With the big-screen creature boom — Anaconda, Deep Blue Sea and Lake Placid — the B-rank-and-file have followed suit with a stampede of nature-run-amok flicks. Reptiles have been the biggest beasts so far, with king-daddy Komodo nipping at the keister of anything the big budgets of Hollywood has yet unleashed. Now comes another welcome surprise — of the eight-leg variety — Spiders (2000, 93 minutes).
A student journalist with a Fox Mulder-complex attempts to infiltrate an Area 51-type base with her photographer and computer whiz in tow. Meanwhile, orbiting the earth, the space shuttle is hit by a solar flare during an experiment with a very SPECIAL spider. After a fiery crash, Marci (Lana Parrilla) and pals wind up playing hide-and-go-eat in the underground base with a two-foot tarantula that doubles in size every time they squish it, until it gets to the point where the thing clambers atop a tall building like a certain value-sized primate. Director Gary Jones is no stranger to the creature genre as he made Mosquito (penned by Leatherface hisself, Gunnar Hansen) — not to be confused with Skeeter, which is a COMPLETELY different movie about giant blood-sucking insects.
Notables: No breasts. 19 corpses. Phony electrocution gag. Egg-laying closeup. One alien in a jar. Projectile puking. Web slinging. Gratuitous spidervision.
Quotables: The script is intentionally littered with lines from other flicks: "I’ll be back!" "I’ve got a bad feeling about this!" and "We’re sure as s@#% not in Kansas anymore!" When fleeing the creature, Marci yells for folks to "duck and cover!" Soldiers searching for the spider don’t feel equipped, "We need bug repellant, not guns."
Time codes: Space shuttle crash featuring both low-rent CGI and Revell model flinging (16:50). An ode to The Thing (36:20). Famous [dead] residents of the secret base (42:46). Goo, gack, slime and more goo (1:12:45).
Final thought: Wry humor punctuates this gooey farce with the familiar monster-on-the-loose pace of 1950s creature flicks.