Eight Legged Freaks

Review by Jason Gaston

One of my fondest memories from my youth involved a little-known movie called Night of the Lepus which was, believe it or not, an old horror movie about giant man-eating bunnies. Yes, you heard me... bunnies. Not just any bunnies, mind you... man-eating bunnies. This movie was a hoot. It had the late great Deforest Kelly in it and a bunch of extras in what looked like bear suits. Every time this movie came on TV I would literally work my schedule around it so I could die laughing at a movie that just didn't have a clue just how freakin' stupid it was.

Then again, if you think about it, all the giant man-eating fill-in-the-blank movies are corny even when they don't mean to be. Them, Anaconda, Piranha, and so on and so forth... all are corny movies that don't want to admit that they are corny movies.

Well, finally, a giant man-eating fill-in-the-blank movie has come along that not only acknowledges what a cornball it is, but also revels shamelessly in it. Eight Legged Freaks is a movie about a town being overrun by giant spiders and, worst of all, David Arquette. It may not be the best movie in the world, it may not be the most entertaining, or witty but it knows that it's stupid and it's going to have a great time being stupid.

This movie is loads of fun and has some great visuals like jumping spiders going after a bunch of annoying teens on dirt bikes, trap door spiders jumping out and grabbing fleeing victims and dragging them underground, and all sorts of foul and inhumane things done to a cat.

I loved it even though it did visit some tried and true clichés of the monster-horror age... you know what I'm talking about. The monsters always stay in groups so that it's easier to blow them up at the end, the monsters always attack a sleepy little town in economic despair, the greedy townsfolk are always the first to die and so on and so on. They even have the showdown in the mall lifted from Romero's Dawn of the Dead... but would you call that a cliché or an homage?

Fortunately, the movie isn't ruined by the presence of David Arquette and I have to send props to the director for reeling this guy in and not allowing him to mug to the camera like he's done in his last ten movies. I mean, this guy is hyperactive on the screen... I mean it, he's like Robin Williams without the talent.

All that said, it's good to see a giant man-eating monster movie come along that doesn't pretend to be all serious and stuff. Eight Legged Freaks knows it's stupid, knows it's silly, and never apologizes for it one single time. Yeah, the movie's got problems - the first hour or so drags on for a while before things start crawling - but it's got spunk and it's loads of fun. Besides, when I go to one of these movies, I don't look for great drama or intellectual stimulation... I look for a bunch of folk to get eaten.