#buggy kids/entomology

[odybee]

Remember that list of assorted Piper quirks? Well, I've been meaning to get back to writing Kyle again, so here's a list of little details about the big, buggy lad!

Was a super outgoing kid contrary to his current demeanor.

Played every Pokemon game up to Sun and Moon as a kid, including Red on his Mom's Gameboy. His teams always included Scyther.

Can't see past the tip of his nose without glasses.

His favorite bug of all time, which is also the one that got him interested in entomology to begin with, is the humble ant. More specifically, fire ants.

Caffeine makes him feel fatigued and sleepy.

Miraculously has a small friend group. He was introduced to it by the only friend he ever made all the way back in elementary school, but he barely ever hangs out with any of them unless prompted.

Doesn't like sugar/sweets.

Despite being a medical entomologist, he has managed to avoid being stung or bitten by anything more painful than a fire ant.

Maintains a garden of berries and flowers along the back and side of his house purely to attract more bugs.

Has put a lot of effort in maintaining steady, gentle hands. He must to properly do his job, which involves handling a lot of extremely delicate specimens.

Major Breaking Point spoilers after the divide!

That final fact may also be one of the reasons why Kyle latches onto Piper so hard, because his ability to hold back is a defense mechanism he's developed since very early in his life. He's always loved holding and studying invertebrates, and as mentioned before, he used to be super open about it. Excited, even, about showing his interest to everyone that would pay attention, because who wouldn't find bugs as cool as he did? Could they not see how beautifully lethal the dragonfly's design is, how the beetle's carapace glistens like a sparkling emerald? He'd proudly present his finds to anyone he could, which most often was another kid on the playground during recess. In doing this, he identified two core problems. One, sometimes he would get too excited and squish or otherwise injure his find. Two, this same excitement seemed to scare people away. So after countless uneasy pep-talks from adults without ever making a single friend, he came to a conclusion.

People, like insects, were easily overwhelmed. The only way he could possibly connect with either would be to first restrain himself, and the safest way to do so was to reduce contact. To listen and observe while minimizing his own personal input, lest they get too close and see or feel something they don't like.

Fast forward fifteen years, and this mindset has led him into a friend group as 'the quiet one' when he desperately wishes to be something more to someone else. Someone that he can be open with, that he can express his excitement around without fear of causing harm. At the very least, someone he could handshake without the nagging feeling that he was somehow doing something wrong.

So imagine how lucky he feels when Piper, the witty little marvel of science with the resilience to survive seemingly anything and the strength to resist absolutely nothing, falls right into his grasp.

[nyewclear]

doin’ some dialogue practices for creative writing class! i had to write dialogue based off of images n stuff :^)

. one . > picture > characters: max | teeny

The clouds swirled overhead, forming obscure and vague shapes that somehow Teeny managed to pick things out of.

“Look!” she crowed, pointing her finger at a nondescript blob of clouds that looked more like a lump to Max than anything. “Issa turtle.” Max wrinkled his nose as he squinted up at the clouds.

“It does not look like a turtle,” he said flatly, putting a hand up to his face to shield his eyes from the sun.

Teeny snorted, turning on her side to flick Max on the cheek. The freckles dotted across her nose had gotten darker from all the time she’d spent in the sun lately. “You’re jus’ uncreative! What does it look like to you?”

The corners of Max’s mouth turned down. It literally looked like nothing. It was a smear of white across the sky. “Um…” he started, feeling Teeny’s big eyes stare at him from the side. “I don’t know? Maybe a…” He peered at the sky a little more, trying to see something. The clouds writhed in the sky above them. “A g… ghost?”

Teeny snorted again, louder this time, and it dissolved into laughter as she flopped back onto her back. Max made a face, trying to keep from laughing himself. “You suck at this, Maxie,” she teased lightly before staring off into the sky for another long moment.

It was quiet when Max sat up after a minute or so. He could feel the grass stains seeping into the backs of his pant legs. There was a rumble in the distance.

“It’s planting season, isn’t it?” he asked idly, plucking grass from the ground and twisting it between his fingers. He looked back to see Teeny fold her arms behind her head. Her eyes were closed, inky black lashes fanned across her cheeks.

“Sure is, cuz,” she replied. “Daddy’s probably runnin’ the tractor over the hill.”

“Soybeans this year?” Teeny opened one eye to gaze at him.

“Nope! Corn this time. We did soybeans last year.” There was a silence. “Remember when you ran through that soybean field by the pig pen and stepped on the hornet’s nest?”

Max grimaced. “You laughed at me for, like, two hours. That hurt so bad. I couldn’t walk for a week.” Teeny grinned at him full force and it was almost blinding.

“You city slickers know nothin’ ‘bout the stuff that creeps around in those fields. You’re lucky you didn’t get bit by a cobra or somethin’.” Max gaped at her.

“There aren’t any cobras in the middle of Ohio, TT.”

There was a mischievous glint in Teeny’s eyes. “You don’t know that.”

. two . > picture > characters: boomer | oliver

The office desk shook violently when a pair of hands slammed down onto it, making Boomer’s pen skid to the side of the form he was filling out. Ophelia was going to kill him. She was always so adamant about having all the museum’s human resources paperwork filled out so very neatly. His brow crumpled with annoyance, looking up to probably frown deeply at whoever had made him do this, only to see a flushed faced Oliver looking down at him.

“Is it true?” was all he said, his voice stretched thin and layered with something that sounded like anger. Disappointment? Betrayal? Boomer couldn’t tell. He set down his pen, carefully, quietly.

“Is… is what true?” Oliver leaned back, green eyes ablaze. They looked watery.

“About you,” he bit out, forcing the words out of his mouth like they were foul.

Boomer cast him a bemused look. “About me?” The fact that Boomer had simply repeated Oliver seemed to bother him more. He crossed his arms stiffly across his chest.

“Yes. About you. And Valentina.”

Oh.

Boomer didn’t know how to answer this, his mouth working uselessly. He’d like to say that he’d forgotten about Oliver and Valentina and their very, very complicated history, and he’d like to say that he had thought about that before he’d kissed Valentina over the summer (he’d kissed her many, many times. But to be fair, she always kissed him first), and he’d like to say that he’d felt bad-- guilty even-- throughout all of this, but he didn’t. He really didn’t.

“I thought you and Ross were together,” he said lamely, biting his lip.

“We are,” Oliver snapped, exasperated. “But you? And Lenn-- Valentina? Are you kidding me? Are you f… are you serious?”

“You… you guys broke up in freshman year.” Oliver smacked the table again. The tin of pens on the corner of the table rattled.

“That doesn’t matter!” he retorted, even though it mattered a lot. He’d started dating Ross three months after Valentina broke up with him. It shouldn’t matter anymore. “You know how much she meant to me. You were there when things ended.”

“Oliver, just because I’m your roommate doesn’t mean that I--”

“You were,” Oliver interrupted suddenly, voice flat and brimming with something terrifying. Boomer had the urge to stand up. It was unnerving to be looked down on by Oliver.

“... What?” It came out as almost a whisper.

“You heard me.”

A hot flush came rising up Boomer’s neck and flooded into his cheeks. He sputtered, “B… but-- You already submitted your roommate request. We’ve been roommates for two years, you can’t just--”

“I already did.” Oliver’s voice wavered, and Boomer realized that his friend’s eyes had brimmed with tears. They threatened to spill as Oliver reached into his back pocket and thwacked a folded piece of paper down onto the table. “I apparently can’t trust you to not stab me in the back, so I told housing I’m living off campus.”

“Oliver--” Boomer’s eyes flicked to the paper. It was folded so sloppily that he could see the bold heading of the page peeking through one of the flaps. Notice of resignation, it read. All the breath was abruptly sucked from Boomer’s lungs. Oliver turned on his heel, began to walk towards the door.

“Don’t you ever talk to me again, Boomer,” Oliver went on over his shoulder, his voice shaking so badly that it would be impossible to believe that he wasn’t crying. Boomer watched Oliver’s back, watched him reach up and viciously wipe tears from his cheeks. “I hope you and Lenny last longer than she did with me.”

He was out the door in a second, his footsteps only a faint echo down the hall. Boomer wanted to call out to him, wanted to call him back, but he couldn’t find the words.

. three . > picture > characters: rosiane | james There was a loud crash from the living room, one that sounded like shattered glass and toppled chairs. The sound reverberated throughout the house, traveling up the stairs to Rosiane’s bedroom. Her pencil halted in the middle of her sentence as she looked up from her homework. A momentary silence passed and it made Rosiane uneasy, so she pushed back from her desk and clicked off her lamp. 

“James?” she called, shoving her feet into her slippers as she left her room and began to pad down the stairs. “Are you okay?” There was no response. She opened her mouth to say her brother’s name again, turning the corner that led from the hallway to the mouth of the living room to see the disaster in there.

“James??” Rosiane shrilled, rushing into the living room and to her brother. He was sitting in what had been the rounded coffee table, the glass surface all fragmented into a thousand pieces and the wooden base splintered under his weight. He was sitting there with a stunned sort of stupefied look on his face, bloodied scratches from the glass on his bare arms. He turned to look at her, big green eyes overflowing with tears.

“Rosie… Rosie, I broke the table,” he sniffled, the words coming out slow. Rosiane let out a sob mixed with a laugh, trying to navigate her way to him without getting glass stuck in her slippers.

“Oh, James, what on earth did you do?” There was another moment of James simply just sitting there looking lost, tears still running down his ruddy cheeks.

“I was trying to use my quirk,” he answered, looking down at his hands, his palms up and open on his thighs. A crushing sympathy tore through Rosiane’s chest, and she carefully lowered herself down next to James, glass crunching under her feet.

“Jameski…”James curled his fingers tightly into his palms, squeezing his eyes shut as he did so. More tears spilled down his face. “I wanna be… I wanna be like you, Rosie,” he mumbled, his chin quivering. His dark hair fell over his eyes and Rosiane reached out to tuck some behind his ear. “I tried to do it like you told me, to concentrate on the object, to… to reach out to it, and-- and it would...” He sighed heavily, shakily, shoulders hunching up to his ears.

“What were you trying to move?” Rosiane asked softly, ungracefully plonking her butt to the floor to release the strain on her legs. Glass painfully poked into her pajama pants and she met this fact with a wince. James curled into her like he was trying to hide.

“The picture frame by the TV.” Rosiane looked over at the television across from them, knowing exactly the picture James was talking about. It was a photo that her dad had taken the day they’d moved to their new house in Musutafu after leaving Kensington. James was just a baby, held in her mother’s arms, and Rosiane had been a skinny girl of nine. Her two front teeth had been missing.

The picture hadn’t moved from the spot that it had always been, perched on the TV stand like it had been for the past seven years. Rosiane assumed that James had climbed onto the coffee table for a better angle and it had given out on him.

“Jameski, you know these things take time,” she murmured, rubbing her hand up and down her brother’s back gingerly. She thought that she could feel glass in the back of his shirt. Her brother was beginning to cry into her shirt, big, heaving sobs that soaked the fabric through in moments.

“R-Rosie, I c-can’t do it,” he said through his tears, hands gripping her shirt in fistfuls. “I can’t, it’s s-so hard.”

“Shh… don’t rush it. It’s okay, Jameski, it’s gonna be fine.” A minute stretched into what felt like an eternity, the only noises being the clock ticking away on the wall and James’ blubbering into her shirt. It took a long while for James to calm down and stop crying, a while until James peeled his face away from Rosiane’s shirt and instead pressed his wet cheek to her chest like he was trying to hear her heartbeat.

“My q-quirk’s weak, isn’t it,” he hiccupped quietly. Rosiane gasped without meaning to, her eyebrows knitting together.“Oh, my God, no, it’s not! I never want to hear you say that again.” She paused before continuing, “My quirk was slow in manifesting too, did you know that?” James peered up at her with his puffy eyes, her shirt crumpling under his cheek. “Yup. I was so frustrated with it that I gave up on trying to summon golems for almost an entire year. It was like my quirk hadn’t even manifested at all.

“But I had to be patient. Not only with my quirk, but with myself. It’s exhausting to be angry at yourself about your quirk and it not being insanely strong right away. I had to learn to take my time, to pace myself, and not push myself too much before I started to see any real progress at all.” She smiled a little down at James, a long, straight lock of hair falling down her shoulder. “And you know what? I remember my first tiny little golem-- one made of air. I’d summoned it while sitting at the kitchen table back in Kensington and it was incredible. Definitely worth waiting for. Definitely worth trying for.” She gave James a little shake, her arm tucked firmly around his back. “So don’t you ever say your quirk is weak. I know you’re gonna be so frickin’ strong someday, Jameski. You’re gonna be stronger than me. It’s gonna be awesome.”

“You think so?” James squeaked. Rosiane smiled big this time, using her thumb to brush the nearly-dried tears from James’ cheeks.

“I know so.”

[horrorslashergirl]

Could you do The Collector meeting the reader who was his only friend when he was a kid they use to read together and she would take care of his bruises and injuries. :)

The Collector x Reader- Sparks Flying

The University was filled with people which only made Asa more anxious, he hated these busy days where people scattered all across the hallways. He to get away from these loud noises and get a coffee because he managed to get just two hours of sleep last night, thanks to a complicated piece of his collection.

He took his lab coat off, hanging it on the hanger by the door, taking his denim jacket, putting it over his black turtleneck. Tonight was so busy that he hadn’t even managed to change. Walking out of his office all eyes were on him, making him room to walk the hallways. All the staff and interns knew not to get acquainted with Dr. Emory because he would either make them feel as stupid as a rock or more simply ignore them.

Walking out the university his steps took him to a close coffee shop. After taking a black simple coffee, he walked out, ready to head back in his cave of an office to finish his work, only for someone to bump into him, thank God not spilling his coffee or else he would make sure to end the persons life.

“Asa?” a gentle voice spoke his name, making his obsidian eyes look into soft wide ones, adored by a big smile. It was like someone electrocuted him, flashbacks coming at him from that familiar cheeky smile.

“[Name]?” he asked, his black eyes that usually were put into a glare or simply not displaying emotions looked now like a lost puppy.

He still remembered you, even after so many years, despite the fact that you never crossed his mind until now that you were in flesh and bone in front of your lost time friend.

“Long time no see, buggy boo?” you said with a grin, making the tall man blush and clear his throat.

“Yes, it’s been quite a lot. What are you doing here?” he asked, trying to steady his voice.

“Well, I decided to come back and get my degree in Engineering! Maybe get an apartment? What about you?” you asked, your eyes never breaking eye contact with his black shiny ones.

“I’m working at the university in the Entomology department.” he simply said.

“Still a lover bug, huh? I’m happy that you achieved your dreams, bugga boo.” you chuckled, making Asa feel so uncomfortable and he knew he was blushing, something that never happened to him in a long time.

“Stop calling me that. We are grown-ups now.” he said, glaring at you. You only rolled your eyes at your hardheaded old friend.

“Always the shy one, Asa?” you asked with a raised eyebrow, only for Asas’ blush to deepen, making you smirk in victory. You never changed, that’s what Asa could tell, but he was somehow glad because it made good memories of his childhood to come back, well the only good memories were with you, someone who accepted him how he was, the nerdy awkward boy that now today is the same only more tall, more broad and so much more intimidating.

“Well, if you want maybe we can catch up on dinner? How about that?” you asked the shy man. Asa sighed, he knew there was no escaping you.

“Alright. I will pick you up at 7. I’m paying.” he said.

“Always the sweet gentleman.” you said with a playful wink.

He couldn’t refuse you, you were probably the only one and the fact that you are back made him feel happy inside, just like the old times when he would receive a hard beating from his father and he would try to hide the injuries only for you to fix him up, and the times you would fall asleep on his lap while he read from books of bugs. Oh and his favorite time when you would kiss his forehead, but after you left with your family he got none and because of his father he is the man that he is today; hardheaded, cold and witty.

“See you then Asa! Bye buggy boo.” you said, kissing his slightly stubbled cheek, making his eyes widen and his skin where your soft lips touched his skin to tingle.

“I would kiss your forehead, but you got so much taller than when you were a kid.” you joked, waving goodbye as you went on your own, leaving Asa in a blushing state, his plush lips forming a small smile.

Maybe life would get better now that you are back.

[tauforged]

🍓 for buggy boy

RUBS HANDS TOGETHER.... time for some REX FACTS!!!!!

-he’s named after and based on Megasoma Rex, or the rex rhino beetle, one of the larger beetle species out there! also just one of my personal favorites, i think their horns are cool :3

- while he does have a degree in entomology, hes at memlabs parrially to work with robotics too— he mainly designs rough concepts and prototypes, basing a lot of the mechanisms on insect anatomy. he isn’t technically supposed to have live specimens in his office, but that didn’t stop him from doing it anyway, for ‘reference’.

- of all fruits, he’s especially partial to apples, but ONLY if they’re crisp. mushy apples make him gag and he’ll resent you for days if you give him one

- fruit based candies and sweets are an entirely new concept and he’s thoroughly fascinated by their existence. giving him a package of fruit jellies guarantees that he will now absolutely die for you. it also guarantees that he’ll eat them all at once and then end up sick.

- he’s much denser than the average human, just because his thick carapace adds a lot of heft. he has to be careful not to throw his weight around too much when he’s in disguise otherwise he’d be constantly breaking things and knocking people over

- he’s also a LOT stronger. he could painlessly flip a decent sized truck with his horns, but he doesn’t like to cause that sort of trouble

- genuinely really enjoys horror movies, but has yet to find one that actually scares him

- hes got horrible insomnia, and can often be found in the kitchen at 3am blearily sipping his way through a whole pot of lavender-chamomile-mint tea in an attempt to pass out in a timely fashion. he adds an ungodly amount of sugar, though, which is a little counterproductive

- he snores. LOUD.

- he loves kids, and is usually pretty good with interacting w/ them. back on his home planet, he used to ‘babysit’ his younger siblings most of the day. he misses them a lot :(

- he’s wary of cats and TERRIFIED of dogs, because they ‘know too much’. he won’t elaborate.

- when he’s really REALLY happy or excited in beetle form, he wiggles his antennas and makes little chirping noises— in disguise, this translates to little hand flaps and humming :’)))))

- he’s genuinely a really chill and friendly guy, but a lot of his mannerisms and the way he tends to speak makes him come off a lot more ominous. he forgets to actually... use facial expressions. he’s not used to having them. cut him some slack

- he’s kinda peeved by the fact that the first person to call him on not being human is a 12 year old who wholeheartedly believes he’s only got this job because he hypnotized his boss with alien mind control, but mostly because it hurts his feelings that anyone would assume he’d be that mean to anyone for no reason :(

- his favorite flowers are roses, because they taste just as good as they smell. he doesn’t understand why people think this is a weird thing to say.

- he can whistle and usually does so while he’s deep in thought working on something or elsewise just killing time alone

[the-rovarians]

"Still not into kids, Commander?" Spirit teased.

"This is different. It's different when they're not yours." He huffed, though even an idiot could tell he liked Lily. It was simply Taurus exhibiting the stubbornness he was known for.

"Uh huh, and I'm a moon buggy." She swatted at some insect buzzing around her face.

"Another thing you won't have to put up with on Mars. Bugs. I mean, we have them, but they're contained in the botany and entomology facilities, and those guys are fanatics about keeping their bugs where they belong."

scales and metal

@the-rovarians 

“dammit…this better not be a waste of my time” grumbled a tall male. his pale complexion and silver scale patches could be seen from a bit away with how bright they were. baring his fangs at the thought of this mission “i have to play fucking babysitter…there are other things i could be doing” he hissed in frustration as he opened his closed eyes, to reveal deep golden silted orbs staring ahead. he was waiting to be briefed, getting more inpatient by the moment. 

[the-master-cylinder]

Bug (1975)

SUMMARY An earthquake releases a bunch of mutant cockroaches that can create fire by rubbing their cerci together. Eventually, most of the bugs die because they cannot survive in the low air pressure on the Earth’s surface, but a scientist, Professor James Parmiter (Dillman), keeps one alive in a pressure chamber. He successfully breeds the mutant cockroach with a modern cockroach, creating a breed of intelligent, flying super-cockroaches.

DEVELOPMENT/PRODUCTION Filmed in Panavision and Technicolor by cinematographer Michel Hugo, “Bug”, based on Thomas Page’s novel “The Hephaestus Plague”, is brought to the screen as a William Castle Production for Paramount Pictures. Jeannot Szwarc served as director. The assignment marks Paris-born Szwarc’s second credit as a theatrical film director. Szwarc also has a long list of credits as a writer, producer and director of television shows and made-for-television movies. The screen adaptation of “Bugs” was written by author Thomas Page and producer Castle.

In “Bug”, a deadly force is loosed among us. Not Martians or lethal bacteria from outer space, but fire roaches, thousands of them swarming, black and eyeless from a chasm opened in California by an earthquake.

As old as the dinosaurs and intelligent as the primates, they feed upon carbon, creating their dinners instantly by burning cars, houses, people, animals, whatever is in their path, with a flame that spurts from their exhaust. Moving by an ingenius method and shrugging off all attempts to destroy them, the bugs threaten to ignite the entire city of Riverside, California, before moving on to take over and destroy the rest of the country.

The plot becomes increasingly tense with the slow realization that something is terribly wrong. Events slide imperceptibly from what is real to what is conceivable and then perhaps beyond. Then, the fascinated scientist, who has come to identify himself with the dreadful bugs, discovers how to kill them, and they are killed-except for one that he breeds to a common roach. Then emerges the second generation: more deadly, alarming, intelligent and versatile than before.

The principal cockroach actors playing title roles in “Bug” are laboratory-grown cockroaches trained for their screen chores by an entomology scientist at the University of California at Riverside. Two weeks of location scenes were filmed at Riverside and its surroundings. Numerous outdoor sites were utilized by the camera as background in this historical territory, including the University of California (Riverside). The script called for the story to be laid in a small university town, and Castle felt that Riverside was an absolutely perfect choice.

The location filming generated extreme interest with the local residents, with many natives and UC college students hired to work as actors in the film.

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Hollywood has a stimulating effect on a town whenever a film unit arrives to shoot location scenes. To begin with, a record fleet of equipment-carrying vehicles, including an $85,000 Chapman camera crane truck, rolled into Riverside for the shooting. Almost 100 studio technicians scurried about, changing local landmarks to fit the script’s requirements.

“Bug” was a real event to the residents of this quiet, agricultural center, which is the home of the first navel orange grown in America, and the filming meant a huge financial boost to Riverside. Motels, banks, restaurants, sporting goods stores, gift shops, etc., were all the recipients of a financial bonanza as the result of the movie company locating there. Producer Castle estimates that a half million dollars was spent in Riverside before the company headed for home and the interior scenes filmed on the sound stages at Paramount in Hollywood.

The living room and kitchen sets from The Brady Bunch were reused in this film, although the living room set was rearranged slightly to a smaller footprint. Aside from a paint job, the kitchen set was otherwise unaltered.

CAST/CREW Directed Jeannot Szwarc

Produced William Castle

Written William Castle Thomas Page

Based The Hephaestus Plague (1973 novel) by Thomas Page

Bradford Dillman as Professor James Parmiter Joanna Miles as Carrie Parmiter Richard Gilliland as Gerald Metbaum Jamie Smith-Jackson as Norma Tacker Alan Fudge as Professor Mark Ross Jesse Vint as Tom Tacker Patty McCormack as Sylvia Ross Brendan Dillon as Charlie

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Quasimodos Monster Magazine#07

  The Nest (1988)

SUMMARY The sheriff of this small island town called North Port has a roach problem in his house. According to the local exterminator Homer (played by Stephen Davies), it turns out the whole town is about to have a big roach problem. Pets, and then people, begin to disappear or turn up dead and mutilated.

Although Sheriff Richard Tarbell (played by Frank Luz) is dating Lillian, the owner of the local eatery, his high school sweetheart Elizabeth Johnson returns to the island after a four-year absence and their romance blooms again. Elizabeth (played by Lisa Langlois) happens to be the daughter of the town’s mayor, Elias Johnson (played by Robert Lansing), who is in cahoots with an evil corporation called INTEC that has been secretly breeding mutant roaches that are immune to normal insect repellants. They also seem to have the ability to assume the form of anything they kill, leading to some animal/roach hybrids and even 2 roach/human combos.

DEVELOPMENT Made by Concord Pictures, directed by Terence H. Winkless, who will be making his debut. He is a co-author of The Howling (1981) script and a horror movie freak. Kelly Howe, who is also a member of the SFX team “Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)” is in charge of SFX. He is a newcomer and creates a powerful monster that is as competitive as a real cockroach flock.

The filmmakers utilized 2,000 flying cockroaches during filming at Quicksilver Studios in Venice, Los Angeles. When some of the insects escaped into nearby dressing rooms, the American Humane Association were unable to assist them as the organization must be contacted prior to shooting on matters concerning insects.

The result is yet another first: the first solid, quality horror film from Concorde, which usually turns out campy cheapies like Munchies and Chopping Mall. Not only is it gut-level effective, but it sports a surprisingly slick, polished look for its budget of less than $1 million. Based on a novel by Eli Cantor (published under the pseudonym Gregory A. Douglas).

What attracted Winkless to Robert King’s screenplay, however, was not the horror as much as the story’s potential for humor. “What I liked about the script was the fact that you could do some comedy with it,” he explains. “If you try to take the bugs completely seriously, you’re going to fall on your face. I think the movie bears that out. Life gets really absurd sometimes, and what better way to talk about how absurd it is than when the fat lady is lying in bed and the bugs are crawling down her cast? You can’t take it seriously; it would never be true horror like Halloween or ALIEN, but it could be sort of comic horror.”

The movie’s best comic achievement is the character of Homer (Stephen Davies), the island’s resident exterminator, who prefers to be called a “pest control agent” and is barely fazed by the horrific goings-on around him. “Ostensibly, the hero of the piece is the sheriff (Franc Luz), but I’ve always been sort of a closet anarchist, so my hero in the movie is Homer. He’s really the guy who winds up saving the island.” Winkless reserves special praise for Davies, an old friend he fought Concorde to use. “He’s a brilliant actor,” raves the director. “One of these days he’s going to be a big star.”

Winkless first met Davies through fellow USC film school alumnus John (The Razor’s Edge) Byrum, who wasn’t the only classmate of his to become well known; John Carpenter, Dan O’Bannon and Nick Castle attended the school at the same time. Prior to working behind the camera, Winkless’ first professional job was as an actor of sorts, playing the gorilla in the kids’ TV show The Banana Splits. He went on to become a scriptwriter, his best-known credit undoubtedly the one he shares with John Sayles for the screenplay adaptation of Gary Brandner’s The Howling.

According to Winkless, though, this work was not collaborative; he has never actually met Sayles. “I worked only with Joe Dante and producer Mike Finnell,” Winkless recalls. “They had bought the book, and all they kept was the title. They threw out the book, and we started from scratch. I did my draft, and then they had Sayles do another draft after me. I admire his work – and I hope he admires mine!”

Winkless had been in constant contact with Concorde president Roger Corman since then, and his agent was a friend of Corman’s wife Julie, who produced The Nest. When said agent found out that the Cormans needed a director for the buggy saga, he advised Winkless to go for it, and Winkless found himself attaining every scriptwriter’s dream: directing his first feature. He describes the experience as “my greatest fantasy and my worst nightmare. The scariest thing about it was that, to a certain extent, I could predict what the actors would do, what the cameraman would do and what the editors would do, but you couldn’t at all predict what the bugs were going to do. For a first-time director, having this great unknown factor was a thrill.

“Actually, that was more humorous than anything else,” Winkless continues. “I was constantly shouting, More bugs! More bugs! Of course, there were never enough bugs, and they were always escaping. I kept stooping down and picking them up, and I’d get pissed off finally and start stepping on them because I was angry that they were getting away. Then I would stop and think, ‘My God, I’m stepping on my stars!

As the movie’s roaches continue to mutate, they begin to genetically combine with the creatures they eat, resulting in a number of grotesque hybrids. FX man Cary Howe was responsible for creating the monsters, including a feline roach creature and a man transformed into a humanoid insect. There’s also a giant roach/human “queen” that is faced down by the sheriff and the mayor’s daughter (Lisa Langlois) in the finale.

Originally, this last monster was to have lurked in the shadows, but Winkless found Howe’s work impressive enough to bring it out into the light. “Cary had put an arm on it that would move, and the producers said, “Gee, that’s terrific, can you put another arm there, and there, and over there?’ So they kept adding appendages. It was all for the same money, so Cary had his work cut out for him. But it worked out great.”

The genesis was that I had the type of assistant everyone needs, and that is someone who comes in Monday morning and says, “You haven’t read this script, you need to have this meeting” and gives you the agenda for the week. Her name was Lynin Whitney. She came in one Monday morning and said, “Hey, wanna make a bug movie?” and I said, “Only if you do all the work.” The Nest was a novel [by Eli Cantor, using the pseudonym Gregory A. Douglas] Lynn found. We acquired the rights, and the screenplay was written by Robert King, who went on to create the series The Good Wife with his wife, Michelle. The director, Terry Winkless, was originally an actor-a clown, in fact-on television, so he is very good with actors. He went to film school and became a director. I think The Nest is underrated. – Roger Corman on The Nest

CAST/CREW Directed Terence H. Winkless

Produced Julie Corman

Written Robert King

Based on The Nest by Eli Cantor

Robert Lansing Lisa Langlois Franc Luz Terri Treas Diana Bellamy

Music Rick Conrad

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Gorezone#02 Fangoria#328

DOUBLE FEATURE RETROSPECTIVE – Bug (1975)/The Nest (1988) Bug (1975) SUMMARY An earthquake releases a bunch of mutant cockroaches that can create fire by rubbing their cerci together.