Eight Legged Freaks [DVD] [2002]

This is one of those films where you can leave your brain at home as its basically designed as a fun movie to past a couple of hours. This movie has its good points and its bad points, on the downside the characters are flat and the script isnt fantastic (but then again, as this is based on those b-movies, maybe the films supposed to be this way). This film has two huge plus points, the spiders are great, they really look the part, crawling and scampering around the town. The other main plus is Kari Wuhrer, probably one of the sexiest women alive! and any scene with her in is well worth paying the ticket fee for :). This isnt a terrible movie, but its not great either, just somewhere in the middle. Worth renting, just maybe not worth buying.

There is the Geeky kid (Harry Potter look-a-like Scott Terra), and his Weird old friend (Tom Noonan). The Weird old friend has a spider fetish, and has found that if he feeds his spiders cockroaches from a specific lake they grow very big. What he doesn't know is that the lake is actually where a toxic waste spill occurred recently (toxic waste... it's always the toxic waste), and soon the spiders are out of control. The Geeky kid tries to warn the town, but he is the Geeky kid, and who is going to believe the Geeky kid?

The Geeky kid lives with his Popular sister (the ever-good Scarlett Johansson), and his Tough-cop mother (Kari Wuhrer), who left her Unfaithful husband. David Arquette plays the Former citizen, who has heard that a Greedy Mayor wants to try and sell the his father's mines to businesses that will fill them with toxic waste (yep, more toxic waste). All the while the Geeky kid is jumping up and down trying to tell the town the giant spiders are coming their way, and no one is paying any attention whatsoever.

On top of all of this, we have the Popular sister's Horny boyfriend and his Dumb friends, the Old residents, the Tough-cop mother's Dumb sidekick and, of course, the Scary monsters which are, in this case, Giant mutant spiders. There are more clichés, but if I told you them, it would feel like I was spoiling something for you.

Last month I saw "Jason X", which suffered not because it overused clichés as much as because it took the concepts that had become cliché and pretended it had come up with them first. "Eight Legged Freaks" knows damn well that these clichés have been around for decades, and is only an inch away from self mocking.

Take, for example, the scene where the Popular daughter is kissing her Horny boyfriend in the front of his truck. He comes on to her a little too much for the Popular Daughter's liking, and she says "look, I don't want to lose my virginity in the front seat of a truck." But is she saying this because she ACTUALLY does not want to lose her virginity, or because she knows that there is a rule that if you have sex in a horror movie, you get killed. Here's another one - when the Geeky boy hitches a lift into town (he is picked up, conveniently, by the Former citizen, who wants to pair up with his Tough-cop mother), the Geeky boy tries to explain to the Former citizen that the spiders have grown to mammoth proportions), then eventually says "but, of course, you don't believe me, 'cause they NEVER believe the kid!"

The movie also has a wicked sense of humour that makes it all the more enjoyable, I found myself tittering regularly (especially at the movie's closing credits song, you gotta stay for that). And it also has thrills and chills, some scenes are pretty exciting, and everyone knows that sticking your hand into a dark place is pretty creepy.

Humour, giant mutant spiders and toxic waste - what more could you ask for from a summer movie? "Eight Legged Freaks" is basically a B-movie with more impressive special effects and a bigger budget, but has no pretensions of be anything more. Its formula has been going around since the '50s, and it plays as more of a tribute to such movies than a spoof. Yes, it lacks any originality whatsoever, has hammy acting and obvious gags but, heck, if you're going to take a movie about giant mutant spiders taking over a town seriously, you don't deserve to enjoy it.

The plot is quite simple; a truck driver skids on a road and accidently releases one of his barrels of toxic chemicals into a nearby lake. Unfortunately there happens to be an exotic spider farm very nearby and when they all escape and somehow ingest these chemicals, they turn into huge killer spiders who are extreamly hungry.

As they go on a ramage into the small town killing everyone in sight, the fate of the people rests in the hands of sexy police sherif and Chris Macormic who has returned to stop the nasty mayor from selling his fathers mine. They make a radio broadcast to the town telling everyone to meet at the Prosperity Mall (i don't know how they got the money to build it in a small town in Arizona) which will offer much more protection. Still the spiders manage to penetrate the steel doors and the concrete walls of the mall, and so the people are forced to flee down into the minds, where they stumble accross the spiders nest and the female, which is three times as big as the others.

I'm not really sure what you would call this film; its not scary enough to be a horror, not funny enough to be a spoof or comedy, but theres a really nice mix of all three along with plenty of use of CGI, which although is overall quite good, it is really obvious and the film never feels totally real.

Overall though a good film which although was not received very well by the public or the critics is still very entertaining and is one of those films which doesn't require you to think about the story too much. You just watch the film, enjoy it, and go home more scared of spiders than you went in. Recommended.