Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 4:1	Budget Medium

Oh, come on, all poodles can't be gay.

Candy (Melinda Clarke, "Return of the Living Dead III" and her partner in crime Johnny (Jason Durr who has lots of English (?) TV credits) rob a bank and then double cross their accomplishes. Johnny then turns himself in for the crime while Candy hides out in a nunnery. Just before he is due to be released, a meteorite crashes in the desert. A chip finds its way to Candy's bowl of soup where it turns her poodles into human drag queens and gives her the titular killer tongue (as well as a black body suit and a small prehensile tail). Johnny has trouble with the prison Warden (Robert Englund, "Nightmare on Elm Street", "Zombie Strippers"). Unfortunately for Johnny getting the crap kicked out of him by the Warden is just the start of his troubles. While he tries to get to Candy's side he will get impaled on a pickaxe, shot, handcuffed to a jeep, and tossed over a cliff. Meanwhile Candy is trying to not succumb to the tongue's evil side. She finally gives in but in the climatic scene Rita is able to rid her of the tongue. When we last see Candy she is in a beautiful repose lamenting her life and expressing a desire to be left alone.

"I know that I should have listened to my mother. And I should have followed her ways. Stayed in our nice harmonious little town in Sombrero-land and become a straight, untroubled and well-respected valium-bound, husband-killer alcoholic. Then cook my head like a turkey in a gas oven on a beautiful Thanksgiving day. Just like she did."

These are the first lines in the movie and unlike a lot of movies that start out with an odd premise and then retreat to familiar story lines, KT just gets weirder and weirder. For starters, when Candy changes so do her poodles. Candy apparently liked to dye the poodles and put ribbons on them, but once they are exposed to the meteorite and changed to drag queens they take it to extremes. Turns out Candy is hiding out in an abandoned whorehouse called Porky (hmm, that sounds really familiar) and the poodles have no trouble finding lots of interesting outfits to wear. In fact they tend to look a little like refugees from "Priscilla" and "To Wong Foo". When we get to see the tongue it brings back memories of "Tremors" and the Graboid appendages. I find these references to be more homage than rip offs. If you were to play a drinking game involving all the movie or movie plot devices referenced it is doubtful that you'd make it to the end of the movie.

Melinda Clarke plays her second incredibly attractive movie monster. She was a particularly hot zombie in "Return of the Living Dead III" and certainly gives Linnea Quigley a run for her money as the hottest. Candy takes one sip of the meteorite soup and starts to transform immediately. She spends pretty much the rest of the movie in a skin tight black outfit which we never really get to see. This is largely due to the horrible film transfer. The film was original shot in some variation of Widescreen but the only copy I have been able to track down is forced down to 4:3 and the resolution is very poor. The image on the screen is often jarringly bad and really can distract from the movie. Still Melinda is given a lot to do in this movie. Occasionally a monster will get a couple of conflicting emotions, but here Candy goes through about six emotional changes and is constantly adapting to what is happening around here. A lesser actress would have been lost here and a less brave actress would have been horrified.

Killer Tongue is a lot like "Tremors" in that it is making reference to numerous movies while still maintaining its own narrative. "Tremors" was much more of a straight forward monster movie with very familiar characters and situations. KT borrows tons of themes from other movies but the characters are wildly different than what you might expect. Johnny is not exactly a normal hero (he reminds me a bit of Griffin Dunne's character in "After Hours") who just keeps getting more and more crap piled on him. Candy's various dealings with the Tongue do mirror what you might see in a vampire movie as a fledgling vampire comes to terms with the ups and downs of their condition. KT ends up being a deliberately odd take on the "Tremors" movie making style.

The movie is broken up into three different storylines. Candy's storyline moves from the robbery to the nunnery to her transformation and then through her time dealing with the tongue. Johnny goes from the robbery to the prison to escaping and then his ordeal trying to get to Candy, he shares screen time with the Warden and then later with Rita. The Warden starts out in complete control and then after Johnny escapes things go downhill for him fast. We spend a lot of time with the Warden; next to Candy, he is probably the most fleshed out character. Rita's has a transformation as well as she goes from being a mute nun who has visions of a meteorite to a lingerie wearing babe.

Candy's ties them all together but they are pretty separate until the final act. Johnny's story starts out tied to the Warden's but when he escapes from the prison he runs into Rita they continue his storyline together. The Warden's storyline is largely peripheral in many ways, he is the only character to not really interact with the meteorite (at least not until the end) and he pursues his own agenda of tracking down his missing men and Johnny. Rita starts out as a quiet (actually mute) nun who has predicted that the meteorite will arrive. She flees the convent and chases down the meteorite which heals her of her speech problems. When she has a run in with the drag queens, she gets a wardrobe upgrade. Rita is the only character who benefits from the meteorite directly. She is healed by it and uses it to heal Johnny. While she is careful not to touch the chunk she breaks off, attacking the meteorite with pickaxe would have gotten anyone else blown to bits. Amusingly when she and Johnny end up in a bed in the middle of the desert (it's a long story), the meteorite fragment seems to work as an aphrodisiac for the two of them. Considering the day that they both had, it must be pretty powerful.

Johnny has a tough time in this movie. He starts out in pretty good shape and seems to do okay during his four years of incarceration, but with only a few days left to go, the Warden starts to take a special interest in him. In true movie hero fashion, nothing seems to phase him. When we first meet the Warden he is repeatedly punching Johnny in the face. When he gets a note from Candy saying she is in trouble, Johnny breaks out of the prison during which he ends up with a pickaxe in his chest. Rita heals him but leaves him handcuffed to the jeep. One of the guys he double crossed shows up and shots him in the leg. Johnny then drags the jeep in the direction he wants to go until the piece of the jeep that he is cuffed to breaks off, then he walks until he finds Rita on a bed in the desert. After lying down beside her, he accidentally touches the piece of meteorite which causes the two of them to have sex. Unfortunately, Candy catches them and pushes the bed over a cliff. And he still survives to save the day and get the girl. Remind me not to whine about having to work overtime to this guy. This really is kind of funny but again if you don't get the joke it might just get old.

What makes this a strong movie is the huge amount of stuff that is going on without distracting from the main story. In fact switching to the other bits keeps Candy's storyline from getting too jumpy. As I mentioned she goes through a lot of changes that might be a little jarring if not played off against the other stories. If you expect it to make any sense, you are not going to enjoy it. There is not really a logical and carefully explained ending (we know Candy is sad but don't know why), we never find out about why Rita predicted the meteorite or why she seems to benefit from it while everyone else is reduced to giblets. But that's okay. The movie owes all most as much to "Kentucky Fried Movie" as it does to "The Blob". While there is a narrative, it is mostly a collection of skits happening to the various characters.

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