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Fire up the smoke machine and cue the pyrotechnics, because the giant spider phenomenon finally has its entrance theme. And here it is:
This seminal anthem is called The Giant Spider by The Night Hobs, from the movie The Giant Spider, which features a giant spider.
The Giant Spider is ultralow budget but made with care. Creator Christopher R. Mihm put enough effort into it to include a bespoke theme song. I don’t remember Eight Legged Freaks doing that, and they had Hollywood money. Shame on them!
The Giant Spider pays tribute to the classic giant spider movies of the 1950s, particularly Tarantula (1955) and Earth vs the Spider (1958). It is part spoof, part homage and features some decent old school special effects of a real tarantula superimposed on the screen.
The movie was made in 2013 but set in 1955, filmed in black-and-white with a hint of artificial graining on the film. It doesn’t quite work because the image still seems too clean and crisp to me.
I realise that’s a strange complaint in a world where the quest for ever-higher definition seems to be the goal, but I like grit. It lends authenticity. I want to feel like I’m watching a movie, not looking out the window.
In-Jokes
The Giant Spider starts with a boy playing in the woods. He sees a giant tarantula wandering around, as you do. He tells his mother and invents his own sizeable spider sizing system on the spot, using barns as the base unit.
Personally, I think a barn is too big for a base unit, but I’m going to give the kid a break. He’s new to this, and he’s got the spirit. This spider is three barns big, according to him.
Give or take a barn or two
After some initial scepticism, his mother believes him because the spider has emerged from the local cave system. The caves are known to be radioactive due to underground Government nuclear tests.
Christopher R. Mihm had already released several loosely connected movies featuring monsters emerging from these caves. Inspired by 1950s drive-in cinema, these movies have been dubbed the ‘Mihmverse.’ I haven’t watched any of the others, but they are referenced heavily.
You may be wondering how I know they are referenced if I haven’t watched them. Well, there are many in-jokes that I didn’t get but still knew were in-jokes somehow. Call it instinct – people tend to know when they’ve been excluded. Plus, I checked on IMDB, just in case my paranoia was playing up again.
My point is that in this movie universe, the caves are already notorious, so the idea of a giant spider emerging from them isn’t as ridiculous to them as it might be to you or me.
Paddle Girls
We cut to four ‘paddle girls’ in the woods, who talk about supporting their husbands while they fight crime on the local lake. It’s never made clear who their husbands are and what they do exactly. It sounds like the lake police (the town is called Phantom Lake) but we never see them. I’m guessing they feature in one of the earlier movies.
The paddle girls wear girl scout type uniforms that have ‘Paddle Girls’ badges on the front. I had no idea what a paddle girl was, but I assumed it was a well-known American institution, so I made the mistake of Googling it.
Long story short: I still have no idea what paddle girls are, and I have a lot of explaining to do to my wife.
When the spider approaches, it makes a distinctive whirring sound that reminded me of UFOs from classic sci-fi movies. The three paddle girl trainees run away without warning their instructor, who has her back to the spider (this will be a common theme in the movie).
When the instructor finally senses the spider, it roars at her like King Kong. The close-up puppet has only two eyes (spiders usually have eight), big pointy teeth and fangs. I can totally buy this as a 1950s design. Also, the eyeballs move, which is a nice touch.
Another revived 1950s trope involves the victims reacting to the monster by looking up at the camera and screaming rather than running, and that’s what we get here too. These guys know their stuff.
Lone Pine Ranch
The main character is a reporter named Howard Johnson. He asks his girlfriend Zita to marry him as they sit in a malt shop.
Nothing is more representative of 1950s USA than a malt shop. It’s a shame that the set is sparce and you can’t feel the vibe. They don’t even have a jukebox.
Like most of the dialogue scenes in The Giant Spider, it is overlong and not as funny as it thinks it is. But I like the story Howard tells Zita about Old Man Peabody, who owns Twin Pines Ranch. An alien spaceship disguised as a car destroyed one of his pines, so it now will be called Lone Pine Ranch.
If this story sounds familiar to you, it’s because these events feature in Back to the Future. This is how I know the movie is set in 1955.
If you want to get really nerdy (and who wouldn’t?), Marty McFly travels back to November 5th 1955, which means this movie takes place shortly after that date. However, it seems like summer. The corn fields haven’t been harvested yet and one character mentions it being the dry season. I’m no meteorologist, but I believe that’s code for summer.
So the dates don’t quite check out, but 1955 still feels right because that was the year Tarantula, the original giant spider movie, was released. I’ll allow it.
Doctor Sweet Cheeks
My favourite scene features an unhappily married couple searching for their kid in the woods. She’s a nag, but not literally. She’s not a horse, is what I mean, but she sure whinnies at her husband a lot.
Her husband is a hen-pecked chicken, but not literally. He’s not poultry. He’s just a guy who gets whined at a lot. My point is that they are both people, but they are looking for their kid, who is a goat. Really.
When they find the goat, the husband sees the giant spider but doesn’t say anything to his wife, who has her back to it. It makes sense this time because he wants it to eat her. And it does.
We see the conflicting expressions on his face as he watches, and it’s well acted. Also, the goat lives. Happy endings all round.
We then meet not one but three obligatory scientists in white coats. They meet with General Castle, the obligatory gruff-voiced, cigar chomping army officer, to warn him about the spider.
Castle is a complete dick and a sexist dinosaur who calls the female doctor ‘Doctor Sweet Cheeks.’ Toxic army officers are a well-worn trope in giant spider movies, but it tends to be a modern phenomenon.
1950s movie army officers were sincere and professional, so this guy seems out of place. He’s a caricature of what some people must assume 1950s men were like without giving it much thought. But I suppose every monster movie needs a human antagonist (except Tremors, because it’s awesome and dares to be different).
Stranded At The Drive-In
I must mention the moment when Dr Sweet Cheeks gets subtle revenge on General Castle. When he calls the spider an insect, she corrects him and says it’s an arachnid.
Characters referring to spiders as insects is surprisingly common in giant spider movies. I have dubbed it the ‘noob alert’ trope. This is the first time I have seen it called out onscreen, and it’s good to see. Accuracy matters, guys.
Howard and his assistant Joe join the meeting, much to General Castle’s annoyance. But Howard starts going on about America and freedom and stuff (you know what they’re like), so they let him stay.
They plot the spider’s movements on a map and it makes a perfectly straight line, but Howard still needs the trend explained to him.
The spider is heading for town but will pass a drive-in movie theatre on the way, as well as a barn where Zita is setting up a barn dance. I guess we’re about to put that barn-based giant spider sizing system to the test.
The spider arrives at the drive-in and the people open their car doors and run away rather than, you know, driving away in their cars.
A kissing couple in an open-top car just carry on necking and the spider doesn’t even bother them, which is cool of him I thought. The only deaths are two soapbox preachers who are protesting the drive-in because they think movies are the work of the devil. Boo! But also, they might be right. I’ve seen Barbie.
Aliens
Howard and Joe head to the barn dance and tell them to leave. Howard is understandably vague on the specific threat because he knows they won’t believe him. When they force him to tell them, they don’t believe him.
His solution: say it’s aliens instead. They scarper immediately. I believe an alien invasion happened in an earlier movie in the series, so it might be due to that, but even without that knowledge it works as a joke. Those dumb hicks!
The spider sneaks up on Joe, who was waiting outside the barn, looking out for it. There is simply no excuse for such poor observation skills. This is a three barn spider we’re talking about!
Oh, there it is…
Although I must say that while the spider is certainly bigger than one barn, it doesn’t reach triple barn territory. The kid was exaggerating.
Howard and Zita escape on a motorbike. The army launches an attack on the spider to stop it before it reaches town. We are treated to a few minutes of grainy stock war footage, probably Vietnam, that’s meant to represent the army attacking the spider.
You could argue that the contrast is supposed to be jarring, but I’m not totally convinced. I suspect the primary reason is budgetary, but they can always fall back on the ‘duh, it’s a spoof!’ argument if anyone criticises it.
Occasionally we cut to the spider, who is still unharmed. Strangely, it isn’t the asshole General but the scientists who suggest extreme alternatives. You know what that means: nuke time!
Weirdly, the general doesn’t go for it. Army officers in giant spider movies are always keen on using nukes as a first resort, but common sense prevails for once.
Domestic Abuse, Except Funny!
The scientists also consider pesticides (like in Earth vs the Spider) and napalm (like in Tarantula) before finally settling on electricity (also Earth vs the Spider).
Excellent choice, but did you consider letting it die of old age? Sorry, I just realised I made a reference to a giant spider movie that I haven’t even reviewed yet. But yes, there exists a giant spider movie where the spider dies of old age. Maybe I’ll do that one next.
Howard agrees to be the bait. The scientists provide him with a giant cotton bud (or Q-tip, if you are American) soaked in spider pheromones. Did they just have spider pheromones lying around in a jar somewhere?
Anyway, the plan is to get the spider horny and hope it makes stupid decisions like trying to hump an electrical substation. The spider’s gender is never stated, but the plan works, so it’s male.
Pictured: a very important meeting
Zita doesn’t want Howard to go because they have just got engaged and he might die. It’s understandable, but he’s a man of action. He doesn’t have time for her whining, so he slaps her around the face to calm her down.
It’s okay, it’s the fifties! She instantly calms down, kisses him and melts into his arms.
I’m not condoning it; I just think it’s funny. Wait, that came out wrong. Domestic violence is never funny, but that’s not what this is. Not exactly.
It’s a parody, and he’s the hero, not a violent abuser. It’s a ‘pull yourself together’ attitude adjuster, that’s all. I’m still not condoning it, by the way. What I mean is I’m digging myself a hole and I need to abandon this paragraph right now.
Unexpected Sting
Howard and Zita kiss and he calls her ‘doll face’ and ‘peaches,’ so it’s all good. He then gives it the full Han Solo treatment when she says ‘I love you,’ and he replies ‘I know.’ What a guy.
Howard leads the spider to an electrical substation, where the horny devil tries to hump a transformer and explodes. Still worth it.
Pretty much everyone survives, including the sexist general, but what follows is the oddest sting in giant spider movie history.
Zita is at a church wearing a black dress, so we assume Howard has died in the explosion and it’s his funeral. But then he walks in. It’s their wedding day, and Zita is about to change into her wedding dress.
She says he shouldn’t see her before the wedding because it’s bad luck, but he points out that she doesn’t have her wedding dress on yet, so the curse doesn’t apply.
Er…that’s about it. The movie ends. Sorry if you were expecting spiders.
Rating: 5 spider legs out of 8
The post Giant Spider Movie Review: THE GIANT SPIDER (2013) appeared first on Last Movie Outpost.
