Arachnid

Rating:
Summary: Aww, Look At Those Cuddly, Flesh Burrowing Aliens
Review: After reading the reviews on this movie, I was actually afraid to go out and buy it. Normally, one or two people can be wrong about something, but there usually isn't a general consensus between three to four people without some sort of truth. Still, being a fan of giant insect movies from my younger days (Empire of the Ants in particular), I found myself smitten with the concept of some giant alien spiders and found that it was too much for me to bear. If anything, I hoped beyond hope that the movie was better than the reviews had said, and bought it on impulse one evening. Actually, after watching it with some friends, I, and they, were glad I did.
Thankfully, I dismissed the claims that this movie was a B-movie flop because it turned out to be so much more than that. It seems that people don't appreciate the fact that this type of movie is beautiful in its cheesiness, bringing aspects of gore and black comedy to the table. You had your basic comedic horror ensemble of disposable characters, a plotline that had holes in it but was still entertaining, a nice looking alien spider stalking people in the jungle, and some nice little gore effects that included from things burrowing around and ultimately out of someone's skin.
While its true that this isn't for everyone, it should also be said that you should at least check it out and give it a chance. Giant insects are also welcome at my picnics!

Rating:
Summary: Saturday afternoon matinee should be on double bill
Review: Arachnid is laughable in its earnestness; expectedly bad; and yet remotely watchable.

Chris Potter (TV's Silk Stalkings and Queer as Folk) plays a mercenary of sorts out to help a Mexican doctor find what has been poisoning the locals of a remote island village. The audience is privy to the fact that this poisoning is in reality the venom of a human sized spider of alien origins (in some of the film's most ridiculous scenes), but the cast is not aware of this. Too bad...they may have chosen not to be in the film at all.

The acting is really not horrible, but we're talking C grade actors here. The script, on the other hand, is so heavy handed and hammy that you won't need to eat for weeks. Ridiculous situations follow ridiculous situations and dialogue. You begin to wonder how these amazingly stupid people even dress themselves. It's not the worst script I've ever seen shot as a film, but is that really something to aspire to, anyway?

Further troubling were the think accents of the Spanish-speaking cast members. I speak Spanish and I speak English, but I can't figure out mumbled English with a heavy Spanish accent. Luckily I was able to turn on subtitles and read what the characters were saying. I left the subtitles on, because it gave me a distraction from the poor script.

As to the production values - I was surprised. Technically, this is a fine film. The lighting is good, as is the sound, effects (for this budget movie), and the costumes. It's a shame that someone churned out a lousy movie from a poor script that really didn't need to be filmed. But I suppose such films keep out of work actors off the street........

Rating:
Summary: Pardon me if I am among few Voices of Cheer, *but* ......
Review: ARACHNID is your basic Big Bug movie that picks off its victims one by one until the very last one, usually the Handsome Young Scientist (Chris Potter) somehow saves the day. This movie's basic premise is such a mess that not even some fairly interesting special effects can compensate. A Stealth pilot chases what seems to be a semi-transparent UFO that flew inexplicably out of a waterspout. His plane crashes and he bails out to land on a tropical island. Now this is weird enough but when he explores the island, he sees what is the ET-like pilot of that UFO, who is promptly killed by a huge spider. At this point, the audience does not know, and soon will not care, whether this is a UFO or Big Bug movie. Soon an airplane crashlands on the island. The passengers are a mixed bag of native islanders, good-looking women, a geeky entomologist (who has a great scene in which he is caught in a spider's cocoon and can still take the time to pontificate on the minutiae of his predicament) and assorted gun-toting guards.
ARACHNID goes seriously astray when it hovers between one kind of film and another. Eventually, it devolves into your standard thing-versus-victims movie. The only actor of note is Chris Potter, who had a minor reputation as the son of Kwai Chang Caine in television's KUNGU FU: THE NEXT GENERATION. Apparently, the call for his modest acting talents was barely sufficient for him as the dashing lead. You can easily skip this movie since there is nothing here that you had not seen done better in dozens of Grade Z monster pics.

Rating:
Summary: Arachnid: A Twisted Web of Illogic
Review: ARACHNID is your basic Big Bug movie that picks off its victims one by one until the very last one, usually the Handsome Young Scientist (Chris Potter) somehow saves the day. This movie's basic premise is such a mess that not even some fairly interesting special effects can compensate. A Stealth pilot chases what seems to be a semi-transparent UFO that flew inexplicably out of a waterspout. His plane crashes and he bails out to land on a tropical island. Now this is weird enough but when he explores the island, he sees what is the ET-like pilot of that UFO, who is promptly killed by a huge spider. At this point, the audience does not know, and soon will not care, whether this is a UFO or Big Bug movie. Soon an airplane crashlands on the island. The passengers are a mixed bag of native islanders, good-looking women, a geeky entomologist (who has a great scene in which he is caught in a spider's cocoon and can still take the time to pontificate on the minutiae of his predicament) and assorted gun-toting guards.
ARACHNID goes seriously astray when it hovers between one kind of film and another. Eventually, it devolves into your standard thing-versus-victims movie. The only actor of note is Chris Potter, who had a minor reputation as the son of Kwai Chang Caine in television's KUNGU FU: THE NEXT GENERATION. Apparently, the call for his modest acting talents was barely sufficient for him as the dashing lead. You can easily skip this movie since there is nothing here that you had not seen done better in dozens of Grade Z monster pics.

Rating:
Summary: Pardon me if I am among few Voices of Cheer, *but* ......
Review: Come on now, folks !! [ NO guys, *not* (quite) in the way the Better of Us CAN in Good Conscience hit on especially lovely, quality girls !! ] This IS, y' know, what IS, in the vernacular, a "campy" movie, *not* Schindler's List, right ? Right !! That establishes the groundwork, for instance, for a Gorgeous Woman to plunge up to her Buxom Assets into a Black, Stinky, Goo, feeling **something** frighteningly knawing on her boot. Thus, in The True Tradition of all Combination Superchick / Damsels in Distress, our honey not only hollers for extrication from her peril, but suffers stuck to her Hero in her Already Revealing Shirt by Sticky "Spider Silk". ( Can _you_ say, Toby McGuire and Kirsten Dunst ?? ) In short, We Men have a Nice LONG Look at her loveliness in her Nice White Brassiere !! Works for Me !! Last word, please: there *are* those movies that are meant *not* to be taken so seriously ... where we are to Leave Our Cerebellums Behind ... and Yield To The Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

Rating:
Summary: Pardon me if I am among few Voices of Cheer, *but* ......
Review: Come on now, folks !! [ NO guys, *not* (quite) in the way the Better of Us CAN in Good Conscience hit on especially lovely, quality girls !! ] This IS, y' know, what IS, in the vernacular, a "campy" movie, *not* Schindler's List, right ? Right !! That establishes the groundwork, for instance, for a Gorgeous Woman to plunge up to her Buxom Assets into a Black, Stinky, Goo, feeling **something** frighteningly knawing on her boot. Thus, in The True Tradition of all Combination Superchick / Damsels in Distress, our honey not only hollers for extrication from her peril, but suffers stuck to her Hero in her Already Revealing Shirt by Sticky "Spider Silk". ( Can _you_ say, Toby McGuire and Kirsten Dunst ?? ) In short, We Men have a Nice LONG Look at her loveliness in her Nice White Brassiere !! Works for Me !! Last word, please: there *are* those movies that are meant *not* to be taken so seriously ... where we are to Leave Our Cerebellums Behind ... and Yield To The Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad Giant spider movie !
Review: First of all, you have to remind yourself that this is a low budget movie from independent company. I think it is Spanish-Canadian joint production. But it is directed by Jack Sholder who has directed several A Hollymood movie (including Nightmare on elm street 2, The Hidden, and Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips action movie Renegades) so the action of this movie is not bad at all. The actors are all virtually unknown but overall the performances are not bad.

The story about an alien spaceship that landed on remote island somewhere in the pacific. Shortly after that, a stealth jet crashed near the island and report of the locals infected by incurable disease. So a team of scientists are headed to the island to see what the problem is and guess what is waiting for them ... Giant Alien Spider.

The DVD is in fullscreen with only a few trailers to go along with it but the picture is quite bright and clear and The 5.1 surround sound actually is very good as the jungle comes alive with all the insect noises all around your surround speaker.

Overall, this DVD worth at least a rental and if you could get one real cheap, I would recommend you to go for it.

Rating:
Summary: "Such a peculiar mutation has never been on record."
Review: For as much trouble as I went through to watch Arachnid (2001), I really can't say it was worth it...let me explain...I ordered the DVD from Amazon a few weeks ago, and finally got around to watching it, only to discover the encoding was all messed up. I notified Amazon, and they promptly sent a replacement (free of charge), which I received last night...at least the customer service was good...if not the movie itself...the film, directed by Jack Sholder, who showed promise way back with his 1987 film The Hidden, but has yet to impress me with any subsequent releases, stars Chris Potter (whom I had a hard time placing, until I remembered he starred, along with David Carradine, in the short lived TV show Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. Also appearing in the film is Alex Reid, in her first feature role, Ravil Issyanov (he also appeared in the wretched 2000 film Octopus), and a handful of Hispanic actors I didn't recognize (the film was produced in Mexico and Spain). One of the main reason I was interested in seeing this movie was due to the fact Brian Yunza (Re-Animator, Return of the Living Dead III, Dagon) is listed as a producer, and his work is usually entertaining.

As the film begins, we witness a CGI (computer generated image) stealth fighter zipping along, intercepting a worse looking CGI flying object, to which they collide, both crashing into the South American jungle. What this has to do with the rest of the film isn't revealed for a while, and then when it is, it's pretty vague. Anyway, this leads into a plot about an expedition into the jungle to aid and investigate a remote village suffering from odd and deadly ailments received from bites from unknown sources. Handling the security for the team is Valentine (Potter), an ex-marine, now more or less mercenary for hire. The group contracts a local pilot named Mercer (played by Reid, who, incidentally, looks a lot like 80's teen pop star Tiffany), and she seems more than willing to take the job, and we find out later she had her reasons. The group flies, and then crashes (good piloting, Mercer) to the area in question, and while there are no natives about, they are most certainly not alone (you're never alone in the jungle, but in this case there's all kinds of creepy mutations running around). Soon the team, who were on a mission of mercy and discovery, find themselves in a struggle to survive, and being picked off one by one by the very thing they came to investigate. What's the true nature of the hideous menace that's over taken the jungle? I'll give you a hint...it's big, hairy, has eight legs, and likes to spin webs...

Arachnid was an okay film, despite some huge flaws, two of the largest being the plot and the dialogue. The film was written by Mark Sevi, a person who seems to specialize in capitalizing off the ideas of others as most of his prior work consists of rotten sequels to so-so films, including Ghoulies IV (1994), Class of 1999 II: The Substitute (1994), Dream a Little Dream 2 (1995) and so on...the plot has little direction (seriously, it's all over the place, and is full of vagaries as to annoy without end), and the dialogue is pretty much the pits, creating some really insipid characters (one of them, a native guide, is actually named Toe Boy...might as well have called him Toe Jam), wasting the talents of some of the actors involved. Potter, as the character Mercer, does alright, as do many of the actors here (the Spanish actor who played the older doctor had an accent so thick I rarely understood what he was saying, but it didn't really matter as his character was presented as such a jerkhole you know he's going to get kakked), but their characters are pathetic. Seriously, I wouldn't hire Mercer to lead a Girl Scout troop...he had absolutely no control over the team he was supposed to be in charge of, and they would often wander off, for whatever reason, allowing for various killings to take place. Also, how in the heck are you going to run out of ammunition after going through one clip? Packing lightly is usually a good thing, but if you're going to bother bringing some heavy ordinance, at least pack a few extra clips moron. My favorite bad scene is when he's firing on a creature, runs of out of ammo, picks up a machete and charges the giant beast, running right into the line of fire of the others in his party. This guy wouldn't have lasted a minute in the real military...the weakest performance was by Reid (clad similarly to Angelina Jolie's character from the film Tomb Raider), especially during her `emotional' scenes...but since this was her first film, I'm willing to cut her some slack (I would have been willing to cut her a whole lot more if she popped her top). There's no nekkidness, but lots of sweaty cleavage. The special effects were actually decent, especially that large, eight-legged beastie. There's a bit more gore than I would have thought (gratuitous puking, exploding eyeballs), but it's limited to a few sequences, so if you're a fan of that sort of thing, you may find your patience rewarded. All in all the film suffers from a weak and predictable (can you guess all the characters who won't make it to the end of the film? I did...) plot, and inherently lame dialog, but features passable acting, and decent special effects. It's worth a look if you like bug films, but you'd be better off checking out Spiders (2000), or Eight Legged Freaks (2002) first.

The wide screen picture (1.85:1) looks from Lions Gate Entertainment looks good, with decent Dolby Digital 5.0 audio. Special features include trailers for this film, and two others including Risk (2000), and Spiders (2000).

Cookieman108


Rating:
Summary: This web ain't getting any wider . . .
Review: I don't know if its just me, but it seems the past couple of months have been BIG-BUG movie crazy. What with SPIDERS, EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS and THEY NEST, B-Movie producers have jumped on the creature feature bandwagon with a vengeance. Now, comes ARACHNID.

Produced by the great Brian Yuzna (he, responsible for the classic RE-ANIMATOR and SOCIETY) and directed by Jack Sholder, this movie had potential. On a good day, Jack Sholder can deliver the goods with gems like THE HIDDEN, but on a bad day just witness the king-stinkers that are WISHMASTER 2 and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2. Unfortuanately, for the producers of ARACHNID, Mr. Sholder was having a really bad day when he was filming this one. For all of the movies good intentions, it ultimately fails to deliver on any level ' it isn't cheesy enough, fun or scary ' just dull.

The story is simple. A viral outbreak on a remote island brings together a team of doctors, soldiers, etc to investigate. The main culprit is a probable spider bite from a previously unkown form of arachnid. Unkown to them, but shown to us in the opening reel, the actual arachnid is an alien being that has crash landed on earth. Thrown into the mix is hard as nails pilot Alex Reid who has a secret (haven't they all?) and Chris Potter as the Indiana Jones-esque hero of the piece, who quite shockingly takes a shine to the spunky Reid. Together, they fight their way through 90 minutes of tedium. Most of the cast show up to become either covered in spider webs or just dragged into the jungle by an assortment of Steve Johnson effects work (which is quite effective on what is obviously a low budget). Infact, the actual main spider of the title is excellent ' a cross between Johnson's own SIL design from SPECIES and a Starship Trooper bug. The problems arise when the arachnid is asked to move around and attack. The jerky movements come across as lumbering and awkward ' as it ultimately becomes as menacing as a paper bag.

The direction is lifeless and lacks energy. This kind of film needed to be fast moving, funny and self aware. Instead, we get a dull ALIENS retread with stock characters (The tough female. The foul-mouthed commando. The expert who meets his fate at the hands of the creature he so admires. The dashing hero who . . etc.) and played out scenarios that put the cast in stupid situations. It really is a big shame, as the talent behind the camera is excellent (and in front ' all of the cast are very good), its just that the finished product resembles another in the long line of creature-amok films that clog up video stores everywhere. Am I missing something? That wasn't the point, was it?

The disc (this refers to the UK Mosaic Movies release ' I'm not sure what the US disc offers) adds a trailer and a boring photo gallery. (Gee, thanks for the extras!). The picture is fine, with sharp cinematography adding an expensive look to the movie. Infact, all-in-all, ARACHNID is an okay time-waster with nothing special or inventive up its sleeve ' just a well filmed, nicely polished flick with above average anamatronic effects. If you like big monster movies, then maybe give it a whirl. It's not too bad ' just frustratingly average.

Rating:
Summary: Schlock fans might enjoy.
Review: I was in a schlocky mood last night, so I decided to catch Arachnid, which had a premise that sounded like schlocky fun. Well, I was about right. The movie's never really suspenseful or exciting, but it has enough icky moments and man vs. spider action to make it a watchable timewaster.

The story is about as silly as you'd expect, with a stealth fighter crashing into a spaceship, which crashlands on a small island. We actually get a brief glimpse at an alien that flickers in and out of transparency. Then it's killed by a giant spider. What the movie never makes clear is the spider's origin. Was it mutated by the spacecraft crash somehow, or was it on board the ship and was freed by the crash? Anyway, an expedition is formed to investigate a virus that came from that island. As a precaution, lots of guns are brought along, and you can sort of guess what happens from there.

I've always had a soft spot for horror films set on desolated jungle islands (Zombie, anyone?), so it's natural my curiosity would get the best of me with this film eventually. Arachnid was about on par with my expectations; basically, the story, acting, and direction are mostly second-rate, but the movie is sometimes enjoyable if you're in the right B-movie mood. And to director Jack Sholder's credit, he does try to use the island setting to as much of his advantage as possible.

The action scenes are pretty standard, which is a little surprising considering this is helmed by the man who gave us The Hidden, which had some fine action sequences. There's a lot of running around, getting stuck in webbing, and a few gun battles, but nothing spectacular by a long shot.

The effects are surprisingly not bad for a straight-to-video release. The giant spider is somewhat convincing, even if it only makes basic movements. Most of the effects appear animatronic, and I don't really recall much in the way of the CGI, barring the opening, of course.

The performances are nothing very notable, with Alex Reid coming off extremely annoying as the cocky pilot. Looking at the way she's dressed, it's obvious the filmmakers were aiming for some Tomb Raider parallels. Personally, I would have switched lead roles between her and Neus Asensi, who delivers a much better performance, and it doesn't hurt that she's hot, as well. Probably the only other actor worthy of note is Rasil Isyanov as a spider expert.

Arachnid is pretty much by-the-book. You know what you're getting if you actually decide to watch it, so to be disappointed by anything less would be rather foolish. Hey, the movie turned out to be slightly better (or a better way to put it would be more enjoyable) than I thought it would be.