Broadcast here as part of a series of giant monster flicks, SPIDERS had a mission. The giant monster genre knew a revival in the late nineties, but the quality of most releases varies from poor to absolutely zero. So, SPIDERS was supposed to represent the better half. I'm not sure whether it lives up to that task. The campy fun overcomes the flaws, but nevertheless it didn't strike me as above average. Now, usually I refuse to rap my comment around a synopsis, but this time it's the easiest way, since SPIDERS is divided in four neat acts, just like a play.
The events in Act I eventually lead to the basic situation of having a monster on the loose. A fictional space shuttle crashes due to a solar flame near a top secret military base, the kind where illegal aliens both dead and alive are given shelter and therefore appropriately named Area 21. The live video images of the shuttle crew are amateurish, the crash looks like a toy was thrown in front of the camera and the whole idea of aliens with New Jersey accents is never developed in its silliness.
Act II gives us the lead characters. Our semi-attractive heroine is a reporter who, together with her nerdy environmentalist companions, plans to sneak into Area 21 to inform the public on whatever secrets hidden there. Then there's an MIB-like agent called Gary, who is precisely the kind of inhuman bastard a government needs to handle situations in the order of alien tourism and secret spaceships malfunctioning. I dug him; he reminded me of both the cop on DEUCE BIGALOW and the second lieutenant on TERMINATOR, which proves his Agent Smith act fails in the end. His assistant eventually switches sides and becomes the clumsy hero. The rest of the cast plays a mix of shallow doctors, nervous soldiers and brave yet helpless police officers most of whom are destined to the slaughter throughout the movie.
In the third act, the 30' spider is born out of the mouth (!) of a surviving astronaut, finishes off a scientist and escapes to the basements of the base. This scene has really good special effects, and the CGI preserves its quality throughout the whole hunt in the basement, which reminded me in particular of the cargo bay chase in JASON X. This part is about the best of the entire movie, with frozen Apollo 18 crew members, a Mexican standoff, an original monster disposal and 'Gary's best scene.
By the beginning of Act IV, the movie has little over a quarter left to find a way to resurrect the spider, have it start a rampage in the big city and give us a big heroic finale. It takes place on our heroine's campus, by the way First the XXL-spider bursts out of Gary ( I'm not spoiling anything, you will see it coming ), then chases a crowd of desperately random fleeing students, takes its first cop in a re-enactment of BEAST FROM 20.000 PHANTOMS and chases more people in the big city before the Heroic Twosome finishes it off with uranium grenades (?). Whatever gore made the first kills bearable is absent here, both the CGI ad puppet work on the spider don't work above the 10 feet perimeter and the Shootout Phrase 'suck on this, bitch !' is obsolete.
In conclusion, taste the quality in the line 'if you weren't one of them, I'd like you.'. There have been worse opening phrases to intimacy ( though the pace doesn't permit the heroes to be intimate ).
The events in Act I eventually lead to the basic situation of having a monster on the loose. A fictional space shuttle crashes due to a solar flame near a top secret military base, the kind where illegal aliens both dead and alive are given shelter and therefore appropriately named Area 21. The live video images of the shuttle crew are amateurish, the crash looks like a toy was thrown in front of the camera and the whole idea of aliens with New Jersey accents is never developed in its silliness.
Act II gives us the lead characters. Our semi-attractive heroine is a reporter who, together with her nerdy environmentalist companions, plans to sneak into Area 21 to inform the public on whatever secrets hidden there. Then there's an MIB-like agent called Gary, who is precisely the kind of inhuman bastard a government needs to handle situations in the order of alien tourism and secret spaceships malfunctioning. I dug him; he reminded me of both the cop on DEUCE BIGALOW and the second lieutenant on TERMINATOR, which proves his Agent Smith act fails in the end. His assistant eventually switches sides and becomes the clumsy hero. The rest of the cast plays a mix of shallow doctors, nervous soldiers and brave yet helpless police officers most of whom are destined to the slaughter throughout the movie.
In the third act, the 30' spider is born out of the mouth (!) of a surviving astronaut, finishes off a scientist and escapes to the basements of the base. This scene has really good special effects, and the CGI preserves its quality throughout the whole hunt in the basement, which reminded me in particular of the cargo bay chase in JASON X. This part is about the best of the entire movie, with frozen Apollo 18 crew members, a Mexican standoff, an original monster disposal and 'Gary's best scene.
By the beginning of Act IV, the movie has little over a quarter left to find a way to resurrect the spider, have it start a rampage in the big city and give us a big heroic finale. It takes place on our heroine's campus, by the way First the XXL-spider bursts out of Gary ( I'm not spoiling anything, you will see it coming ), then chases a crowd of desperately random fleeing students, takes its first cop in a re-enactment of BEAST FROM 20.000 PHANTOMS and chases more people in the big city before the Heroic Twosome finishes it off with uranium grenades (?). Whatever gore made the first kills bearable is absent here, both the CGI ad puppet work on the spider don't work above the 10 feet perimeter and the Shootout Phrase 'suck on this, bitch !' is obsolete.
In conclusion, taste the quality in the line 'if you weren't one of them, I'd like you.'. There have been worse opening phrases to intimacy ( though the pace doesn't permit the heroes to be intimate ).