Spiders rule in ‘Eight Legged Freaks’

Prosperity is the random rural jerkwater hick town blessed with

problems in “Eight Legged Freaks.” It’s prosperous all right -- with

conspiracy freaks, fat sheriffs, loaded teenagers and a citizenry

whose IQs are marginally greater than their declining number of

teeth.

Tooling along the narrow mountain road toward this intellectual

sinkhole is the obligatory truck. Rickety and rusty, its driver tries

to avoid a resident rodent that should have been road kill. The

driver swerves and inadvertently tests the escape velocity of the

ubiquitous oil drum or two, which are no doubt filled with our usual

suspects: toxic chemicals and plot contrivances.

Well, they’re off the truck, down the road, into the ditch and

fouling the water, just upstream from the local spider farm. Living

near the water are crickets. The crickets start to act strangely

after drinking in the steroid-like chemicals. The crickets are fed to

spiders by the resident mad scientist and, voila, the dubious premise

to a classically stupid movie.

Fattened up on the toxic crickets, our friendly neighborhood

spiders start to grow like a government program. They can jump like

Carl Lewis, run like Seattle Slew and eat like teenagers.

These little prizes escape from their cages, chow down on their

benefactor and are discovered by a Harry Potter look-alike. Where are

the Orkin or Terminex guys when you need them? In fact, where’s a

good film editor when you need one?

That’s what makes “Eight Legged Freaks” such a fun flick. This is

as dumb as they come and as stupid as it gets. From watching the

rubber spiders stroll among the plastic saguaros filmed among some of

the hokiest miniatures ever committed to celluloid, this flick is a

classic no-brainer. Not quite “Tremors,” but much better than say,

“Citizen Kane.”

This leads to such classic dialogue as: “Come on,” “I’ll find

another way out,” “It’s the only way out,” “It’s locked,” “We’re

trapped,” and, of course, “Oh, my God.”

Starring a bunch of nobodies whose acting skills are so missing

that they’re probably listed on the backs of milk cartons everywhere,

backed by a soundtrack probably stolen from a porno film or a whoopee

cushion, “Eight Legged Freaks” rips off about every cheesy monster

movie ever made. Most obviously it takes from the “Night of the

Living Dead” series.

As it turns out, the mayor of Prosperity, adorned with a ponytail

and more wrinkles than the San Andreas fault, is in cahoots with

various other local nefarious Neanderthals to make some bucks by

storing toxic waste in a nearby abandoned gold mine.

Well who should ride into town, not on a white horse, but on a

Greyhound -- to this burg that those with even rudimentary

intelligence would take a Greyhound out of -- but our hero and

protagonist, David Arquette. Overacting to the point of being toxic

himself, he schleps, stumbles and strolls through both town and mine,

Moses-like and Gary Cooper-ish, to save what really doesn’t deserve

to be saved: the town and the people. He sure ain’t gonna save the

movie.

Leading his people out of their houses, to the shopping mall and

into the mines, our hero fiddles while Rome burns as the townsfolk

are eaten like Lay’s potato chips. Them spiders are hungry. Lousy

table manners combined with a tendency to slurp their food, the

townsfolk, make them quite undesirable socially.

Arquette finally burns them, like cats on a hot tin roof, like

feet on asphalt on a summer’s day, like s’mores in a campfire, like

bad metaphors from a lousy columnist, with the methane that’s

conveniently floating around in the mine. Are all the little buggers

gone, or will there be a part two?

There’s a no-brainer.

“Eight Legged Freaks” is rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence, brief

sexuality and language.

* UNCLE DON reviews b-movies and cheesy musical acts for the

Daily Pilot. He may be reached by e-mail at [email protected].