Bug (1975) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - July 6, 1975

William Castle's production of Bug did not ping my pop culture radar until 1976, when I saw it at the Alameda three on a double-bill with Godzilla vs. Megalon.

The order in which the two were screened is a memory long buried under the inexorable sands of time. What I do remember is being both freaked out and grossed out by Bug, while being off-put by the broad cartoonish-ness of Godzilla vs. Megalon.

For a time the theatrical one-sheet for Bug hung in my bedroom. There are even some polaroids of my sitting at my desk and play acting as a working writer with the poster behind me. Where those polaroids are, and if they even still exist, I have no idea. If I do find them, I will share them. Why not?

In mid-to-late 1980s I managed to get my hands on a paperback of Thomas Page's source novel, The Hephaestus Plague and read it. While my admittedly fuzzy memory of the book remembers there being a tad larger scope to the firebug invasion, the core story beats of the novel seemed to have survived and been retained for this film adaptation.