Eight Legged Freaks pays homage to the B-movies of the 1950s while delivering modern updates. The plot is what you’d expect from a mega-monster movie – when a load of toxic waste comes into contact with a spider farm on the outskirts of Prosperity, Arizona things go from itsy-bitsy to super-sized in a hurry. The town is under an arach-attack (the film’s original title) by five different species of SUV-sized spiders, and it’s up to Chris McCormack (David Arquette), the owner of a defunct gold mine the spiders are inhabiting, and his unrequited love, Sheriff Sam Parker (Kari Wuhrer), to squash the bodacious bugs.
Long-time B-movie fans Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin were wondering if they could create a modern gargantuan film with today’s technology that still held the same humorous appeal as the classics. Their question was answered when they watched Ellory Elkayem’s short film, “Larger Than Life.” The highly successful 13-minute black and white movie about a woman being terrorized in her house by an enormous arachnid inspired the producers to hire Elkayem, who co-wrote the Eight Legged Freaks script and made his feature film directorial debut.
The beginning of Eight Legged Freaks suffers from an unnecessarily long set-up, but when the jumping spiders first appear – confronting some unfortunate dirt bikers – things get fun and frenzied. There are some genuine watch-between-your-fingers tense moments, one good jump-out-of-your-seat startle, a few gross-outs and lots of laughs. Arachnophobes need not sweat too much. Although some 200 spiders were used for the film’s opening set up, the vast majority of creepy crawlies are CGI creations that are enjoyable in their outrageousness. That’s right, like all beloved B-movies the killer creatures look slightly, intentionally, unreal. Technology certainly has the capability to render them completely lifelike, but that would eliminate some of the movie’s campy charm. Also modernized is the female lead character – no more screaming women who cling to their heroic hunks. In today’s world of bad-ass babes, Sheriff Sam could be no less than a kick-butt, gorgeous, pistol-packing, spider-smashing chick. The only scaredy-cat in this flick is the fierce feline that gets into a hilarious scuffle with a spider inside the plastered walls of a house.
Witty dialogue, modern special effects that respect the method of yesteryear and a few inventive attack sequences make this more than a spidery spoof. As for performances, Arquette turns in a quiet, straight man act leaving Doug E. Doug to steal the comedic scenes as underground radio DJ Harlan. Wuhrer returns to the B-movie front after ‘97’s slithery successful Anaconda, and while she manages to carry herself fairly well in the battle sequences, she looks entirely too young to portray the single mom of rising stars Scarlett Johansson and Mike Terra. If only they had fast-forwarded the movie’s beginning a bit, Eight Legged Freaks would have fully qualified as a fun, laugh-out-loud movie that’s perfect when you’re in the mood for humour and heebie-jeebies.
If only they had fast-forwarded the beginning, it would have been a fun, laugh-out-loud movie that’s perfect when you’re in the mood for humour and heebie-jeebies.- Terri Clark
