The Nest

This mediocre sci-fi horror flick concerns hungry roaches chowing down on the residents of an island-based town. The story is absolutely standard to these types of things, and this one offers nothing new to horror fans, as the gore piles up. Not especially gory, although it definitely has its moments, and there is an eyeball scene that Lucio Fulci would be proud of. Despite this, this is not an especially good, or thrilling flick. Really for genre fans only.

Ants dont scare me,and nor do spiders.But roaches are the one thing that freak me out. I think this movie had good special effects for 1988,and I thought it had a good cast of character actors.A good companion to this movie is the bug [1975] which has a similar plot about killer roaches.

This flick is the Ultimate in Mutant Cockroach Terror! I love this one! Easily one of the best Roger Corman productions from the 80's! Sure it has a cheesy 80's synthesizer-score and displays ditto wardrobe and hairdos. But it also has a decent plot, well-drawn-out characters and... great gross gore effects! It follows the rules of a creature feature by the book, and the film benefits a lot from it. The puppetry and 'animatronics' might be rather static (not very lively), but the creature design is rather great and the 'mayor-roach' transformation scene is major fun to watch! There's also a 'cat-roach' in it, and just wait until you (briefly) see the final 'Über-mutant-roach' (which for some reason always reminds me of the final creature we get to see in John Carpenters "The Thing")! If you like all the afore-mentioned ingredients, then seek this baby out and have fun with it.

Mutant-insects…isolated little town…gory make-up effects…Yup, `The Nest' looks like a prototype of cheap and redundant 80's horror. But I'm sure that, if you decide to give it a chance after all, you won't regret it. ! The obvious aspect to-love about it is the gore, naturally, but the screenplay actually contains some sub-plots and ingenious elements that you wouldn't immediately expect in a low-budget production like this. Northport is small, peaceful island outside L.A suddenly infested by a deadly plague of cockroaches. A mysterious female scientist arrives on the island and the mayor acts very ignorant about the on-growing bug problem. Events escalate into a true disaster when the cockroaches attack and devour inhabitants of the island and, if this isn't worse enough, mutate into what they eat. Looks like a genetic experiment gone horribly wrong? `The Nest' has tension and atmosphere, accompanied by a bit of good black humor and decent acting performances. Horror insiders might recognize Robert Lansing in the role of ignorant mayor, as he previously appeared in `Empire of the Ants'. The show is stolen, however, by Terri Treas as the morbid Dr. Hubbard. The creators of `The Nest' obviously learned a lot from watching horror highlights as `The Fly' and `Them!' but the film offers enough amusement to stand by itself. I certainly enjoyed it better than the similar `Mimic', which was made almost ten years later. If you're a sucker for gore-goodies, check out `the Nest'

To be honest, I had too much whiskey prior to and during my viewing of this killer cockroach taking over a small town film, so key plot points remain a blur. That's fine, so when I view it again in a few years under the same circumstances it will be like a first viewing. While the film never lives up to the absurdly tasteless poster of a 5 ft tall roach mounting a scantily clad woman, it's still a fun cheesy creature feature. Throw in a mad scientist, a wacky exterminator and a whole lot of insect action and this ranks as one of the better late 80s output from Corman. The Scream Factory blu-ray seems to have put in more effort restoring the best looking version of this film, than the filmmakers put into making the actual film.