And so we come to one of the great giant spider movies. Eight Legged Freaks would have been a lock for ‘Best Title’ at the 2003 Oscars if that was a thing (please make it a thing, Hollywood).
You might think that the name Eight Legged Freaks was dreamed up by a marketing executive trying too hard to sound ‘B-movie cool,’ but you would be wrong. David Arquette ad-libbed the line while filming the scene where he shoots at spiders from a radio tower, and the decision makers thought it would make a good title.
The original title was Arac Attack, which sounds like a 90s kids TV show. My first ever article for Lastmovieoutpost concerned the titles of the Star Wars films. I am biased towards the action-orientated ones like The Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones. Arac Attack fits that mould but abbreviating the word ‘arachnid’ in that way doesn’t work, in my opinion.
It’s overused, too. As far as I know or can tell, seven giant spider movies contain some variation of the word ‘arachnid’ in their title. Twenty-six contain the word ‘spider.’
To stand out in that wall of white noise, the makers of future giant spider movies need to get creative and use the physical and personality traits of the spider and not just some variation of the creature’s name or species.
Eight Legged Freaks uses both – the spiders have eight legs (physical trait) and are freaky (personality trait, although admittedly a vague one).
Here’s my suggestion: Furious Furry Web Spinners from Outer Space. You can have that one for a modest royalty.
For those who missed my Spaceman review, Arthur the Arthropod and the Soapbox Racers is the title of my giant spider soapbox racing movie (it’s coming, honestly).
What’s in a Name
For posterity, here are my top ten giant spider movie titles:
- Eight Legged Freaks (for justification, see above)
- Itsy Bitsy (sounds creepy, and we all get it because we remember the nursery rhyme)
- Curse of the Black Widow (I love a good curse. Also, black widows are cool)
- Lavalantula (tarantulas made of lava! Fuck yeah!)
- 2 Lava 2 Lantula (they’re absolutely taking the piss now, but I love it)
- The Giant Spider Invasion (you can sense the urgency with this one)
- Earth vs the Spider (on paper, the stakes don’t get any higher than this)
- Arachnophobia (the fear of spiders. No need to say anymore)
- Kingdom of the Spiders (suggests that humans are in trouble, and they are)
- Big Ass Spider (who doesn’t love a big ass?)
Interestingly, the line ‘Big Ass Spider’ is spoken at one point in Eight Legged Freaks, so perhaps the dialogue inspired future Giant Ass Spider Movie (GASM) titles as well as its own. The line ‘Arac Attack’ also makes the cut despite being dropped as the title, so I guess that’s still available.
Where was I? Oh yeah – remember when Arachnophobia had a 17-minute prologue? We don’t get any of that bloated nonsense here. A truck swerves to avoid a rabbit and spills a drum of toxic waste into a pond. Job done.
The twist is that the toxic waste doesn’t affect the spiders directly. It affects crickets, which a spider farmer gathers up and feeds to his pet spiders and…well, you know.
One question: how the heck do you harvest wild crickets? Do you lure them by singing ‘When You Wish Upon a Star?’
Irony, Arizona
Just before the toxic waste incident, we are introduced to the town of Irony, Arizona. Sorry, that’s Prosperity, Arizona, but it sure ain’t prosperous, you’re darn tootin.’ The gold mine is on the verge of closing. The dodgy mayor has built a huge mall that stands mostly empty, and this was before the internet killed everything.
On the bright side, the mall will make an ideal setting for a climactic spider showdown later.
The spider farmer, Josh, owns Taft’s Exotic Spider Farm. It’s not exactly Disney World, but it’s his passion. I can relate because right now I’m writing a book about giant spider movies that nobody will ever read. Josh is setting up a spider farm that nobody will ever visit.
But we do it anyway because we love it, and maybe that’s enough. Maybe. If I’m honest, we could do with a fan or two, and Josh has Mike, a local boy who is obsessed with spiders. I’ve got you Outposters, so thank you for your service.
Josh is a Doc Brown type character, except scarier. He’s played by Tom Noonan, who I’m sure is lovely in real life but he freaks me the fuck out. He likes having someone around to share his obsession with. Josh and Mike tour the spider terrariums and introduce the main players in this multiple-species team-up.
Spider Avengers
As well as the usual suspects (black widow, wandering spider, funnel web spider and several types of tarantula) we get a few new spiders with their own superpowers. These are all real species, by the way:
- Trapdoor spiders. Superpower: invisibility, sort of. They construct their own underground burrow with a trapdoor, then leap out and grab their unsuspecting pray.
- Jumping spiders. Superpower: jumping. It’s way cooler than I just made it sound.
- Spitting spiders. Superpower: spitting venomous web at their victims.
- Orb Weaver spiders. Superpower: simping. The males are much smaller than the female and spend their time wrapping up live prey in web and gifting it to her in the hope that she’ll love them back. The female’s superpower, other than her sex appeal, is her size. She is the largest spider in the movie: the Big Bad with a big ass. She even gets a name: Consuela. They should have called her Sigourney.
If you can imagine a world where all giant spider movies are connected in a shared universe, then Eight Legged Freaks is the movie where they finally team up. Spider Avengers! It’s even got a young Scarlet Johanssen in it. She plays Mike’s teenage sister and also plays Black Widow in the Avengers movies. You can’t tell me that’s a coincidence.
Okay fine, it’s a coincidence, but also noteworthy.
A Stranger Rolls into Town
After Mike leaves Taft’s Waking Nightmare Farm, Josh is bitten by a pink toe tarantula called Tank (the second biggest spider in the movie). Josh screams and stumbles around like an idiot, smashes into every single spider terrarium and releases them all. Even his parrot gets attacked, and that won’t be the last domestic pet to meet a sticky end in Eight Legged Freaks.
Get it? Sticky. Because of the web. Moving on…
A week later, in a case of incredibly bad timing, David Arquette’s character Chris McCormick returns to town, ten years after he left. It’s a classic western opening – a stranger rolls into town – and I’m fucking here for it.
Chris’ dad has died and left him the failing mine. The mayor is trying to sell the town to a company that wants to use the mine as a toxic waste store, which begs the obvious question: can’t the mayor be a decent human being just ONCE in a movie? Why do we keep voting for these people?
Early on in Eight Legged Freaks, the mayor holds an exposition meeting at the mall. Chris saunters in fashionably late and refuses to sell the mine, pointing out that it’s full of methane gas and you can’t safely store toxic waste in it. This may be relevant later. Plus, there’s the legendary seam of gold that Chris’ dad claimed to have seen just before he died.
The mayor provokes Chris and gets a knuckle sandwich as a receipt, but it’s right in front of the female police chief, Sam. Luckily, Sam is Chris’ crush, so she lets him off easy.
Friendzone, Arizona
Sam is the reason Chris left town ten years earlier. He beat up her husband for cheating on her but couldn’t bring himself to tell her because it would ruin her life. She’s Mike and ScarJo’s mum, you see. He loved her but didn’t want to break up her family, so he did the masculine thing and left.
It isn’t clear what he’s been doing for the last ten years, but I imagine he’s been wandering the earth, getting into adventures, hoping each time that the next leap will be the leap home. Stuff like that.
You might think from all this that Chris is a rough, uncompromising Clint Eastwood type who isn’t afraid to rattle a few cages, but that isn’t the case. The movie never takes itself seriously enough for that, plus they cast David Arquette, who’s about as rough as silk sheets.
He reminds me of Adam Sandler in one of his nice guy roles, except not quite as annoying. I can’t say he was miscast because he’s so darn likeable and fits the tone of the movie, but I do wonder whether a more serious take on the subject matter would have made for a better film.
The good news for Chris is that Sam is now divorced and back on the market (you guessed it, he cheated on her). Despite this open goal, Chris manages to spoon a shot right over the bar. In non-football terms, he stumbles over his lines trying to tell her how he feels, which is the path to Friendzone, Arizona.
Shape up, dude. That Adam Sandler schtick doesn’t work in real life.
Ostrich Botherer
Sam has her hands full with Mike and ScarJo. Mike keeps visiting the spider farm against her wishes and ScarJo has a boyfriend, Bret, who rides a motorbike. Sam gives Bret a speeding ticket but not his douchebag friends, which seems vindictive. Then she gives ScarJo a Taser to use on Bret if he gets too frisky with her.
I can understand a mum being protective of her daughter, especially as Sam herself got pregnant at eighteen, but Bret seems okay to me. He’s respectful when he receives the ticket, and despite having the mayor as his stepfather (of all people), he doesn’t call in any favours to get it squashed.
In contrast to ScarJo’s desire to rebel, Bret craves discipline from the mayor, or at least some attention, but he doesn’t get it because the mayor is too busy covering his tracks for storing toxic waste in the mine (for fuck’s sake).
The mayor is also an ostrich farmer. He has fingers in many pies, and this is the most benign one. We get a brief scene with his ostriches being bothered by trapdoor spiders. He goes out to investigate and I thought his time had come. No way is he surviving this movie. But nothing much comes of it. A few ostriches are pulled into spider burrows and he just walks away.
It doesn’t make much sense, now that I think about it. The spiders would have had to dig their burrows first, in the ostrich pen, in full view of the ostriches, before jumping out and surprising them? Ostriches are dumb.
Chekhov’s Taser
Mike discovers the trashed spider farm. He follows some giant spider footprints to a mine entrance and discovers a detached spider leg. He returns home and tells Sam, but would you believe it, the 1950s sci-fi classic Them, featuring giant ants, is playing on the television at that very moment.
It’s no surprise that Sam doesn’t believe him when Mike tells her about the giant spiders. She thinks he’s getting high on his own supply.
By this time the spiders have started to make their presence felt. Sam’s deputy, Pete, has a pet cat that gets into a fight with a spider behind his newly installed drywall, leaving several cat-shaped cartoon indents in the wall.
In other news, a miner tries to unblock a hose by sucking up whatever the blockage is. With his mouth. And the blockage is spiders.
But don’t worry folks, it’s only a…miner problem (okay, I’ll stop).
Remember ScarJo’s Taser? Well, the screenwriters created a Chekhov’s gun problem for themselves. You can’t introduce a Taser and then not use it, so they contrive a scene where ScarJo and Bret are kissing in a truck. He gets hot and heavy with her and she tasers him in the balls and he pisses himself.
I’m not condoning his actions, but it’s out of character, and just an excuse to use the Taser. ScarJo kicks him out of the truck and leaves, just in time as it happens, because at that moment a cluster of jumping spiders crests the brow of a nearby hill like Zulus arriving at Rorke’s Drift.
Bret and his pals flee on their motorbikes but spiders pick them off. It’s an excellent set-piece. Bret alone makes it to the mine and the entrance caves in behind him.
Orb Weavered
In case you were wondering, the next pet to die in Eight Legged Freaks is a dog belonging to Chris’ aunt Gladys. An orb weaver takes it after tunneling into her basement.
Gladys investigates the dog’s howling and also gets orb weavered. Chris investigates Gladys’ howling and I wondered how long the orb weavering would go on for, but the orbs must have been temporarily weavered out because Chris just finds one of their detached legs instead.
Do spider legs detach very often? That’s twice now, but I’ve only seen it one other time in a giant spider movie. No, I’m not going to say which. You should have been paying attention.
Side note: I think Orb Weaver is a great name for a rock band.
Chris rushes the leg to Mike, who does some early-2000s computer wizardry to determine the orb weaver’s dimensions (verdict: family sized).
But it’s all a bit academic because at that very moment, the real thing is orb weavering its way into ScarJo’s bedroom after she gets out the shower, the pervert. It sprays her with sticky web (stop right there!).
Chris runs in and also gets sprayed, and it’s left to Sam to blow its head off with a shotgun. I think she believes in the giant spiders now.
Sam radios Pete and instructs him to bring over all the police department’s guns, which he does (I fucking love America!). They escape in Pete’s police car and Mike doesn’t even try to conceal the fact that he’s having a great time.
I will feel the same when the zombie apocalypse finally arrives.
Spider noises
They journey to the mobile home of Harlan, the local conspiracy nutcase. The phone lines are down (spiders did it) and Sam needs to warn the town. Harlan has a short-wave radio which he uses to broadcast wacky theories about aliens and government cover-ups.
When they tell Harlan about the oversized arthropods, he calls it ‘bullshit,’ which is odd behaviour for a conspiracy theorist. He’s letting down his entire profession with such a closed-minded attitude.
Harlan doesn’t remain sceptical for long because Tank, the giant tarantula, appears at the window and humps his mobile home. Tank moves in a typically slow Tarantulan gait, except when the plot requires otherwise, then it springs into action.
Its vocalisations initially reminded me of the bird spider from Earth vs the Spider (1958), which I described as Steven Tyler from Aerosmith being flushed down the toilet (probably the second greatest line I’ve ever written). However, when they run it over with a police car, it makes a cartoon babbling noise that’s a cross between a Gremlin and a Jawa from Star Wars.
This is the point where all Hell breaks loose and dozens of spiders attack the town centre. They all seem to be making the same Gremlin/Jawa babbling noises and it’s an issue, frankly. I understand the comedic tone they’re going for in Eight legged Freaks, but treating the whole thing as a joke threatens to undermine the peril. Luckily, we get some cool trapdoor spider moments to balance it out.
Black Friday
The surviving townsfolk flee to the mall, where the mayor sits alone, eating an ostrich burger (what’s the odds he slaughtered it himself?). When the cars start arriving, he smiles and says ‘if you build it, they will come,’ which is the exact line I was thinking of before he said it, honestly.
When the mayor sees a giant spider and asks what it is, Pete replies ‘Spider, man.’ I see what they did there. Very clever.
They close the mall doors, but the spiders are banging on the shutters like it’s Black Friday and the people inside are flatscreen televisions. The mayor possesses the only cell phone in town but wouldn’t you know it, he can’t get a signal.
Chris and Harlen climb the radio tower and phone the authorities, only to be laughed at because he tells them the truth about the giant spiders. He really should have thought that one through.
This isn’t the 1950s. You can’t just phone the local airbase and expect them to scramble Clint Eastwood to the rescue. People are more skeptical in the 21st Century.
In a final effort to convince them, Chris screams ‘THEY’RE HERE!!!’ like a lunatic. He seems to go cross-eyed when he gets angry, but maybe I dreamed that part.
While this is going on, the mayor helps everyone into the basement, where there is a secret door to the mine. He leads them to safety and is hailed a hero.
Ha ha, only kidding. Have you seen mayors in movies? He runs off to the mine by himself and doesn’t tell anyone.
No way is he surviving this movie.
He’s got a ponytail as well, by the way.
Tarzan Boy
The spiders break into the mall. The survivors have armed themselves with sporting equipment and power tools sourced from the mall, which is more interesting than everyone being armed with guns, but not very American. It’s a bad tactic and the spiders absolutely overwhelm them.
Chris slides down a wire from the radio tower to escape the spiders. A spider follows him down the wire while uttering a Tarzan wail (they’re seriously taking the piss now).
ScarJo saw where the mayor went, so the survivors follow him into the basement. Chris meets them there, but the mayor has locked the door to the mine from the other side. Of course he has, why wouldn’t he? It’s chapter twelve of the douchebag mayor handbook.
The mayor discovers Bret in the mine. Bret has been riding around the tunnels all day on his motorbike, being pursued by spiders and failing to find an exit. I’m not a mining expert by any means, but I would have thought at some point it might slope downwards, or upwards, and that might suggest where the exit is? But it’s all on one level like they built it on a sound stage.
Anyway, the mayor gets orb weavered and Bret escapes. Finally! I knew the mayor would die. I called it, didn’t I? You bet I did.
Bret breaks down the door to the basement with a forklift truck and ScarJo is delighted to see him. The ball tasering incident is never mentioned again. Not sure I would be so forgiving.
Meet Consuela
Chris reminds everyone that because of the methane in the mine, the slightest spark could blow them all to Hell. I see where this is going. They make for the exit but have to travel through Consuela’s nest to get there.
I like this movie’s version of the ‘spider queen’ trope. While not a queen in the biological sense, Consuela is waited on like royalty by the male orb weavers. She’s also three times their size, so she fits all the characteristics of a queen, but in a credible way.
They uncover a cocooned body in the nest and would you believe it, it’s the mayor, and he’s alive, ponytail intact.
Before you get your hopes up, he hasn’t been mortally wounded by poison, nor has he been impregnated with spiderlings (that’s what baby spiders are called – it almost makes them sound cute). He’s totally fine.
Let’s recap. The mayor is responsible for everything bad that has happened. He was smuggling toxic waste into the town and storing it in the mine, so the initial spill is on him. He has the blood of hundreds of people on his hands, and even though most of them are anonymous extras, they’re still people, and he receives no comeuppance at all.
I love it because it’s not what you expect.
Methane Enema
All the spiders have followed the survivors into the mine. Like…all of them. It’s just a huge pile-up at this point.
Chris decides to ignite the methane and blow them all up, which is a neat way of resolving the story (what I call the ‘we’ve got to wrap this up somehow’ trope). He takes one final swing at explaining his feelings to Sam, but she interrupts and does it for him.
It’s not very heroic, but following this, Chris becomes the hero he was meant to be. While everyone else flees, Chris borrows Bret’s bike, rides back into Consuela territory, rescues his aunt Gladys, outsmarts Consuela, rides back out with flames licking at his heels, and escapes just before the mine explodes.
Oh, and they find the legendary seam of gold as well. It’s in the middle of Consuela’s nest, but after that methane enema the coast should be clear when they return.
The explosion also destroys the mall, and the mayor worries about whether the insurance company will pay out. That’s the extent of his punishment in this movie: dealing with insurers. I guess that’s enough.
Oh, and they find another use for the Taser, so Bret didn’t have to get zapped in the nuts after all. Sam uses it to jump start the generator which turns on the lights in the mine, triggering the explosion.
I guess I should end it there. It might sound like I’ve described the entirety of Eight Legged Freaks, but I haven’t. There’s lots more going on, and I genuinely recommend watching it.
Rating: 7 spider legs out of 8.
