This one came with a thoroughly icky sort of reputation.
Parasite was one of the films from that brief revival of 3-D in the early Eighties, using a new polarized projection system. This all too short craze produced such classics as, well...Jaws 3-D, Friday the Thirteenth part Three, Nightmare on Elm Street part 3…
Well, you get the idea.
Parasite, however, wanted to stand out from the rest of the gimmicky herd — by throwing in another gimmick: besides a pair of 3-D glasses, theater goers also got…
A barf bag.
Lovely.
As a result, it is one of those films I’ve ignored for a long time.
…Or is that “avoided”?
However someone listed it as a forgotten gem of a horror film, so naturally I had to check it out.
My conclusion?
It is surprisingly good.
In a crumbling future where people are forced to barter for the scraps left from our modern world, A scientist goes on the run from The Merchants, a group so tied in to the government that it is hard to tell them apart any more.
He was developing a horrible, leech-like parasite for them but regrets it. Unfortunately, he accidentally infected himself and is trying to find the cure before it kills him. His job becomes far more difficult when someone accidentally releases the second surviving parasite and it starts devouring people in mildly messy ways.
This is a downbeat film with a lot of action, a surprising amount of plot, some rather obvious forced perspective shots when things were supposed to leap out of the screen at us, a nasty critter by Stan Winston with a memorable toothy smile, a bit of often silly-looking gore, and a very young Demi Moore.
With a “B” movie this good it should come as no surprise to find Charles Band’s name listed as Director and Producer. This one came out a year before Band launched his Empire Film’s label — and, in fact, a planned sequel would have been the first film released by Band’s Empire Films if he’d been able to find the funding.
What you will not find in this film is the sickeningly gruesome film the ads promised. Even their show stopper, the one really gruesome moment in Parasite, when the creature bursts out from an unexpected place, is more silly and unrealistic than nauseating.
So you won’t need that barf bag.
But you never know, if you offer one to your movie viewing friends, you might just convince them that they want to watch this thing.
It worked in the Eighties, right?
rivets on the poster 
A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 3 is not in 3-D. The finale of Freddy’s Dead – The Final Nightmare is in 3-D. Or maybe you are thinking of Amityville 3-D ?
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Yep, you got me. I just lived through the era and knew there was a Freddy that came out of the screen at you!
I completely forgot Amityville 3-D, too, although that’s probably for the best. Frankly, the only one of that wave of 3-D movies I saw at the time was Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, which was enough to cure me any desire to see any of the others…
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