Bug Buster

Bug Buster is a 1998 comedy-horror film set in the lakeside California town of Mountview, where the mayor's use of a questionable chemical to protect a local plantation has deadly consequences. The substance causes oversized, lethal cockroaches to swarm the area, killing residents. With the town under siege, the mayor calls in an eccentric pest exterminator, General George S. Merlin, to stop the creatures and prevent further deaths.

Lorenzo Doumani directed the film from a screenplay by Malick Khoury. It was Doumani's first feature as director, followed years later by Monster Night. Randy Quaid plays the exterminator General Merlin, with Brenda Epperson as Dr. Laura Casey, a young Katherine Heigl as Shannon Griffin, James Doohan as Sheriff Carlson, George Takei as Dr. Hiro Fujimoto, and Meredith Salenger as Veronica Hart.

Made for a budget of nine million dollars, the film mixes creature-feature horror with comedy. Its reception has been modest: on IMDb it holds a rating of 4 out of 10 from around 1,300 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 3.9 out of 10 from a much smaller pool of 28 votes. Both figures indicate a largely unfavorable response, with the larger IMDb sample carrying more weight.