My Favourite Movies: Eight Legged Freaks

For those who know me, or those who have meandered through my favourite movies posts, this particular movie selection should come as no surprise considering that I am a long time fan of 50’s monster movies. Indeed a scene from one of my all-time favourite monster movies (and indeed one of my favourite bits from that movie) appears briefly – on a TV screen – in this film and is used as an explanation of a child’s overactive imagination (as he rightly says early on – no one believes the kid).

Anyway as you can imagine if you haven’t already seen this minor classic the film revolves around giant spiders. Lot and lots and even more giant spiders…… You see the small Arizona town of Prosperity is dying after the local gold mine ran dry. There’s no work and everyone is slowly leaving. Meanwhile the town big-wig (payed by Leon Rippy) has cut a deal with a chemical firm to (illegally) store toxic chemicals in parts of the abandoned mine and some of it gets into the local water supply. Insects drinking this water are then fed to inmates of the local spider farm and the rest, as they say, is mayhem. Unsurprisingly the arachnids grow quickly to huge proportions and pretty soon the local cats, dogs and occasional person starts to go missing. As the chief of police (played by the lovely Kari Wuhrer pictured above) struggles with what’s going on in her previously sleepy town an old would-be boyfriend (David Arquette) returns after a 10 year absence….. and finally though rather belatedly they start to believe the kid (Scott Terra).

Part homage and part send-up this film is, at least in my opinion, lots of fun – unless that is you have any problems whatsoever with spiders. If you are in the least arachnophobic I’d strongly suggest you avoid this film like the plague as spiders appear in just about every scene and either kill, capture or scare the shit out of just about every member of the cast – and often not in a good way. Of course what makes it funny – to those of us not overly bothered by spiders – is the overall feel of the movie (very 50’s style), the typical reactions of the townsfolk (just think Jaws here), the challenge of spotting other movie references (Them! was a bit of a giveaway) and the ‘chatter’ of some of the spiders giving them more of a personality than is usual for this sort of thing. Occasionally gross (lots of spider ‘blood’ and gore getting splattered about as the town fights back), sometimes generally creepy and often amusing/laugh-out-loud funny this is a great movie for a wet weekend afternoon.