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If, like me, you were wondering what the director of Big Ass Spider did next, then wonder no more. He rounded up half the cast of Police Academy and put them in a giant spider movie called Lavalantula.
Well, why not? You’re looking at the guy who has the Blue Oyster theme tune as his ringtone (although it’s permanently on silent). I’m in.
Lavalantula is the highest concept giant spider movie so far: giant spiders from the centre of the earth that are made of lava, sort of. It isn’t clear what their exoskeleton is made of, only that it is hard and face-meltingly hot (literally). But they definitely have lava inside them because one of their attacks involves spitting it at people and melting their faces.
They also jump on people and incinerate them with their body heat, like Kathleen Turner in the 80s. The special effects are good and the spiders pose a credible threat to our heroes. What should be a ridiculous joke of a monster turns out to be pretty badass.
This is almost certainly an accident because nothing else is taken seriously. Lavalantula is a SyFy channel movie after all, the home of jokey high concept monster movies.
Puntastic portmanteau punchlines
Lavalantula features a cameo by none other than Ian Ziering of Beverly Hills 90210 fame, if you were born in the last century. More recently, he starred in the Sharknado movies, which feature tornadoes full of sharks. He runs into Lavalantula’s hero, Colton West, and says ‘I’d love to help, but I’ve got shark problems.’ This suggests that Lavalantula shares a universe with the Sharknado films.
You could dismiss it as a throwaway in-joke (both movies were made by the SyFy channel) or you could consider it a seminal moment in giant spider movie history. I’ve been joking for a while about a potential Spider Cinematic Universe Multiverse (SCUM), and here it is, maybe.
If that’s true, do I now need to review the Sharknado films? Or do I go even further and review ALL shark movies? If I did, it would be The Lord of the Rings compared to giant spiderdom’s The Hobbit. I took a tentative look and found at least 100 shark movies. A minority of them take the subject matter seriously, but most are puntastic portmanteau punchlines like Sharknado.
Every time I thought I had found the most ludicrous title imaginable, another one came along to blow it out of the water (pun not intended, but I’ll take it). Here is my top 15 (these are all real films):
We interrupt our regular programming to talk about shark movies
Sharktopus vs Whalewolf (a shark/octopus hybrid actually makes some kind of sense when you compare it to the hybrid of a killer whale and a wolf)
Sand sharks (sharks that can swim through sand)
Shark Exorcist (shark possessed by the devil)
Toxic shark (shark gaslights you and doesn’t call you back for days, probably)
Sharkula (it’s a vampire. It’s got the teeth and everything)
Sharks of the corn (sharks in a corn field. Stephen King’s going to sue somebody)
House shark (is that the one with Goldie Hawn?)
Invisible shark (exactly what you think. Saves money on the special effects budget at least)
Nazi sharks (let’s face it, Nazis had to turn up at some point)
Sky sharks (flying sharks. Created by Nazis. Ridden by…also Nazis)
Shark Babes (featuring busty babes. And sharks)
Ghost shark (it’s a ghost)
Roboshark (it’s a robot, but I doubt it serves the public trust, protects the innocent and upholds the law)
Sharkenstein (it’s Frankenstein)
Shark Side of the moon (sharks in a Pink Floyd tribute band, probably)
You get the idea. I was going to end this segment with a ‘where is my Space Sharks movie?’ joke but I looked it up and yes, it exists. Next, I considered a ‘where is my time travelling sharks movie?’ joke, but that was the plot of the last Sharknado film.
I give up. Shark movies have jumped the shark. I can’t make any bigger jokes than the producers have already made, so I can officially announce that I won’t be writing about sharks any time soon.
Jingle all the Way
I’m glad that the coke-addled movie executives who greenlight this stuff haven’t abused spiders as much as sharks in recent years. Lavalantula received a single sequel, but thankfully we have been spared that Giant Tarantula vs Mega Hawk Wasp movie that I light-heartedly suggested in my Tarantula review. You can take the joke too far.
I still want my giant spider soapbox racing movie though. Call me, Hollywood.
In Lavalantula, Colton West is played by Steve Guttenberg from Police Academy. Colton is a fading movie star who was popular in the 90s but isn’t doing so well now. This is quite the acting stretch for Steve Guttenberg. I’m not sure how he managed to get into that head space.
Colton’s most famous role was a superhero called ‘Red Rocket’ where he wore a red jumpsuit, helmet and jet pack. And yes, he puts it on to fight the queen spider at the end. And yes, the jet pack is fully functional. This movie is Jingle all the Way but with spiders instead of that Sinbad guy.
Colton has a recurring catchphrase in his movies. No, not ‘it’s turbo time,’ but ‘nice…*something*.’ For example, he says ‘nice nose’ before punching someone in the nose. I was waiting for him to say it in real life (well not REAL life, but Colton’s real life, which is still fiction).
He eventually does at the end, saying ‘nice mouth’ before dropping a bomb into the queen spider’s mouth, but it’s a bit weak. He could have said ‘nice legs’ before shooting off her leg, or ‘nice ass’ before firing a rocket launcher up her ass.
Spider time
Colton has been reduced to making cameo appearances in giant cockroach movies, which he considers to be beneath him. The crew of the cockroach movie includes Michael Winslow from Police Academy (the human sound effects guy, and yes, he does sound effects in this) and Marion Ramsey from Police Academy (the timid one who occasionally screams into a megaphone).
Colton has been on the set of the cockroach movie for 16 hours but bails because he has to take his son Wyatt to the big baseball game, which gets him fired. But he gets stuck in traffic and lets his son down anyway.
It’s Jingle all the Way again: a workaholic dad who disappoints his son even though he doesn’t mean to and spends the rest of the movie trying to make up for it.
The difference here is that Wyatt isn’t six years old. He’s meant to be a teenager but looks old enough to play a teenager in Stranger Things. The trope doesn’t really work when the kid is old enough to take himself to the damn game.
Pictured: a “teenager”
While Colton is stuck on the freeway, an earthquake hits and the nearby mountain explodes. Fire, lava and sizeable spiders made of lava rain down. He escapes in his car and makes it home to warn his wife, Olivia.
I don’t know who won the Oscar for best supporting actor in 2015, but it should have been Olivia’s sports bra, which is at least three sizes too small and puts in an absolute shift to contain her, um, modesty.
Breast Off
Wyatt has gone into town on his BMX, which doesn’t make him look any younger. He meets up with his friends to do wheelies and stuff.
Colton searches for Wyatt while Olivia checks up on her neighbour Doris, played by Leslie Easterbrook from Police Academy (the one with the huge, um, modesty). I thought there might be a ‘breast off’ with Olivia but sadly it’s not to be as Doris gets her face melted by a lavalantula. A missed opportunity.
Nice…plant
While en route to Wyatt, Colton encounters a pool of lava in the road. The heat pops his tyres so he hijacks a tour bus. The passengers know who he is and think he’s putting on a performance piece until two giant spiders attack the bus.
Colton shoots one with his shotgun while shouting ‘no fare, no ride.’ He understands the importance of dunking on his victims with one-liners before killing them. A definite improvement on the ‘nice…’ catchphrase.
He dispatches the second spider with the old ‘brake suddenly to send it flying it off the front, accelerate and crush it’ routine. Colton is a pro, as he repeatedly says in this movie. Movie tropes are his specialty.
Spiderlings return
Another pool of lava emerges where Wyatt and the BMX bandits are hanging out. It seems like there might be a love triangle subplot, as both Wyatt and his friend Travis like Jordan, the sole girl of the group. However, after Jordan is nearly pulled into the lava by lavalantulas, one of them bites her on the leg.
The bite looks minor, but as we all know, movie bites are never incidental. Like movie nosebleeds or movie coughs, they are always terminal. ALWAYS.
They take shelter in a warehouse. Jordan complains about her leg a lot until the inevitable happens: hundreds of spiderlings (aww, cute) crawl out of her mouth and she turns into Ghostrider, burning up from the inside.
The effects could be better, but it is one of the best scenes in the movie. The same spiderlings crawl all over Travis and he too burns up. The only thing that ends up half-baked is the love triangle subplot.
Wyatt fights the spiders off with a fire extinguisher but doesn’t once say ‘cool off’ or ‘chill out’ as he sprays them. Has Colton taught him nothing? He really is a bad father.
Time Gladiator and Cyborg Ninja
Meanwhile, Olivia and her sports bra are sheltering at home when a lavalantula drops down the chimney. The old ‘spider down the chimney’ trope has become one of my favourite giant spider movie traditions (movie count: 4).
When Olivia hears it coming, she does the sensible thing and turns on the fire. How was she to know that the spider is made of literal lava?
Olivia fights off the spider with a succession of props from Colton’s movies that are hanging on the wall: a sword, a shield, ninja stars and a shotgun, the latter of which is real (and loaded of course).
Nice…poker
Next to the weapons are posters of the movies they originated from: Thorn of the Viking, Time Gladiator, Cyborg Ninja and The Executioner. I appreciate the effort that went into mocking these up and also I want to watch them. Get on it, SyFy. This shit is your bread and butter.
A platoon of soldiers arrives to evacuate the residents, probably because this is Beverly Hills and rich people get all the breaks. Olivia puts on a sensible top and looks badass with her shotgun and a bandolier of shells slung over her shoulder. But when she gets into the army truck, she’s unarmed.
She gives away her only means of defence, which is stupid. However, it saves her life because when lavalantulas ambush the truck, everyone with a gun makes a stand and gets killed.
Olivia survives because she has to hide under a fire blanket. However, when a lavalantula starts poking holes in the fire blanket, she shoots it with a handgun that she didn’t have before. It was probably just lying around – it’s America!
Mayan origins, my ass
Colton’s bus explodes on Hollywood boulevard. A fresh earthquake opens up a crack in the road and out spill those pesky lavalantulas. Colton escapes with superfan Chris, and a Captain Jack Sparrow impersonator called Dave.
Just sit on the damn seat
They end up at a museum near La Brea tar pits, where they meet the obligatory ‘scientist who knows everything TM,’ Dr Eric Von Struble. Proper scientist name, well done.
Dr Struble has been mapping a network of lava tunnels that the spiders use to travel around the city. It’s like the London Underground, only not as hot. According to him, the Mayans had a word for the monsters: lavalantula.
And to that I say: no they fucking didn’t.
I hate to get picky, but ‘Lavalantula’ is a portmanteau of the words ‘lava’ and ‘tarantula,’ both of which originate from Latin, and the Mayans sure didn’t speak Latin. They may have lived in Latin America, but it wasn’t called that back then.
Dr Struble identifies the spider queen’s chamber, which is the largest of the chasms in the lava network (Queen’s Cross St Pancras?).
Dr Struble also refers to the queen as the mommalantula. Is that Mayan too? Oh, and if you kill the queen, guess what happens? That’s right, all the other spiders die somehow. The ‘kill the queen, kill them all’ trope is back!*
*In real life, spiders don’t have queens. All female spiders are reproductive. I accept that accuracy isn’t the top priority here, but it is an interesting piece of trivia that I thought I would share. Even if spiders did have queens, the idea that killing the queen kills them all is still stupid.
Mammoth mammoth
It’s not clear why Dr Struble explains all this to Colton and co. They aren’t authority figures, just regular shmoes, and one of them is dressed like a pirate. I reckon he’s lonely and feels grateful to have someone to share his findings with.
Spiders invade the museum incinerate captain Dave. I like that the spiders go after the skeleton of a mammoth, apparently not realising it has been dead for ten thousand years. Perhaps they are ancient enemies. What if lavalantulas caused mammoths to go extinct? I smell a prequel coming on (sorry, I shouldn’t encourage them).
Colton fights off a Big Daddy sized lavalantula with a mammoth tusk (that being the tusk of a mammoth, not a tusk that is mammoth. I’m using it as a noun, not an adjective. I am describing the source of the tusk, not its size, although if I was describing its size, mammoth would also be appropriate. It’s a mammoth mammoth tusk).
This is Guttenberg’s actual schlong
Anyway, not once does Big Daddy spit lava at him, despite numerous opportunities. The plot armour is strong with this one.
It’s turbo time
After escaping the museum, Dr Struble and Chris are rescued and play no further part in the movie. Colton remains behind. Olivia arrives in an army truck and they rescue Wyatt.
Wyatt asks Olivia why she has a military truck and Colton replies ‘you know your mum. She likes everything big.’ She looks at Colton’s crotch and says ‘yes I do.’
I believe this is a reference to the time Steve Guttenberg boasted on a radio show that he possessed a ten-inch todger. You didn’t need to know this, but now you do. You’re welcome.
For the finale, Colton enlists his Police Academy chums to set off explosives at the lava holes to force the queen to the surface. The Big Ass queen emerges for a final showdown, so as well as the queen trope we also have the queen alien trope in the same movie.
Spiders usually have eight eyes, but the queen only has two large ones. Somehow it makes her look even more freaky, thus proving that sometimes sacrificing accuracy for the sake of the movie can be effective.
Colton dons his Turbo Man outfit and takes to the skies to defy physics and kill the queen, thus proving that sometimes sacrificing accuracy for the sake of the movie isn’t effective.
Final note: this is the only giant spider movie so far to achieve the full house: all five stages of my recently completed sizeable spider sizing system are represented on screen at some point in the movie. To mark the occasion, here’s a trophy I made.
Rating: 5 spider legs out of 8
The post Giant Spider Movie Review: LAVALANTULA (2015) appeared first on Last Movie Outpost.
