This imaginatively titled movie is about giant spiders. Spiders is the second giant spider movie I ever watched, after Arachnia.
I think it’s time for my origin story. Many years ago, around 2007, I came across a DVD of Spiders in the local supermarket bargain bin. It cost 97p, but I am happy to report that it was worth at least £1.49 so I got a good deal.
More importantly, this was literally a week after I had watched Arachnia on The Horror Channel. It had to be a sign. This meant something. This was important.
The Universe had revealed to me my density. Sorry…my destiny. That day, I resolved to unearth and review every giant spider movie ever made.
Many years passed before I fully got going on it, but here we are.
Spider Origins
One of the things I liked about last week’s giant spider movie, Arachnia, was that they didn’t mess around with complicated explanations of how the giant spiders came to be. They were there the whole time, which is refreshingly simple if a little illogical.
It reminded me of Tremors, one of the best monster movies of all time, and one of the very few to get the horror/comedy balance just right. In Tremors the creatures just appear one day. The characters speculate on where they came from, but they never find out.
They explain it in one of the sequels, but it isn’t very interesting and would not have improved the original film at all. The question is always more intriguing than the answer.
I am not suggesting that this approach will work for every giant spider movie, but sometimes I like to see a movie jettison the baggage of a contrived origin story and just getting down to business.
I mean…it’s a giant spider movie. We want to see some giant spiders terrorising people, so get on with it already.
All Explanation, All The Time
In Spiders, they take the polar-opposite approach. Instead of explaining nothing, they manage to contrive the most ridiculous and convoluted origin story in movie history.
It breaks down like this: a plucky reporter for a college newspaper, Marci (Lana Parrilla) believes in aliens and conspiracy theories. She interviews a guy who claims to be an alien. Later on it turns out that he is, in fact, an alien.
At some point the Government got hold of his alien DNA and are now experimenting with it by injecting it into spiders for some reason. However, they can only carry out the experiments in space, because that is where the alien DNA came from. Stay with me.
So the Government is running secret space shuttle missions and carrying out these experiments in space. On one of these missions, a solar flare swamps the shuttle with radiation.
The regular sized spider they were experimenting on, codename ‘Mother-in-Law,’ (a desert funnel web, if you’re interested) escapes and bites the crew, turning them into bloated freaks before they die.
The space shuttle crash lands in the desert. Still here? Mother-in-Law lays its eggs in one of the crew before getting squished. The man is taken to a secret underground Government lab, where a spider the size of a cat crawls out of his mouth and runs amok.
And thus, giant spider is born. Simple as that.
But Wait. There’s More.
Alien guy tips off Marci and her two buddies, Jake and Slick, about the secret underground lab in the desert. They arrive just as the shuttle crashes, which is timely. They stow away on the rescue crew’s truck and smuggle themselves into the base.
Later on, they stumble across a room with the name of the top-secret spider project printed on the door. The room has lots of mathematical formulae on blackboards accompanied by pictures of spiders and a computer with all the files on that explain everything.
The only thing they don’t make clear is whether the giant spiders are a result of the alien DNA, the radiation from the solar flare, or a combination of the two.
One of those plot devices would have sufficed for a giant spider movie, but they use both. Why not go the whole hog and have the space shuttle crash land into a vat of toxic waste. Greedy bastards.
At the crash site, we meet the super-evil FBI agent, Agent Grey, who is the best thing about this movie. His sidekick, Murphy, says there may be survivors, and he replies:
‘Not the one I want.’
You see, all he cares about is the spider – he’s that bad.
Just in case we didn’t get it right away, he then kills a doctor who dares suggest they take the injured crewman to a hospital. Just shoots him in cold blood.
Then he throws a grenade into the shuttle wreck and strolls away, not even breaking stride as it all blows to Hell behind him. Everyone else is ducking for cover but he just walks away as calm as you like.
I can’t remember if he lights a cigarette as he does this, but I like to think that he did.
The X-Files
I thought the alien guy from the beginning was going to play a bigger part, but we never see him again. I smell a sequel coming on – Spiders 2: Alien Guy!
Forget the spiders – set it in suburbia and have alien guy getting into all sorts of mishaps as he adjusts to his new world and tries to figure out how toilets work. Hilarity ensues.
Anyway, Marci and co witness the birth of the giant spider. The practical effects are excellent. The bloated space shuttle captain pukes yellow shit all over Marci right before the spider bursts out of his mouth.
They then discover pickled aliens in jars and frozen astronauts from unofficial Apollo missions. I even spotted a coffin with 11-22-63 stamped on it.
I’ve read the Stephen King book with the same title, so I know this is the date of JFK’s assassination. So presumably they’ve got him on ice too. I didn’t spot Walt Disney.
This movie should have been an episode of The X-Files.
It’s Game Time
The spider attacks Marci, Jake and Slick on a stairwell. Slick punches it. It falls over the side and plummets several stories.
Don’t spiders have web they can deploy to avoid this precise scenario? We’ve already seen it shoot web, so we know it has that ability. But nope – it just falls like you and me. This also happened in Big Ass Spider, so I’m tempted to name a new trope.
The spider isn’t dead, just stunned (with beautiful plumage). It revives and sheds its skin. I’ve mentioned before that spiders shed their exoskeleton when they grow, but this is the first time I’ve seen it happen onscreen.
When we next see it, it has grown to around 6-8 feet long. The puppetry for the close-ups is amazing. The only let-down is when they switch to dodgy CGI for the scuttling shots.
Agent Grey and an army unit arrive to capture the spider. Without spoiling anything – it doesn’t go well for them. The action is surprisingly effective, with some inventive set pieces (including two elevator shaft scenes). The spider is the perfect size for the enclosed environment and poses a real threat.
Marci teams up with Agent Grey’s partner, Murphy, but she takes some warming up to him. By that I mean she beats him with an iron bar, tries to shoot him in cold blood (he ducks) and beats the shit out of him while he desperately tries to explain that he’s an okay guy.
He shows considerable restraint, if I’m honest. I’m pretty sure I would have become the man she thought I was.
Marci then does a confusing 180 by saving Murphy when the spider drags him off. She was punching him five seconds beforehand. It’s not clear what changed her mind. Woman’s prerogative.
King Kong
Marci and Murphy kill the spider with an elevator and escape the lab, but not before the spider impregnates Agent Grey with one of its offspring. Agent Grey actually encourages it to impregnate him, which is a little weird.
Marci and Murphy rush back to the College newspaper offices because she wants to get the story out before her deadline. Okay, but to who? A few thousand college kids? What is she hoping to achieve? This isn’t Disclosure Day. Nobody’s going to give a shit.
Anyway, Agent Grey is waiting for them, having flown there in his helicopter. Another giant spider, much bigger than the last one, bursts out of him and he loosens his tie to help it along. What a guy.
The last act goes all King Kong with a stage 4 parade float sized spider rampaging through Los Angeles. For a low budget movie, the carnage is well choreographed. The stunt people really put in a shift, throwing themselves about and trampling on each other.
My favourite part was when the spider knocks over a trolley full of cans. Trolleys full of cans only exist in movies, not real life. The only reason they exist in movies is so they can get knocked over and spilled all over the road, complete with a homeless person shaking their fist at whoever did it (see also – prams).
Marci and Murphy take Agent Grey’s helicopter (he won’t be needing it) and take out Big Daddy with what can only be described as a Nerf rocket launcher. It’s pretty funny.
Spiders is one of those giant spider movies with real potential. The framework for a great movie is all there (basically Alien but with a spider), but hampered by the usual limitations (budget, talent etc). Still, it’s way better than I remembered.
Rating: 6 spider legs out of 8
