Jebidiah and Roscoe are really excited because they’ve seen that Billy (Michael Badalucco) has reopened his old gold mine. Used to be that the people in this backwoods town used the old mine to drink and make out… an abandoned gold mine of all places… but now Billy has put up a protective fence and Jebidiah and Roscoe are gonna find what Billy’s hiding.  So Jeb explodes something, opens a hole in the mine and next thing you know a evil mist appears giving Jeb, I don’t know, let’s call it the heebie jeebies, and freezes him in his tracks.  Then he gets eviscerated.  This is followed by Roscoe getting eviscerated.  And now one of the more horrific, while at the same time goofiest monsters the SyFy channel has ever unveiled is on the loose, in this sci-fi channel original ‘Heebie Jeebies’.

Next we meet sheriff’s deputy Todd Crane (Robert Belushi) who is issuing a traffic citation to his elementary school teacher Mrs. Whitehead (Marion Ross) who taunts him to his knees in the form of a panic attack.  Obviously the entry requirements for being a law officer in this town are rock bottom low.  While his boss Sheriff Tatum (Carl Savering) is disgusted with his deputy, he takes comfort in knowing that nothing will ever happen in this town that he can’t handle by himself.  See where this is going?  Another thing that Todd has to deal with is that his baby sister Veronica (Evie Thompson) is the town tramp.  In the history of annoying town tramps in low budget horror movies, there aren’t a lot more annoying or trampier than Evie.

Now about Todd’s panic attacks, he is being assisted by the town Medical Examiner Theresa (Cathy Shim) who is helping find peace through what I can

only call erotic meditation.  Note that the woman is Asian and is clearly inherently born with the ‘Peace through Meditation’ gene.  Also, while the movie does have its challenges, Cathy Shim in motion would not be one of these challenges, and I think just the fact she’s on her knees with her eyes closed is what makes these sessions oddly erotic.  And Theresa has a grandmother in Miss Zu Mu (Lucille Soong) who was born with the ‘I sense evil in the air’ gene.  She’s that all-important character who has the critical monster information that nobody else on the planet Earth possesses. 

So what is this monster?  It’s some kind of amalgam of four or five people, with a large gaping glowing mouth in its gut, with teeth, and it likes to twist off necks and

eat gold.  In fact, if you shoot it, it bleeds gold.  Did I mention that Billy owns the mine and is looking for more gold to sell for his gold business?  So while this monster is just wrecking this town, it does bleed gold, which means if you can capture it and just shoot it every once in a while and make it bleed, you would have an unlimited supply of gold.  In theory.  I think what Billy is missing here, and this is just me postulating, is that this monster has to eat gold to bleed gold, thus making his plan inherently stupid.   

Regardless of all of that, there’s a string of brutal murders going on around town, and they must be stopped.  But the person who has to stop this monster has fear issues and the monster farts fear dust.  This is going to be a problem.  Good luck with that little backwoods town where people make out in abandoned mines.

Can we give a quick shout out to actor Joseph Randy Causin who is listed on the filmography of this movie as the character of Monster’s Arms?  And might we add that he was brilliant in his portrayal of Monsters Arms?  Nailed it.  Back on point, there’s not much to say about ‘Heebie Jeebies’ other than the fact that we ended up liking it a little bit.  There’s no particular reason for this affection as it is typical SyFy fare featuring suspect CGI, spotty acting, and a nonsensical plot, but today that combination of the those typical SyFy staples worked for us this time around.

Plus I’ve learned a few things watching this movie.  Like at the age of 85 Richie Cunningham’s mom is still alive working.  That’s awesome.  I learned that history is written by those who lived, not those who died, since dead people can’t write.  Another nugget I picked up from Zu Mu is that a curse is more like a bomb than a bullet, meaning that it’s going to kill everybody, and not just its intended target.  That’s straight kicking hardcore knowledge right there.  Thanks Zu Mu!

But there are things about this movie we did like.  I did like the monster design as it was suitably horrible, except when it took off running then it was suitably goofy.  And you have to like the fact that it viewed you through gold Monster Vision.  The movie did propel itself forward at a descent clip and Joseph Randy Causin’s amazing Monster Arms were never far from causing some kind of slaughter, the stupidity level was very high, which made it very funny, like our law enforcement professionals seeing the monster on video and determining it to be some kind of wild animal.  I’m no wildlife expert, but I ain’t never seen no wildlife that looked like that.  Plus the movie had a social conscious, highlighting the disparate working conditions of the Chinese migrant worker during the early twentieth century.  More hardcore knowledge.

It’s not art, not that we know art anyway, and the title is stupid, but ‘Heebie Jeebies’ was more than functional, low brow, SyFy style entertainment.