Spiders (review)

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Spiders red light

I’m “biast” (pro): nothing

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)


What has happened to America’s cheesy film industry? Where is the pride of our grade-Z filmmakers? Does no one care anymore about making decent bad movies? You might imagine that crap impresario Tibor Takács — who has such titles as NYC: Tornado Terror, Mega Snake, and, yes, Ice Spiders to his credit — would know how to make a flick about space spiders genetically engineered by former Soviet eggheads and now out of control in the New York City subway filmed entirely on a Bulgarian backlot with mannequin-like actors mean something. But he can’t even be bothered to ladle on a preposterous theme about the balkanization of mad science in the wake of the breakup of the USSR, or weave in a laughable motif about cultural environmental anxieties over global warming and overpopulated humanity encroaching on the natural world. My God, man, (said the frustrated critic and lover of monster movies to the director), you couldn’t even raise the minor heavyhanded enthusiasm to parallel the fecundity of the Queen Spider and her rampaging babies with the concerns of the divorcing MTA engineer and Department of Health official over their pubescent daughter who’s turning 12 years old on the very day the crashing bit of Soviet space junk brings the arachnids to Earth? And you call yourself a professional?

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RogerBW
RogerBW
Sat, Feb 09, 2013 4:58pm

Yes! I want cheesy fun, gosh-darn-it! I have an abiding love for the cheap dire films that went to feed the local movie industry, then the drive-in circuit, then VHS, then DVD, anywhere that had an insatiable appetite for piled-high and sold-cheap… because those guys working with their microbudgets still felt they had something to say. The modern Syfy movie all too often takes an amusing premise and plugs it in to the Script-o-Matic 3000, and the resulting production is simply soul-dead. Nothing can be allowed to go egregiously wrong (Blood Feast, anyone?) and so nothing can go egregiously right either.

Keith AllGamer
Keith AllGamer
Sat, Feb 09, 2013 5:40pm

Haha, good review. I’d probably feel the same way if I saw it. I love monster movies too, but, guys, put some effort into it.

Paul Wartenberg
Sat, Feb 16, 2013 12:09am

He dared to tamper in God’s (re: Joe Dante) domain…