Hey folks, Harry here with a massive spoiler filled review of EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS, which is less review and more synopsis sounding. SO BEWARE! Having said that, being told what Giant Spiders are going to do exactly in Arizona... Well, let's just say that for me... I don't want to be told, I want to see Giant Spiders doing things in Arizona, so all this did was make me skim the review and want to say, "I WANT TO SEE THIS IMMEDIATELY!!!!" Now, before people start screaming 'PLANT' let me clarify something, I know this fella and he did work on the movie, so those feelings are obviously caught up in talking about the film. Afterall.... from a CAST & CREW screening, just about everyone in that room either was a Cast member or a Crew Member or having relations of some deviant or non-deviant nature with one or the other. Once again, if you are SPOILER SENSITIVE run screaming from this review. If you love your spoilers then read on....
Hi Harry, this is 655321 providing you my report on the screening of 8 Legged Freaks. I’m not a good reviewer so if this just seems to go on and on forever, don’t let it reflect on your thoughts of the film. The film is a GREAT ride!
I talked to Dean just before the screening and he told me that the first press screening is tomorrow night so this review probably won’t be a “scoop” so much, but here it is… this review is full of spoilers…
SPIDERS WILL RULE THE SUMMER!! Few trailers will tell the truth about a movie, but this one is a very pleasant exception. Everything you saw in the trailers play out in the movie with the same impact. This movie plays like a combination between Tremors and Gremlins with the heart and charm of both. It starts with a slow pace at the beginning, but in an eerie moody atmospheric kinda way. The toxic waste drum gets dumped into the local water pond where we find the spider-farm owner (played uncredited by TOM NOONAN – of “Manhunter” fame… have no idea why he’s not credited, but he’s in the movie) collecting crickets for his spiders around the same pond and we see him giggle with delight (perfect casting). Cut to little Mike “I shoulda been Harry Potter” Terra (who is also cast in the upcoming DAREDEVIL) lead kid riding his bike and we see the sign for the spider farm where he’s headed.. During his visit to the farm we get to know about the different spider types and that they’ve been growing to unnatural sizes… we got jumpers (which are scary fast and my favorite), orb-weavers, trap-door spiders (those rock too) and a GIANT tarantula…
Everything goes haywire once the kid leaves and the spider farmer realizes that he left the lid open on one of the aquariums with the tarantula. It’s on his back and gets him but good. Next we see spiders EVERYWHERE… honestly not sure why or how all the others got out of their respective aquariums, but what the hell, IT LOOKED SUPER SWEET! The farmer meets his end in a delightfully nasty way and we see the spiders move into the nearby mineshaft which is critical since the mine runs under the entire town.
Anyway, the kid runs home and we meet mommy-sheriff the lovely Kari Wuhrer. She looks really good in this film (and in person… an excellent chick to hang with) and sells her part well. We see her conflict with her (TOTALLY HOT) teenage daughter who is dating the mayor’s son and her nerdy son who is the explorative type and is hard to keep grounded.
Enter David Arquette as Chris McCormack who is coming home after having abandoned “Prosperity, AZ” 10 years ago. Here’s an example of where the set-up is bypassed and we are just putting it together on our own and the comedy down the line suffers some since we don’t have the proper base to appreciate the humor even though we “get it”. Hard to describe, but it’s palpable throughout the film. Not a major detractor, just that little bit of extra that you wish they had gotten right because the potential is there.
Chris meets his Aunt who runs his father’s now defunct mining business though it’s never clear and she smokes a whole hell of a lot. He’s home, it’s a reunion and we catch up a bit on who he is and his relationship to Kari’s character. Yes they have a thing going and it’s a funny running gag, however, a lot of this was ad-libbed on the set and while great ideas, the execution is not 100% on the money. That’s why I say, write your script first, THEN shoot it… even if you have great ideas come to you, it takes time and effort to implement them into your script so that it all works fluidly with the rest of the story. However, the running gag of delaying his “I love you and want you to bear my young’uns” speech is a clever way to deal with the stupid love interest thing and it made me laugh each time. They managed to keep all sappiness out of the picture and it was an excellent choice… PURE FUN ENTERTAINMENT!
Now Chris evidently is the son of the owner of the local mine which used to be the town’s business and since it went out of business the whole town is unemployed. Chris goes to the “Prosperity Mall” where a town meeting is being held by Leon Rippy’s character of Wade. Wade is the town mayor and owner of the mall and is trying to persuade everyone to move out and take the money that’s being offered to them from “developers’ who want the town to relocate. Wade is countered by Doug E. Doug’s character who claims that this (and everything) is a government conspiracy. Doug plays Harlan who is running a pirate radio station and is convinced that aliens want to probe his bunghole. Chris interrupts the meeting and claims that his father’s mine has gold in it and he’s come back to reopen the mine and bring back the jobs to the town. Evidently there were problems with methane explosions which killed miners and Chris’ dad… hmmm… methane explosions… in the mine…. Hmmmm...
The kid takes a ride to the spider farm to check on how things are going. He sees the place is deserted but with webs spun over everything. He follows the tracks out the back door and sees that the spiders went into the mine. He finds a discarded spider leg of considerable size and realizes that the town is in serious trouble.
He goes back to the road and gets picked up by Chris who just so happens to be driving by and they have an exchange about how the kid knows that no one will believe him about the spiders because “No one ever believes the kid”… ha-ha-ha… but that the town is in serious shit.
Skip along to the desert outside of town where the mayor’s son is making out with the sheriff’s daughter in his truck. She gives a good speech about not wanting to lose her virginity in the front seat of a pick-up truck and when he doesn’t get the clue, she takes out a STUN GUN and cracks him in the FUCKING BALLS with it… oh my GOD!! Slap a man or something, but NEVER, NEVER, EVER give a guy a stun gun in the NUTS!!! Funny though as he falls out of the truck and pisses on himself. She drives off and as he gets up, he forgets his pain and notices the giant jumping spiders which are starting to cover the horizon… AMAZING 3D WORK!! This is an incredible film for the amount of artistry that went into the animation of the spiders. Forget the texture and fur work which will blow your mind, the actual animation of these 8-Legged Freaks is COMPLETELY convincing.
He starts to run over to his friends who are warming up their bikes and joking around. He runs by screaming and they goof on him having pissed himself… just in time for one of the jumpers to fly in frame and tackle one of the guys (see the trailer… it’s a very funny gag)… a few make it onto their bikes and the chase is ON!! They run in front of a tanker truck which gets overtaken by the spiders and crashes into the telephone poles along the road. Now all the phones are dead in the town and we get to see spiders die in exquisite flaming wonder… then we see T2 style more spiders coming through the flames… great money shot and the individually animated creatures are a joy to watch… can’t wait for the DVD on this one to really analyze the incredible animation.
As the sun goes down, the spiders advance on the town and pets have been disappearing all over town. Rick Overton plays the sheriff’s deputy and is hilarious throughout the film. As the town is overrun by the spiders, we are reminded of the total chaos in “smallsville” scenes from Gremlins and it works very well! Funny scenes of townsfolk meeting their demise and the spiders doing all kinds of wacky stuff… again the animation on this feature is worth the ticket price and ANY serious student or fan of 3D MUST go see this one as Tom Dadras (Vis FX coord) and his team at CFX did an incredible job and never let anything slide (like say ILM in Mummy Returns)… Everyone is called to meet at the town mall since it has steel doors and thick walls. Which are needed to repel the GIANT TARANTULA that runs around among the jumpers and orb weavers and even takes some of them out as well… I love the tarantula, because unlike the orb weavers or jumpers or trap-door spiders, the tarantula doesn’t give a fuck and just wants to mame and destroy anything and everything!!! The spiders all have definite characters that are at times funnier than their live-action co-stars. And that is a tribute to the talented animators!
It’s a funny scene when everyone starts to swarm in on the mall. First we show Leon Rippy’s Wade character eating in the mall diner (he’s the only patron) and he and the waitress make discourse about how there’s no one who ever comes to the mall and shows a little bit how Wade is wanting to make the town move so he can get it all off his hands but that he really likes the owning the mall. Then he’s going out to his car to see a line of cars coming into the parking lot and everyone running in to the mall… he looks for a moment with a smile as if to say, “things are looking better already” when he turns around and see the mass of spiders which are pouring into the lot after the people…
Everyone is in the mall and the mayhem reaches a fever pitch. Wade is the only one with a cell phone and the only reception he can get with it is from a high point… oh like say a radio tower… just like the trailer with Arquette on the tower exclaiming the film’s title. You guessed it, up Chris goes with Harlan to make a phone call to 911… see the trailer where he’s yelling “they’re here! They’re here!” into the cellphone… 911 thinks it’s a prank and hangs up. All is lost and now they have to make it back into the mall.
Well chaos ensues and they all make it into the mine shaft which Wade inadvertently shows them the way. The biggest spider (mama Orb-weaver) is waiting in the mines and now is a very Aliens type action and humor although with more camp than Aliens. There’s a funny scene where Wade gets taken by the orb weavers and we see that people are taken alive to be cocooned and are killed one by one by the female orb-weaver. They find Wade and he has a great line of “I don’t feel so good” as they take the cocoon off of his face… somehow there is a methane leak that they can smell (funny fart jokes of course) and they can’t fire their weapons for fear of getting bar-b-qued. Chris is the hero and tells the Kari to take the others out of the cave while he goes to find his aunt (who got taken by the orb-weavers) and to set a trap to kill all the spiders in the mine. When he gets to the heart of the lair where most of the people are, he finds his aunt because of her persistent smoker’s cough (funny bit) and when she comes to, she notices on the wall that it’s colored gold. He looks and sees that it’s gold all right. The trap he sets is to put a book of matches into an open light socket so that when Kari reaches the end of the mine, she can turn on the generator and set off the methane gas. Well there’s a great motorcycle chase out of the mine as Kari gets the generator started and the flames are rushing through the mine… they jump out of the mine just in the nick of time and the spiders are all doomed!! (well, it’s a better ending than say giving an alien computer system a virus)
The movie ends as it began with the voice of Doug E. Doug’s Harlan broadcasting his show to Prosperity, AZ and all is well with a modest portend to a possible sequel though I’m positive that there will not be one.
As this is a genre that’s been well played out, the movie winks to the audience and also chooses to bypass some of the normal set-up in an effort to acknowledge that we all know the story and want to get to the action. As much as I like that attempt, it would be for me the only real flaw with the movie. Even though we all know the story, proper set-up is necessary to sell the comedy. I would not consider it a major detractor as this is a very fun film and will sell LOTS of popcorn.
This is a great flick that should not be judged too harshly. It is complete fun and camp and the free spirit of the film and the actors were given a lot of range to ad lib during this shoot and even though it’s not perfect, it’s very enjoyable and combined with such amazing special effects, it makes for a near perfect summer hit! I’m predicting a big response from the public and that this film will run well into October as it will translate well as it goes from summer into fall. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED VIEWING!!
I’m about pooped from typing and I hope that I’ve written at least somewhat coherently, but I’m not going to edit this one and just hope for the best!
Signing off!
