The free streaming service Tubi has made a name for itself among horror aficionados for being a cornucopia of hidden gems in the horror, cult, and exploitation genres. Terror on Tubi is a column dedicated to deep diving the seemingly endless options the service provides.
This week’s spotlight: Spiders (2000).
Spiders are on the Mount Everest of horror iconography. Skeletons, bats, rats, snakes, and the spider. They adorn many a fake web during the Halloween season and feature in countless genre films as either a nice bit of set dressing or as the main feature. Few crawlies of the creepy variety instill as much dread, disgust, and outright terror as the multi-eyed arachnid.
So why aren’t there more top shelf horror flicks starring the many-legged darlings? I can count the quality spider flicks we have to choose from on less than eight limbs.
Spiders is one of the good ones and deserves more love. It came out at the very end of the late ’90s creature feature cycle which included the likes of theatrically released gems such as Deep Blue Sea, Lake Placid, and Anaconda. Spiders may not feature the budget nor the star power of those aforementioned films, but it can confidently sit alongside them in the entertainment category.
Directed by Gary Jones (the schlock slinger who delivered another bug infused B-movie with 1994’s Mosquito) and produced by and with story credit from Boaz Davidson (of The Last American Virgin fame), Spiders is a better-than-expected foray into over the top monster movie goodness.
I have an incredibly large soft spot for creature-features. If they contain copious amounts of camp, all the better. Spiders plays with its tone, balancing tongue-in-cheek humor with the goal of also trying to be scary and intense when need be. Spoilers: It’s not scary. Nor is it intense. But it gets a sticker for really going for it.
The humor is another surprising element of the film. While it’s no work of comedic genius, you will find yourself chuckling both ironically and unironically throughout the duration. You can make a drinking game out of how many times a character hurls profanities at the spider as it’s murdering them.
The plot, such as it is, revolves around college journalist Marci Eyre (Lana Parilla) and her two man crew of Slick (Oliver Macready) and Jake (Nick Swarts). The gang infiltrates a top secret government base to follow up a lead Marci has about aliens (Oh yeah, she’s a total UFO nut) only to stumble upon a deadly secret involving space, genetic experimentation, the aforementioned aliens, and of course…SPIDERS!
Well, actually, spider. Singular. There is technically only one spider at any given time. It molts and grows exponentially bigger as the film progresses. At no point in the film do the characters face multiple spiders…
Nevertheless, Spiders is a frothy brew of homage and rip-off. It homages creature-feature flicks of old such as the plethora of “nuclear terror” movies that came out in the 1950s. The rip-off aspect comes in with the obvious beats it borrows from Alien and Aliens. The movie’s musical score borders on asking for a lawsuit from Aliens composer James Horner.
We even get our own version of the famous Chest Burster scene when a huge ass spider forcibly pushes itself out of the mouth of a dead astronaut – one of the gory highlights of the film.
That’s what we’re all here for, right? Legendary effects house KNB EFX lent their considerable talents to the practical effects of the film, and you can tell that’s where a good chunk of the budget went. The practical spider effects are surprisingly well done and the filmmakers have confidence in showing them off. This isn’t one of those no-effort z-movies that promises awesome monster action only to dedicate most of its runtime to boring characters blathering inane dialogue without giving us the goods we came for. There is ambition to be found in Spiders. Where the film could have settled for being another base under siege type of flick, Spiders has the guts to go big.
Maybe even too big considering its budgetary limitations…
The climax gives a full-blown kaiju rampage as the giant spider wreaks havoc on an unsuspecting populace. Think the San Diego sequence in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, but way cheaper. And with a spider. And a bazooka. And a terrible “homage” to the famous “get away from her, you bitch!” line from Aliens. It is riotous.
Spiders is better than it should be, for what it is. It’s clear the filmmakers cared here and put the effort into making a fun and fast paced bit of horror amusement.
Grab a beer, order a pizza, and have a good time getting caught in this web for 90 minutes.
