{"id":24199,"date":"2017-02-13T00:32:21","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T05:32:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=24199"},"modified":"2019-02-22T16:22:13","modified_gmt":"2019-02-22T21:22:13","slug":"fifteen-years-later-eight-legged-freaks-deserves-to-be-celebrated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/13\/fifteen-years-later-eight-legged-freaks-deserves-to-be-celebrated\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifteen Years Later, \u201cEight Legged Freaks\u201d Deserves To Be Celebrated"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Ellory Elkayem\u2019s \u201cEight Legged Freaks\u201d came out during a horrendous time. First it was a limited release, unleashed around the time another Spider oriented movie was breaking box office records, and it was released during a time where audiences were still bruised from 9\/11 and weren\u2019t too keen on welcoming horror comedies in to their lives quite yet. It\u2019s a shame since \u201cEight Legged Freaks\u201d is a pitch perfect horror comedy that celebrates everything from B movies, slasher movies, disaster movies, and the classic monster movies like \u201cThem!<\/em>\u201d and \u201cMosquito<\/a><\/em>.\u201d Ellory Elkayem based a lot of \u201cEight Legged Freaks\u201d on his short film \u201cLarger Than Life,\u201d which is very much in the spirit of what we see on the big screen. It is a black and white ode to the sixties monster movies with Elkayem conjuring up what\u2019s so gross and icky about spiders. I originally saw \u201cLarger than Life\u201d on television in 2000 when it premiered on the short film television series \u201cExposure\u201d on the Sci-Fi Channel here in America.<\/p>\n

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The short film from Elkayem became a significant memory in my mind and Elkayem managed to realize it in to a rather fantastic monster movie in its own right. \u00a0\u201cEight Legged Freaks\u201d is a simple but truly fantastic horror comedy that doesn\u2019t over complicate itself nor take itself seriously at all. Whenever it\u2019s on cable I always find myself drifting to it and sitting through the entirety laughing and giggling through most of it. Elkayem assembles an interesting cast to deliver what is one of the more raucous spider attack movies since \u201cArachnophobia<\/em><\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

No matter what you feel about spiders, you\u2019ll have a hard time not getting grossed out at giant spiders besieging hapless town folks in Prosperity mall, or a giant spider yanking a poor house cat in to a hole in a wall. There\u2019s also a very ghoulish moment where a character, stuck in the town\u2019s abandoned mines, accidentally walks in on the queen spider that proceeds to jab her piercer in to poor victim and suck out his innards as he screams in agony.<\/p>\n

<\/a>What makes \u201cEight Legged Freaks\u201d so fantastic though is that, though the movie sports some significant male presence (including David Arquette in a mostly straight faced role as the film\u2019s inadvertent hero Chris), the movie supplies a very strong array of female characters and heroines, all of whom either save the day or keep a cool head. While most of the men in the movie are running away and fleeing for their lives in the face of a giant spider, Kari Wuhrer as town sheriff Samantha, stands in front of the gradually closing mall shooting down spiders left and right while pretty much everyone flees. While Samantha is a single mother still reeling from a jilted romance, she is not a woman who needs help at all. Another scene finds her daughter Ashley (Scarlett Johannson) being wrapped in webbing by a giant spider that sneaks in to her room.<\/p>\n

As Chris and Samantha\u2019s son Mike fail to fend off the intruder, Samantha takes it upon herself to shatter her gun cabinet and blow the spider to pieces with her shotgun. If that\u2019s not enough Samantha\u2019s daughter Ashley is also a young girl incapable of depending on men for help, often chasing after her younger brother and even fends off an aggressive attack by her boyfriend with a tazer right in his crotch. To contribute to the theme of female empowerment, the way Mike is able to completely disorient one of the giant predators is by spraying its face with perfume.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cEight Legged Freaks\u201d is so criminally under appreciated and manages to channel the schlock of the sixties without feeling tedious or dull. It moves at a rapid pace, garners a ton of memorable moments, and even does a good job making its spider foes absolutely terrifying while also injecting a dose of silliness. The spiders all seem to communicate with high pitched jabbering to one another that sounds like speech, and scream in horror whenever they\u2019re killed or attacked by their intended prey.<\/p>\n

The cast all around are fantastic with Arquette playing a believable hero, Doug E. Doug garnering a ton of laughter as the town\u2019s resident conspiracy theorist who reacts to the spiders in about as much delirious panic as you\u2019d expect. There\u2019s also Rick Overton as Samantha\u2019s lumbering but very competent deputy. The stand outs thought are Scarlett Johannson as Samantha\u2019s inadvertent hero daughter Alex, the very intelligent Mike who helps overcome the spiders with his knowledge of their species. Finally, there\u2019s Kari Wuhrer who is mostly accustomed to playing vivacious sex bombs in film, who plays a conservative mother and gun toting heroine who is almost always on the verge of sacrificing herself to help others. Wuhrer\u2019s performance is very restrained and it\u2019s the very tight knit performance that ironically makes Samantha so sexy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cEight Legged Freaks\u201d packs in slight social commentary about developing and steam rolling small towns for the sake of corporations, and the disastrous results of pollution that transforms a farm of spiders in to a horde of truck sized predators. I\u2019d also be remiss if I didn\u2019t mention Leon Rippy as the town\u2019s villainous mayor Wade, and Tom Noonan who has a welcome walk on role. Despite the fact that pretty much everyone are releasing giant bug movies these days, \u201cEight Legged Freaks\u201d deserves to be celebrated again and given its due for being so ahead of its time. Despite its age the special effects are still quite solid, and writers Elkayem and Jesse Alexander manage to slip in a very solid narrative that allows for a logical and fascinating reason to giant spiders invading a small desert town.<\/p>\n

Elkayem makes due with a smaller budget, allowing for a lot of great moments of inherent terror and hysterical comedy. Some of my favorite scenes include Sam\u2019s deputy stuck in his car with a giant tarantula mounting above him, and the big climactic battle in the mall. I love how Elkayem undercuts out expectations as a giant spider smashes through the mall\u2019s gates. As the town readies their weapons preparing to fight it, it backs off allowing an army of thousands of smaller spiders to raid the area, effectively destroying the human strong hold. Despite the advertising\u2019s best efforts to draw in crowds for alternative movies, America was just too wrapped up in Spider-Man finally coming to the big screen by way of another cult director Sam Raimi.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I fondly remember the trailer featuring Samantha\u2019s deputy muttering \u201cIt\u2019s a spider, man.\u201d Were it not for the limited movie theaters in my area, I surely would have turned out to see Elkayem\u2019s movie in the theater. Fifteen years later, \u201cEight Legged Freaks\u201d maintains a lot of its appeal and camp value. There\u2019s simply no excuse for Elkayem\u2019s movie still being on a very ancient bare bones DVD release. In an age where audiences and studios are celebrating films of all kinds and niches, \u201cEight Legged Freaks\u201d is rightfully deserving of a Collector\u2019s Edition Blu-Ray.<\/p>\n

When you consider that the movie co-stars a pre-fame Scarlett Johannson, the movie could have its appeal for modern audiences that weren\u2019t old enough to appreciate it. This is the golden age of horror comedy to boot, where films like \u201cZombeavers<\/em><\/a>,\u201d \u201cBig Ass Spider!<\/em><\/a>,\u201d \u201cLavalantula<\/em>,\u201d and \u201cZoombies<\/em>\u201d are being given to fans gobbling up this kind of escapist horror cinema. \u201cEight Legged Freaks\u201d is easily one of the best in its sub-genre and deserves to be acknowledged by movie fans of all kinds.<\/p>\n