Skeeter on AllMovie

Part of the same "third wave" of eco-kill horror films which spawned the superior Ticks, Aberration, and Spiders, this giant mosquito film from director Clark Brandon and executive producer Don Edmonds (Ilsa -- She-Wolf of the S.S.) is similarly hamstrung by too much plot about environmental crime and not enough scares. Jay Robinson is the greedy developer who is dumping toxic waste into the mines around the small town of Clear Sky, causing mosquitoes to mutate into giant, silly looking beasts which resemble something out of The Giant Claw. The sheriff (Jim Youngs) and his girlfriend (Tracy Griffith) must put a stop to both the pollution and the bugs. There's a good deal of characterization and exposition, and the cast includes such genre stalwarts as Charles Napier, William Sanderson, George Buck Flower, and Michael J. Pollard, so at least cult viewers have some interesting people to watch in between bug attacks. Still, it is hardly likely that most viewers who choose to sit through a film called Skeeter are looking for the detailed human drama which Brandon throws their way at the expense of real fear. The concept of giant blood-sucking insects certainly has the potential to give viewers the screaming meemies, but time and again the potential is undercut by pious environmental speeches and pointless subplots more suitable to a frontier Western than a horror film. The best films in the eco-kill sub-genre use nature's revenge as subtext, but Brandon pushes it full-tilt into the foreground and the result is a real bore.