Eight Legged Freaks
| Eight Legged Freaks | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Ellory Elkayem |
| Written by | Jesse Alexander Ellory Elkayem |
| Produced by | Bruce Berman Dean Devlin |
| Starring | David Arquette Kari Wuhrer Scarlett Johansson Doug E. Doug |
| Music by | John Ottman |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
Release dates | July 17, 2002 |
Running time | 99 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $30,000,000 (estimated) |
Eight Legged Freaks is a 2002 horror/comedy film directed by Ellory Elkayem and starring David Arquette and Kari Wührer. The plot concerns a collection of spiders who are exposed to a chemical that makes them grow to a humungous size. It has been called "a B-Movie with A-Movie special effects."
Taglines:
- Poster: Let the squashing begin!
- Poster: From the producers of Independence Day and Godzilla
- Poster: The biggest... nastiest... mutant spider movie of all time!!!!
- Trailer: Do you hate spiders? Do you really hate spiders? Well, they don't like you either!
Plot
Template:Spoilers In the quiet mining town of Prosperity, Arizona, an exhausted trucker carrying a cargo of toxic waste swerves to avoid killing a rabbit in the middle of road, loosening one of the barrels, which rolls off the road into a pond, where a small population of crickets live. The trucker does not notice this, and the toxins begin polluting the pond and the surrounding area. The next day, an exotic spider collector named Joshua goes down to the pond to collect food for his spiders, the crickets. Unfortunately, the crickets have ingested the toxins, but the man doesn't notice since the crickets seem unaffected.
Sometime later, a young boy named Mike Parker is riding on his bicycle down to the man's spider collection to visit Joshua. Joshua is excited to show him how much larger his spiders have grown, and even shows him his newest spider, from Brazil: An enormous female Orb Weaver he named "Consuela". The males bring live food to Consuela to earn the right to mate. After Mike leaves, Joshua is bitten by one of his spiders that escaped, and ends up freeing all the spiders in his pain. He is soon eaten, and the spiders make their home in his house, growing larger and larger.
Mike returns later, but is stopped when he spots his mother, Sheriff Sam Parker (Kari Wuhrer) and Deputy Pete Willis pulling the toxic barrel out of the pond. Sam scolds Mike, telling him that the spiders are dangerous and he doesn't need to be seeing them. Sam forces Mike to get in the car, as she is going to take him home. However, on their way home, a group of motorcyclers are speeding, forcing her to give them a ticket. Sam's daughter Ashley Parker(Scarlett Johansson) was riding on the back seat of her boyfriend Bret's motorcycle, and Bret, who is also the stepson of the mayor, is given a ticket with Ashley also driven home by Sam.
The Mayor of Prosperity, Wade, is holding a town meeting in the mall (which is ironically placed, seeing as few people live in the town) about whether they should sell the mines and relocate. Chris McCormick, whose father owned the mines before he died, shows up after being gone for several years to the meeting, and stands against it. Chris also sparks a romance with Sam.
Mike sneaks out and finds Joshua and the spiders missing, and tells Chris that the spiders have grown to enormous sizes, based on a giant spider leg he found in the mine entrance. Chris is skeptical. The mines, meanwhile, have reopened with the miners searching for gold. However, they are all eaten by the spiders, who have made the mines their home. Seeing as the entire town is connected in some way to the mines, Spiders also show up in different places. Pete's cat is eaten by a small specimen, some ostriches from the local ostrich farm are eaten by a large trapdoor spider, and Chris' skepticism is overcome when his Aunt Gladys is abducted by the Male Orb Weavers, and he finds an even bigger leg. Ashley breaks up with Bret, who soon after witnesses his entire motorcycle gang eaten by Jumping Spiders, with himself surviving by fleeing into the mines. Sheriff Sam Parker is skeptical, and is convinced Chris has gone crazy. However, her skepticism fades when she witnesses a giant spider attempt to abduct Ashley in her room; the spider is shot, but the threat is revealed as Mike concludes that the spiders come out at night to feed, and the whole town is in danger.
Sam contacts Pete and tells him to bring guns; after a scuffle with some jumping spiders, they travel to the trailer of an eccentric UFO enthusiast Harlan Griffiths (Doug E. Doug), knowing he has a radio station that he operates from within the trailer. As Sam broadcasts the threat over the radio as Harlan stands by in skepticism, a giant tarantula assaults the trailer, eliminating his skepticism. As the town listens to the broadcast, they at first scoff because of Harlan's reputation, but soon hear the screams of the people within the trailer as the tarantula pummels it. They escape as the tarantula pummels to hard and trips over the trailer, just as the town is assaulted by vicious spiders. Sam tells everybody to get to the mall (No Windows, Steel Doors), but half the town is eaten by spiders. The mayor at first seems happy that everyone is coming to his mall, but this happiness is replaced with fear once he learns the reason. The main characters make it in safely, and the women and children are told to go down to the basement as the able-bodied townsfolk hold off the spiders. Wade sneaks into the mines and encounters Bret before being abducted by Orb Weavers. Harlan and Chris go up to try and get a signal to call the police, but are believed to be pranksters and are forced to fend themselves off from spiders. Harlan meets up with Pete, and the two run from spiders as Chris meets up with Sam Parker and goes down to the basement with the remaining townspeople. Ashley is reunited with Bret, who finds Wade and frees him. The townspeople make it out of the mines, but Chris stays behind to look for his Aunt Gladys after expressing his love for Sam. He finds Gladys, and the gold his father was searching for, but is confronted by the massive Consuela; he uses Brad's motorcycle to escape, and blows up the spiders and the mines utilizing Gladys' smoking addiction and the high concentrations of methane gas. Ironically, the police, found by Pete and Harlan arrive after the danger has abided, and everyone is reunited.
Later, Harlan is heard making a radio report in which he is concluding the story about the spiders in the mine in the aftermath. Apparently, the town has decided to cover up the whole incident, but decided to let Harlan continue broadcasting it, as they know nobody would believe him. He also mentions the mayor reopening the gold mine, but simply says "that's a story for another time", and laughs, as the camera pans in on his mouth, showing he now has gold teeth. The screen then fades to black and the credits roll.
Spiders Featured
Title
The film was originally to be titled Arach Attack, but the similarity to "Iraq Attack" made the title seem inappropriate near the start of the Iraq War. In contrast, a joke in a commercial for 1990 spider movie Arachnophobia, which premiered during the buildup to the first Gulf War, showed a gentleman at a screening mispronouncing the name of the movie as "Iraqiphobia".
The title "Eight Legged Freaks" is from a line that Arquette ad-libbed in the movie.
Inspiration
The film's director, Ellory Elkayem, got the idea for the film following his 1997 short film, "Larger than Life", which also dealt with a spider-fighting storyline. However, it is not based on H.G. Wells's short story "The Valley of Spiders" or used as an initial inspiration.
Trivia
- There is a "cameo" of Jason Voorhees in the film. One of the town survivors in the mall dresses up like Jason; the mask, jacket, and a weapon he found which happened to be a melee weapon (something Jason is known for using throughout his films): a chain saw (even though Jason has never used a chain saw). He was slaughtered by the jumping spiders while trying to escape the mall.
Location
- The town of Prosperity does not really exist in Arizona, however the county that the story takes place in does. The scenes inside of Prosperity Mall were actually shot in a real mall in Glendale, Arizona. The location was formerly Valley West Mall and also known as Manistee Mall. This movie would be the last operation that took place in the mall, it was demolished soon after shooting was completed.
Key scenes in the movie were recognized by local residents:
- The scene where Wade is eating an Ostrich Burger was shot in a cafe known as TK's.
- The general store appeared in the movie very similar to how it was in real life, even the marquee was the same.