It was The Best of the Worst. It was the best of times. The late nineties classic, Wormania, made legend by Red Letter Media, now has a companion piece called Worm Pornography. Expect to see these two pairing up (asexually) at your local kinoplex.
The plot? Oh, no. I’m not quite sure, and I’m not watching it again to find out. What is clear is that our hazmat-suited lead (listed in the credits as “the slime narrator”) investigates an infestation by pan-dimensional nematodes, tracking them as they propagate within the soil of our trashy culture. He is desperately trying to find a way to curtail the invasion. Meanwhile they discover new and disturbing ways of reproducing, including using 7-11’s, advertising, virtual reality, mutant cat videos, and the eponymous worm porn, until the whole thing becomes an endless, glistening apocalypse.
The film has three simple elements: a man on a toilet floor/laboratory, a slurred voice-over attributed to him, and basic special effects of endless wet squishy worms blended with other strange imagery. It takes these as far as they can go for a half hour.
“…an endless, glistening apocalypse…”
If you like Cronenberg, then you probably still won’t like this. It can feel like half an hour looking into a decaying cat. Actually, that’s not fair; a lot of it is a shattered man on a toilet floor surrounded by garbage, going mad, so you take the rough with the smooth. But if you like Burroughs and Marshall McLuhan, then you might get along well with this mangy monstrosity, as there are some bright and horrible science fiction ideas here.
This is a college film from the University of Melbourne, and if you want to find out more about it, then please make sure you search for Professor Ian Haig and not just worm pornography, or the results might kill the light inside you.
There are some nice touches in Worm Pornography, like the 7-11 logo displayed on screen for most of the film, as if the media we are watching has become infected by its own concepts. The visual effects are rudimentary, but they get the point across, and the film has a surprising bit of philosophical weight, more than the title suggests, anyway.
Perry Norton | June 18, 2024, Film Threat