Mosquito
I once told my wife that I would prefer it if insects were much larger, provided there were a proportionate reduction in their numbers. I would rather have 100 beetles the size of dogs instead of 100,000 beetles of normal size. The bigger beetles would be visible from a long way off; you’d know they were there, and you could shoot them from the porch.
The 1994 film Mosquito puts this theory into practice. Well, it puts a variation of this theory into practice; the premise of Mosquito is that radiation from a meteor has transformed all the local mosquitoes (in someplace that looks like Florida) into large puppets the size of cattle.
As the film opens, Ordinary Horror Movie Protagonists Ray and Meg are driving Ray’s Dodge Shadow to some State Park, where Meg will be taking her new job as a Park Officer. Ray’s a boring loser who can’t act. Meg’s a normal-looking, wholesome gal who collects road kill and can’t stop saying the word “proboscis.” (In fact, Mosquito holds the record among all movies I’ve seen as the film in which the word “proboscis” is used most.)
Ray hits a mosquito the size of a deer. It’s proboscis puts a hole in his radiator, prompting Meg to gleefully exclaim, “My God, this looks like a proboscis.” Stroking the proboscis, she asks Ray if they can take the squished corpse of the giant Mosquito with them. Ray, a little disgusted with her road kill-collecting habits, refuses.
We then cut to the aforementioned State Park, where Park Officer Hendricks — a slovenly fellow with a bad comb-over who enjoys spraying people with poison when he’s not using his binoculars to spy on bikini-clad volleyball players — is assigned by Park Chief F.B. Morrow to go out and kill mosquitoes with a poison-fogging device the size of a Toyota. Chief Morrow has problems of his own; he’s absolutely obsessed with killing mosquitoes. These teeny tiny Moby Dicks have him spouting phrases like, “Blood Fever! They must be stopped!”
Hendricks, inspired by Chief Morrow’s pep talk and no doubt envisioning himself as part of that Thin Beige Line that is all that stands between humanity and rampaging mosquito hordes, goes out and sprays poison on everyone camping in the park.
In another scene, which I was surprised to find out was part of the same movie, we meet The Evil Kenny Rogers, Rex, and Junior. The Evil Kenny Rogers, whom my wife identified as such, looks, well, like an Evil Kenny Rogers. Junior is a weasel-faced fellow, and Rex is very stupid and obviously cuts his own hair. The three are camouflage-wearing rednecks armed with shotguns and revolvers, and they’ve got a bag of money. I’m not sure if they robbed a bank or what, since I started the movie a few minutes late.
Meanwhile, Meg and Ray have checked into a motel built entirely of Lincoln Logs. Meg can’t wait to tell the desk clerk about the proboscis she found, but Ray is only interested in how long it will take his car to be repaired. A television in the office shows one of those Plot Relevant News Reports (to which nobody bothers to pay attention) that has to do with — surprise — grisly murders occurring in the area, and some sort of bank robbery (aha!). The reporter is named Alan Smithee, ha ha ha, which is the name often used in Hollywood when a film’s director refuses to put his name on the final product.
The Evil Kenny Rogers and his redneck stereotype brothers get lost trying to leave wherever the heck in Florida or California or Canada this movie was filmed. They’re a hunting accident waiting to happen as it is, and when Rex visits an outhouse just sitting in the middle of a field somewhere, he is attacked by giant mosquitoes. His brothers manage to shoot him accidentally, for which the giant mosquitoes are grateful, since sucking Rex’s blood probably makes then stupider. We discover, thanks to the efforts of The Evil Kenny Rogers and his SPAS-12 shotgun, that the mosquitoes are vulnerable to deer slugs.
(“Do you still think bugs should be as big as dogs?” my wife asked as a big fake puppet built to look like a mosquito attempted to kill Rex while he was sitting in the outhouse.)
What follows is a montage of scenes of giant mosquito puppets killing people, their green-slime-dripping proboscises poking about in their endless need for blood. There are a lot of scenes shot in SkeeterCam, in which we get the Giant Mosquito’s Eye View as this menacing puppets pretend to fly about. Drunken fisherman are horribly killed. A naked woman in a tent is molested by a giant mosquito, then killed. Her date is killed. And so it goes.
At the Lincoln Log Motel, Ray meets Dr. Parks, the movie’s Token Black Guy Who’ll Probably Be Killed Doing Something Heroic. Dr. Parks works for the Air Force researching meteors, or something. One has landed nearby. (Gee, I wonder if the meteor’s radiation has turned all the local mosquitoes into giant monsters? Seems likely. Interesting that while radiation in real life just kills you, radiation in the movies always turns everything huge. Go figure.)
Dr. Parks gives Meg and Ray a lift to the State Park, where they discover that everyone has been horribly killed. The park is littered with shriveled, blood-drained bodies, which means it’s an improvement over every campground my family ever made me visit during my childhood. The gang finds another Dead Giant Mosquito Puppet, which Meg immediately wants to take home. Dr. Parks, ever one to grasp the obvious, wanders around pronouncing things like, “What in God’s name happened here?” He concludes, based on the dead giant mosquito, that it’s entirely possible the deaths in the park have been caused by dead giant mosquitoes.
Ray and Meg discover Hendricks hiding under an overturned rowboat. He immediately sprays them with poison. The gang gets back together with Dr. Parks to discuss the fact that giant mosquitoes are killing everyone, something they all take pretty calmly. I don’t know about you, but about the time I discovered giant mosquitoes were killing everyone, I’d be freaking out pretty elaborately. This group seems ready to form a committee to discuss the exact order in which they will flee from the giant monsters, if it should come to that.
Our heroes steal an RV (after scraping its dead owner from the driver’s seat) and travel away from the park. They encounter The Evil Kenny Rogers and Junior, who attempt to hijack the RV. Everyone fights, and the mosquitoes attack. The gang ties up The Evil Kenny Rogers and Junior and hauls them along for the ride.
The mosquitoes attack on the road, in a scene right out of The Road Warrior, if the Humongous’ minions were giant mosquitoes instead of leather- and chainmail-clad Australians who don’t bathe, and Mel Gibson was actually an unknown black actor playing the part of Dr. Parks. During the fight, Meg manages to sever a proboscis with a hatchet, fulfilling a life-long dream. When The Evil Kenny Rogers tries to take her hostage, she stabs him with the proboscis, somehow restraining herself from proclaiming something like, “Aha! I’ve stabbed you with this proboscis! Proboscis, I tell you!”
Bad special effects that are supposed to be giant flying mosquitoes continue to assault the RV. Thanks to Dr. Parks’ excellent driving skills, the vehicle scraps to a stop on its side. Our heroes escape, but Junior is sucked dry by the skeeters while trying to rescue the bag of money.
Hiding in some sort of sewer, the incredibly dull Ray finally makes the connection between the giant mosquitoes and the meteor, thus proving that the occupants of a horror movie are always several dozen steps behind the audience. The gang exits the sewer in the morning only to discover an Abandoned Farmhouse. Brilliant as always, they decided to fortify it and hide inside.
If you’ve ever watched a horror movie before, you know that Abandoned Farmhouses are structures where horror movie occupants go to die. If you discover yourself in a horror move, do NOT go into the abandoned farmhouse, and whatever you do, don’t nail scrap wood over all the windows in a vain attempt to keep the zombies or giant rabbits or, in this case, giant mosquitoes outside. You’re only going to die anyway, and by refusing to go in the Abandoned Farmhouse you save yourself a lot of time spent hammering boards.
Inside the farmhouse, The Evil Kenny Rogers discovers a great big giant chainsaw, which makes him happy. The rest of the gang busy themselves trying to commit suicde while Parks bores them with stories of his childhood. Hendricks is sent to check the basement, a task of which he does a really half-assed job. Eventually, while Parks is getting ready to show his vacation slides, the mosquitoes do everyone a favor and attack the house.
As you can imagine, much shotgunning and chainsawing and hatcheting of giant mosquito puppets ensues. Eventually, the gang discovers that the basement is full of bazillions of giant mosquito eggs, a fact for which Hendricks has little explanation. Resisting the urge to slap his face off, Parks hits on a plan: they should chop open all the gas lines and set a kitchen appliance like a time bomb, blowing up the entire building. Parks seems a little depressed even as he helps hatch this scheme, knowing that in all probability he’ll be killed doing something heroic related to the plan.
The mosquitoes continue to attack. Ray and Meg use a dumbwaiter to escape to the roof, somehow, but Hendricks and his ample girth snap the cable, and he plummets into the basement. The Evil Kenny Rogers, displaying some sort of latent heroism, takes his big chainsaw and goes into the basement to save the incredibly stupid Hendricks. Parks, left with nowhere to go, decides to salvage as heroic a Black Guy in a Horror Movie Death as he can, shouting to the giant mosquitoes, “Come and get me, come and get me!”
The house explodes.
When daylight arrives, Ray and Meg stare at the burnt-out shell. “Are you ready to leave now?” Ray asks — which begs the question, “When did Meg ever say she wasn’t ready to leave this land of Abandoned Farmhouses and giant killer mosquito puppets? They discover Parks alive, having broken one of the key laws of horror movies by hiding inside a refrigerator.
Mosquito is a bad horror movie that ends like many bad horror movies: with a character announcing, “Let’s get the hell out of here,” and an abrupt transition to the credits. I understood his haste; the urge to announce, “Let’s get the hell out of here” and flee my living room was strong for the two hours I sat through this.