What we have here is a movie with insects the size of Sally Struthers — and they are a bloodthirsty lot. They suck the blood out of humans the way Sally inhales a large chocolate shake and a double bacon burger at Wendy’s: with cold, horrifying efficiency and no regrets.
In “Mosquito,” the trouble starts when radioactive debris from outer space lands in a rural area and causes a batch of mosquitos to grow to the enormous Sally-esque proportions mentioned above. Soon, they are a seemingly unstoppable airborne division of fake-looking, but unquestionably deadly killers.
Ray (Tim Lovelace) and Megan (Rachel Loiselle) are a couple of happy-go-lucky young flea brains who happen to hit one of the flying monsters with their crummy economy car. They inadvertently kill the bug, but his stinger puts a hole in the car’s radiator and the couple is stranded in the backwoods hamlet. They soon meet up with Hendricks (Ron Asheton, ex-guitarist with Iggy and the Stooges), a bumbling forest ranger type who provides much of the film’s comic relief.
It becomes apparent, in relatively short order, that the mosquitoes are on a rampage and Hendricks and the youngsters are thrown together with a scientist named Parks (Steve Dixon) and a trio of thugs lead by Earl (Gunnar “Leatherface” Hansen). They race around for a while in a Winnebago while the mutant bugs take kamikaze runs at the vehicle.
Later, they manage to barricade themselves into a house and briefly hold off the swarming creatures. But our heroes soon discover that they’ve stumbled upon the nesting place for the insects: the basement of the very house they now inhabit. So, they decide to pull a daring stunt by letting all of the mosquitos into the house and then blowing the skeeters and their unborn larvæ to smithereens–leaving themselves only precious seconds to escape the explosive carnage.
The special effects are, for the most part, not very convincing–but the movie has a lot of laughs. Like when Gunnar Hansen grabs a chainsaw and says “I haven’t used one of these in twenty years!” It’s basically like a low-budget Fifties horror flick, except that there’s that tongue-in-cheek element to the production that lets us know that filmmaker Gary Jones isn’t afraid to poke fun at the movie’s obvious shoestring budget. All in all, “Mosquito” is even more fun than watching Sally Struthers spew lunch all over the sidewalk after eating an undercooked Whopper.
