Starring: Lana Parrilla, Josh Green, Oliver Macready, Nick Swarts, Mark Phelan Directed By: Gary Jones Average Rating: Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD Format: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC Label: Lions Gate Number of Items: 1 Picture Format: Letterbox Region Code: 1 Release Date: January 16, 2001 Running Time: 93 minutes Theatrical Release Date: 2000
Evil Government Overlords Versus Self-Important College Newspaper Reporters "Spiders" is one of the stupidest giant creature movies I have ever seen. The film starts with the launch of the space shuttle "Solaris", which is carrying a top secret government payload called "Project Mother-In-Law", due, no doubt, to it's horrifying powers. A college reporter is told to cover the story, but she's more interested in covering a ludicrous story about government conspiracy and aliens, and takes two of her buddies into the desert to look for evidence of nefarious activity. She was tipped off by two aliens whose crimes against humanity solely consisted of stealing and drinking non-dairy creamer. (Really.)
Meanwhile, on the "Solaris" (despite the fact that the name "Discovery" is clearly visible during the stock footage shots), a scientist injects alien DNA into a tarantula at exactly the same moment the shuttle is caught in a huge cosmic storm. The shuttle crash lands in the secret facility being investigated by the three teenagers in what has to be the worst model effect I have seen in years. Interestingly, the post-crash shuttle destruction is CGI, but that effect is terrible too.
Most of the rest of the film is spent with government evildoers, cub reporters, and giant CGI spiders chasing each other around a basement of horrors including a frozen "Apollo 18" astronaut, which inspires one of the teens to remark "It's like a bad sci-fi movie", and he is exactly right.
There are some fairly amusing action sequences, my favorite of which involved falling down an elevator shaft only to be caught in a giant web at the bottom. It turns out that the project is about world domination, which plays right into the conspiracy looniness prevalent in this movie.
Eventually a good government agent and the reporter team up and, after finding a spare helicopter with rocket launcher just sitting there ready to do battle with Mother-In-Law, take off for the nearby city where the giant spider is atop a building. (Haven't I seen a giant monster on a skyscraper somewhere before?) The girl lowers herself from the helicopter on a rope and fires a rocket into the spider's mouth concluding the movie, although I am aghast to report that there is apparently a sequel ("Spiders II: Breeding Ground") ready to further the franchise.
This film has some terrible acting, is plagued by insanely stupid coincidences and plot twists, and some of the worst dialogue you will ever hear in your life. None of this should surprise B-movie fans, though, as this was produced by Boaz Davidson, the same man who brought us "Crocodile".
I think the film is worth two stars for camp value: the sheer audaciousness of the plot makes it worth watching for fans of B-movies.
Great Killer Spider Movie School Newspaper Reporter Marci (Lana Parrilla) and her friends Slick (Oliver Macready) and John (Josh Green) are assigned to cover a space shuttle landing. Instead she decides they are going to prove the existence of aliens and heads out to a restricted area in the desert. While doing an experiment on board the shuttle with Alien DNA and a spider the shuttle is hit by a solar flare and the experiment gets loose. According to the news the shuttle burnt up during re-entry but just as she gets the news the shuttle flies overhead and crash lands in the desert. When they head over to the shuttle to investigate they find mutilated bodies lying around inside the shuttle. The government guys get there so Marci, Slick and John hide in the back of a truck which then heads deep into the underground base. One of the astronauts survives, but the spider implanted an egg inside him before he was taken inside the base. While sneaking around the inside of the base they find proof that aliens do exist and many other government cover ups. They find the astronaut that survived the crash just as a foot tall spider bursts from his mouth and each time the spider kills it gets bigger and hungrier! When she finally is able to escape the base so does the spider. So now she and her new government friend Jake (Nick Swarts) have to find a way to stop the spider before it makes Los Angeles it's new Home.
Spiders is actually an enjoyable B a lot better than most of the other Trimark / Lions Gate Killer Creature flicks. The Special effects are really good for this type of movie and instead of using a ton of bad CGI they balance out satisfactory looking CGI with good animatronics. It also has the making of the movie which is kind of cool to watch. Gary Jones seems like he is pretty good at making good killer creature B movies examples- Mosquito, Spiders, Crocodile 2: Death Swamp. Overall this is an enjoyable cheesy killer creature flick that I highly recommend to B movie watchers.
An amusing cheap sci-fi flick I'm not saying you should BUY this, but it's good for a few laughs if you Netflix or Tivo it. The story draws you in just enough to stick around for the laughs. no real babes in this one if that's what you're after.
Rewatchable, but there's better movies I didn't like this as much as the Shark Attack/Crocodile/Octopus movies, but I've rewatched it before. The only problem is that everything or almost everything in the trail is taken from the last 10-15 minutes of this movie.
Giant spiders I think Gary Jone's Spiders movie is really great!! In fact I'm a spider liker myself! It was really interesting,I like the way he designed the Funnel Web Spider,except they don't spin ORB WEBS,they spin a Burrow thats lined with web.Its real strange how that Gray guy got to the place before Marci and Murphy.Its a real great movie
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