Product Description

Residents of a rural mining town discover that an unfortunate chemical spill has caused hundreds of little spiders to mutate overnight to the size of SUVs. Movie tagline: Do you hate spiders? Do you really hate spiders? Well they don't like you either.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13721 in DVD
• Brand: WARNER HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 2004-06-01
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 99 minutes

Amazon.com
In the grand tradition of atomic-age monster movies, Eight Legged Freaks delivers everything you'd want from a giant-spider thriller. The plot's hardly original, but familiarity is half the fun, beginning when toxic waste results in a stampede of gigantic, ravenous arachnids in the depressed mining town of Liberty, Arizona. David Arquette is Liberty's prodigal son, returning to save the town from greedy developers, and to reunite with the lovely local sheriff (Kari Wuhrer), whom he never stopped loving. Before long they're saving the town from a teeming horde of jumbo-size "jumpers," "orb-weavers," tarantulas, and other eight-legged beasties, brought to life by digital effects that are consistently fantastic. Though not quite as witty as the similarly exciting Tremors, this "arach-attack" offers a deft balance of creepy shocks, sight gags, and tongue-in-cheek satire. Cleverly expanding his New Zealand short "Larger Than Life," first-time director Ellory Elkayem gives genre fans and arachnophobes a giddy nightmare they won't soon forget. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker
A throwback to those paranoid after-the-A-bomb flicks of the fifties like "Them" and "The Crawling Eye," this silly movie about giant spiders menacing an Arizona town tries to rework familiar material by treating it in an offhand, sardonic way. Nice try. Still, David Arquette, Kari Wuhrer, and the always sublime Scarlett Johansson deal with the musty genre conventions good-naturedly, and the computer-generated arachnids are reasonably entertaining. -Bruce Diones
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Let the Squishing Begin!
EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS was not well received by the critics and it did poorly at the box office--and frankly I'm surprised. Obviously we're not talking about "deep meanings" in reference to this film, but what it does, it does extremely well: part hommage, part spoof, part horror, part comedy, and all of it a tremendous amount of fun! The film is essentially the classic 1950s "big bug" movie brought up to date and given a comic spin. A truck driver skids on the road and accidentally releases toxic chemicals into a pond; unfortunately, an "exotic spider farm" happens to be nearby, and when the spiders are contaminated by the chemicals they explode into creatures of monstrous proportions, nasty dispositions, and insatiable appetites. Cats, dogs, and even the occasional ostrich goes missing--can human victims be far behind?

The cast plays expertly, and two deserve special mention: Doug E. Doug, who is hilarious as the independent radio station broadcaster obsessed with UFOs, aliens, and government cover-ups, and Eileen Ryan as the chain-smoking, drop-dead-talking Aunt Gladys. But although every one does well with their often-comic characters, the emphasis isn't on the cast: it's on special effects, sight-gags, and a traditional "big bug" plot played at a breakneck speed. It's all smoothly, slickly done, and the special effects are terrific without going into overkill.

Now, the film is rather icky: after all, the spiders jump and bite and slurp, and when the townfolk go after them with everything from guns to pitchforks to chainsaws they also splatter in an appropriately disgusting way. Some viewers will be turned off by the black humor of the piece--particularly as it references the pets that go missing early on in the film. (I admit I winced a bit myself there!) Some viewers may be turned off by the "ick" factor and the violence, of which there is aplenty; others may take issue with the plot itself, which as noted is pretty traditional. But this isn't an Ingmar Bergman or Fellini film we're talking about here, and if you want a modern twist on a classic sci-fi theme, EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS is sure to please. The DVD has several extras, some of which are fun as well. On the whole, I give it four big squishes!

It's fun
This is a fun throwback to the world of monster bug movies...an ode sort-of-speak to the classic movies about giant ants and spiders that eat everyone in sight. Stir in David Arquette and Doug E. Doug for humor, add the sausy Scarlett Johansson for...me...and you have an action spider funny whatchamacallit movie that is worth watching. The humor is high, and the CGI is brilliant despite what some idiot said about "it could have been better" and "there were no shadows"...um...who cares...the spiders looked cool. So, theres toxic crap that mutates the spiders into HUGE monsterous killing machines and they destroy and terrorize this small mining town. Believe me, it's funny. I enjoyed it, if not for the humor and CGI, for the beauty that is Scarlett Johansson! Grrrrrrrr

Larger Than Life
Eight-Legged Freaks was inspired by a short film titled Larger Than Life (included on the disk). It is a tale of a spider museum, crickets that have been exposed to toxic waste, and a dying mining town.

Crickets become toxic, crickets get fed to spider collection, spiders grow escape and terrorize. No other movie has down the swarm of giant spiders as well as this one. The effects are superb, the characters clever, and the action builds and runs non-stop.

Add a prodigal son, a paranoid radio personality, a relationship revisited, greed, corruption and more giant spiders than you could ever dream of and you get a fun and wild film. Despite the subject there is little or no gore even though quite a few characters succumb to the ravenous freaks. Currently the king of giant-spider films. An absolute must see for fans of the genre.