A 1987 cockroaches-on-the-rampage chiller made under the auspices of Roger Corman. If that sounds good to you then by all means seek this movie out, as it delivers exactly what you’d expect given that self explanatory poster art.
THE NEST was adapted from a 1980 novel by “Gregory A. Douglas,” a.k.a. Eli Cantor, which Will Errickson called “a shuddering, creepy-crawly scarefest that attacks the reader with one revolting sensation after another.” The film adaptation, made for the Corman run Concorde Pictures and produced by the great man’s wife Julie, followed suit, providing a fair amount of gross-out fun and even a message about the perils of environmental abuse.
It all occurs in the New England based island town of North Port, where a dog is chomped by an unseen something, all the library books are devoured from the insides and at least one suspicious death is reported. Faced with all this ugliness, Sheriff Tarbell (Franc Luz) accurately concludes that the town is overrun with mutant cockroaches.
Dr. Morgan Hubbard (Terri Treas) works for a shadowy research organization that’s been conducting inhumane experiments on cockroaches at the behest of North Port’s money grubbing mayor. The aim of the experiments is to create a new breed of cockroach, as too many are becoming immune to standard bug spray, but Dr. Hubbard and her fellow researchers have inadvertently created a deadly strain that’s multiplying out of control—plus the roaches are genetically mutating and can turn into whatever they eat, be it a dog, cat or even a human. This means the people of North Port now have to watch out for each other, as not everybody is who he/she appears to be.
Corman was famous for nurturing emerging talent, having given early breaks to Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Joe Dante and James Cameron. THE NEST’s director Terence H. Winkless (who remains best known for co-scripting THE HOWLING) didn’t enjoy the same sort of post-Corman success as those other filmmakers, despite THE NEST being about on par with Coppola’s Corman produced debut DEMENTIA 13 (1963) and several times better than Cameron’s PIRAHNA II: THE SPAWNING (1982).
This doesn’t mean the film is all that good, as Winkless’ camera placement leaves much to be desired and none of the performances stand out. That includes the cockroaches, a species whose main problem, cinematically speaking, is that they tend to scatter at the first sign of light, which explains why the roach masses of this film are never onscreen for very long (and often appear dead).
There are nonetheless some memorable moments. The sight of roaches swarming out of a woman’s cast is a puke-prodding standout, as is the outrageous finale, which copies the FLY and THING remakes, and also ALIENS in its depiction of slimy cocoons housing the critters’ offspring. With such a wealth of attention-grabbing nastiness it’s easy to forget that the film overall isn’t much—but then, it is a mutant cockroach thriller, and so shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
Vital Statistics
THE NEST
Concorde
Director: Terence H. Winkless
Producer: Julie Corman
Screenplay: Robert King
(Based on a novel by Eli Cantor)
Cinematography: Ricardo Jacques Gale
Editing: James A. Stewart, Stephen Mark
Cast: Robert Lansing, Lisa Langlois, Franc Luz, Terri Treas, Stephen Davies, Diana Bellamy, Jack Collins, Nancy Morgan, Jeff Winkless, Steve Tannen, Heidi Helmer