not writing weird-ass articles for Geekscape, he maintains a ‘blog of movie reviews at Three Cheers for Darkened Years! He is also the co-host of The B-Movies Podcast out of Crave Online, which can be downloaded on iTunes. If you like this article, seek him out. You’ll find he’s rather gregarious.
