Feature
Review | Eight Legged Freaks
Written by: Brian
Orndorf
Rated: 2/10
There are just some things in the summer that, if possible, should
be great fun: A water park with no lines, a late evening barbecue with
friends, and a giant evil spider movie. However, the makers of
"Eight Legged Freaks" don't follow through on their promise
of a rousing, arac-squashing good time. Unless you crave, and I mean crave,
tedious, campy, exceedingly unfunny monster pictures, then stay far
away from this film, which just might be the biggest letdown of the
filmgoing summer.
In a tiny mining town in Arizona, times are tough. The commerce is
suffering, morale is low, and a local land developer (Leon Rippy,
Stargate) is using the town as a toxic waste dump to fuel his greed.
When an arachnid farmer uses crickets from the contaminated site to
feed his legions of spiders, little does he know that the mutagen will
cause the spiders to grow to hundreds of times their original size.
Bent on feeding, the spiders take over the town, leaving the local
sheriff (Kari Wuhrer), her kids (Scott Terra and Scarlett Johansson,
Ghost World), a local man returning to town after a ten year absence
(David Arquette), and a paranoid radio announcer (Doug E. Doug, Cool
Runnings) to fight off the massive arac attack.
All the ingredients are there to mix up a wildly entertaining picture.
They have a cast full of b-listers, a good-sized budget for the
special effects, and the willingness to forge ahead with this wild
premise. So how could it go wrong? Easily, folks, as this film is
overseen by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, the team behind
"Independence Day" and "Godzilla." While
"Independence Day" is as good as a summer film can get, the
duo has a penchant for overindulging themselves, and they often
arrogantly assume they know what makes a hit movie. Take at look at
the disastrous "Godzilla" if you don't believe me. Working
(or ripping) off such monster bug classics as "Them!" and
"Arachnophobia," Devlin and Emmerich have decided to take
what was so efficient and delightful from those films and squash it
under a layer of camp, noise, and unbearable comedy, losing in the
process the essential horror elements that could've helped
"Freaks" work accurately.
Think I'm being too harsh on a film about mutant spiders? Here's what
passes for "comedy" in this film: one character get his
genitals tazered and squeals into the camera about how "he pissed
his pants!"; the Doug E. Doug character has a monologue about
alien anal probing (always a guaranteed laugh, right?); there's a
quick shot where two department store mannequins are shown posing in
an oral sex position; and one character constantly gets sprayed with
slimy "spider goo" for easy gross-out gags.
Laughing yet?
Well, I wasn't. The aforementioned "Arachnophobia" was a
much better example of how to blend horror and comedy in such a way
that the two genres complement each other. "Eight Legged
Freaks" isn't that subtle, picking mayhem over scares, and gags
instead of humor.
The cast doesn't inspire much enthusiasm either. Looking lost amongst
the hundreds of CG spiders (the looks on their faces suggest an
expectation of maybe 10 spiders, not the 10,000 as the film
hysterically depicts), what could they do? Well, hiring Doug E. Doug
and David Arquette wasn't a great start. These two notoriously unfunny
actors are in charge of the film's laughs, and they fail expectedly at
their job. Helping them out is comedian Rick Overton (Jackpot), and
the fact that most people have never heard of him might indicate the
level of his laugh quotient.
The only survivor of this forgettable cast is video mainstay Kari
Wuhrer, cast bizarrely here as a mother of two teenagers after a solid
decade of sexbomb roles in movies always on the top shelf at the video
store. Wuhrer gives the toughest, brightest performance out of the
little anyone has been given, putting all those years of
straight-to-video action films to use in this film, which asks even
less of her than such blockbusters as "The Hitcher 2" or Red
Blooded American Girl 2.
Eventually, "Eight Legged Freaks" dissolves into a full-on
cartoon, and by that time my interest in the intolerable pandemonium
had completely shut down. To Devlin and Emmerich: being cute and
ironic will get you nowhere, and dropping the ball on what should be
an easy lay-up of a film is nearly unforgivable.
COMMENTS
Date/Time of Posting: Aug 08 2002 /
18:37:29
IP Address: 152.163.197.214
name = saylor
where = saylorwhit@aol.com
Sub= 8 legged freaks
comments = you have to be at least 60 years old to enjoy this movie
...I value your opinion but you just didn't get it and that is ok....
Date/Time of Posting: Oct 14 2002 / 02:48:18
IP Address: 210.50.30.3
name = sarah
where = bubz_11ch@hotmail.com
Sub = 8 legged freaks
comments = why waz dat movie only rated 2/10?!
dat movie kicked ass!i would hav rated it at least 9/10!!!!
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