July 20, 2002 -- "Eight-Legged Freaks" (the real title omits the required hyphen) is reminiscent of science fiction and horror films of the 1950s such as "Them," "The Blob" and "Tarantula," except that the special effects are up to date. The films of that era and genre often featured insects or other animals that had grown huge because of radiation or some other scientific excuse. Many films of the genre were so bad they were funny.

"Eight-Legged Freaks" is an attempt to make an intentionally campy 1950's style creature feature. It doesn't quite succeed as well as it should, but it is fun nevertheless. David Arquette of the "Scream" trilogy stars as Chris McCormack, a man who returns to his home town, Prosperity, Arizona, after a long absence only to find the town falling apart. The gold mine he inherited from his father is about to close, as is the local mall. He begins work trying to save the mine and he also tries to get back with his old flame Samantha Parker (she is the county sheriff). Meanwhile, a toxic chemical spill is causing the spiders at a nearby exotic spider farm to grow to the size of Buicks. McCormack and the people of the isolated town find themselves in a battle to the death with a horde of marauding giant spiders.

The real stars of this fim are the spiders. There is everything from a giant tarantula spider, to trap door spiders to jumping spiders and other species. They crawl, hop and bite their way through town, snaping their mandibles menacingly. The CGI team took the approach of scanning the original negative into computers and then adding the spider images into the existing scenes, and then formed a new negative from the combined images. The effects team of 70 artists was lead by visual effects supervisors Karen E. Goulekas ("Terminator 2") and Thomas Dadras ("Starship Troopers," "Deep Blue Sea") and Visual Effects Producer Drew McKeen ("Armageddon," "End of Days"). The spiders are scary.

The actors are low profile, with Scarlett Johansson of "The Man Who Wasn't There" playing Ashley Parker, the sheriff's wayward daughter, and Scott Terra playing Mike Parker, the sheriff's son who knows all about spiders. Doug E. Doug of "Cool Runnings" plays Harlan, a talk radio conspiracy/alien nut and Leon Rippy of "The Patriot" plays Wade, the mayor, whose nutty ideas include an ostrich farm. Rick Overton of "EdTV" plays the dense Deputy Pete. Harlan is supposed to be a comic character, but comes across as a little too disconnected from reality to be relevant. Deputy Pete is supposed to be a Barney Fife-type character, but comes across as being a little too competent for that. The script tries a little too hard to make a joke out of the cliché of Mike, the stereotypical kid who has all the answers, but who is ignored by adults. This type of self-aware camp humor is a little too obvious and not quite clever enough (see "Scream" to see how it is supposed to be done). It is a good try, but no prize. This film rates a C+.

Click here for links to places to buy this movie in video and/or DVD format, the soundtrack, books, even used videos, games and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.