Deadly Stingers is set in a small US town where toxic waste has been illegally dumped for years, the local Scorpion population has grown into six foot long killers as a result. A young girl named Joey (Sarah Megan White) witnesses the death of fellow teenager Eric (Jeff Dylan Graham) by said giant Scorpion but strangely enough her elder sister Alice (Marcella Laasch) doesn't believe her & neither does Sheriff Evans (Stephen O'Mahoney) when he comes calling after finding the mutilated remains of Eric. As more local residents are killed by the Scorpions a group of teenage parolees becomes trapped in a halfway house as they try to fight the hungry killer Scorpions off...
Co-written, produced & directed J.R. Bookwalter & executive produced by our old friend Charles Band I would guess that Deadly Stingers was a homage to the fun monsters films of the 50's & the like with there giant bugs of various descriptions on the loose, here the makers chose Scorpions & while not a complete waste of time I didn't think it was particularly good. The plot is very thin with nothing more than toxic waste mutated Scorions on the loose killing the bit-part character's, a little bit of plot depth was attempted with an evil Mayor & his hand puppet the Sheriff but both are killed off very quickly & nothing becomes of it & the sub-plot about a woman being killed & someone sent to prison for five years also goes nowhere. At just over 70 minutes at least it's short but with a fairly repetitive & predictable plot that's a blessing & while Deadly Stingers is gorier than similar creature feature output by the likes of the Sci-Fi Channel it's still silly, badly thought out without a sense of fun or humour & just doesn't feel like a 50's monster film even though it's obviously modelled itself on one. The one notable aspect is the amount of gore & the silly way the Scorpions are dispatched but overall Deadly Stingers isn't any better than any other low budget creature feature out there.
As mentioned there's a fair bit of blood here with melted bodies, blood splatter & various Scorpion claws & tails going through people's bodies. The effects vary, the on-set puppet effects range from average to awful while the CGI computer effects are uniformly awful which just doesn't help, I mean the monster films from the 50's generally had effects that were no worse (no better either to be fair though) than those on show in Deadly Stingers. I always thought the big argument for CGI as a film-making tool was that it was cheap, quick & produced better results than traditional effects work but that clearly isn't the case as far as I can see. I want to know the cool looking film Joey & Eric are watching featuring a stop-motion animated two tailed Scorpion monster at the start on telly as it looks better than Deadly Stingers itself.
The IMDb says Deadly Stingers had a budget of about $150,000 & I don't disbelieve that as this has low, low budget written all over it with cheap effects work & production values. Apparently filmed in Los Angeles. The acting is poor all round from no-one of any note.
Deadly Stingers is obviously a homage to the giant bug films of the 50's but with added gore & terrible CGI computer work & the fact that Charles Band was involved should be enough to tell you that this isn't particularly good. Sure it's short but is that enough to recommend it?
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