EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS
I have such a strange soft spot for Eight Legged Freaks and don’t really know why. It’s a kind of fun but hardly remarkable horror comedy about giant spiders. I’ve seen the film twice, once when it came out back in 2002 and now twenty years later in order to write this newsletter about it. I think it’s got a bit of Snakes on a Plane syndrome. I think most of my affection for this movie comes from the fact that it’s a pretty good-natured movie with a title that I love. I mean, it’s called Eight Legged Freaks. That’s got to be it, right? I enjoy saying Eight Legged Freaks.
I first raised my Spider Movie Theory with Arachnophobia but as there aren’t a lot of spider movies in existence, now would be another time to talk about it. I believe there is a webbed ceiling when it comes to movies about spiders that they cannot possibly break through because no matter how fun, or light-hearted, or goofy these movies about spiders are the fact is: people hate spiders. They will never make proper bank at the box office because in order to sell tickets you need to convince couples and groups of friends to go to the movie, and every person you add to a party increases the chance there will be somebody who will absolutely refuse to go see a movie that has spiders in it.
The plot is your classic case of a bunch of chemicals being spilled into a lake that’s right next door to an exotic spider farm. Those chemicals cause the spiders to grow to gargantuan size and then wreak havoc in the small town. Dealing with these enormous CGI spiders are a cast of characters that you’ll love if you inhaled the exact same mid-90s content as I did. You’ve got Kari Wuhrer from Anaconda and Sliders. You’ve got Doug E. Doug from Cool Runnings. You’ve got David Arquette from Scream. You’ve got a young Scarlett Johanson from stuff in the future that hadn’t come out yet.
Where would I fit into Eight Legged Freaks? I absolutely shudder to imagine. These spiders aren’t as scary as the Arachnophobia spiders because these spiders are way too big and way too poorly CGI’d to be real. Even still, I absolutely would hate more than anything to be a clueless townsperson going about my business only to find myself webbed by one of these, say it with me now, eight legged freaks.
IF I WERE IN ‘EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS’ I WOULD: SUFFER WORSE PTSD ABOUT THE DINER INCIDENT AND LONG TO BE WRAPPED TIGHTLY UP IN A COCOON, UNCONSCIOUS AND UNABLE TO THINK ABOUT HOW I EMBARRASSED MYSELF
