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In the Spider’s Web is like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom without the initial hospitality at the palace, and weirder, and not as good.
The opening credits of In the Spider’s Web, as well as showing the usual names and job titles and stuff, feature clips of a woman on a surgical table cocooned in spiders’ web (except for her flat midriff, which is exposed. Cheeky).
A creepy hand with a spider tattoo and long yellow fingernails caresses her bare stomach. She’s got a belly button stud. I’m not sure why I mentioned that.
Next, we see the shadow of a man dropping a spider into his mouth and eating it. Yummy. The spider eater trails his fingernails across the woman’s stomach, as if miming an incision. He is, in fact, miming an incision.
It’s obviously Lance Henriksen, who gets top billing here and they’ve already given away that he’s the villain. Thanks a lot. He cuts the woman’s stomach open and she screams. So far, so freaky.
We cut to a group of backpackers walking through a jungle, with no title cards, establishing shots or context whatsoever. It’s not clear who they are, where they are, or more existentially, why they are.
They discover a huge web in the jungle and an altar where local villagers place dead tarantulas as an offering. They don’t say who the offering is for, but I’m going with Maa-Kalaratri, the spider God from Itsy Bitsy. I’m building a giant spider universe in my head, remember?
The Horror! The Horror!
They camp out for the night under the canopy of a massive spider web, which is ill advised. One, there’s spiders in it. Two, it’s not thick enough to keep the wind and rain off. Three…did I mention the spiders?
The inevitable happens: a spider drops onto Geraldine, one of the happy campers, and gives her a Nosferatu love bite on the neck.
Geraldine suffers a bad reaction to the bite, and the town is a day’s walk away, so they take her to the village where the spider worshipers reside. Their guide, Brian, informs them that an American doctor lives with the tribe and might be able to help.
Great, so they’ve got spider worshipers and Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now. The horror, the horror! What could possibly go wrong?
They arrive at the village and meet Marlon Brando Lance Henriksen. He plays Dr Lecorpus, who sounds like a spoof undertaker from a Carry On movie.
Some of the villagers are riding around on elephants, and the elephants have small ears, which makes them Indian elephants, which means we are in India. I’m happy to have worked it out, but it isn’t a mystery that needed to be solved. Title card, please.
Dr Lecorpus helps Geraldine by extracting venom from another spider with a massive syringe and injecting her with it.
I’m not convinced that the cure for a venomous spider bite is more spider venom, but go ahead, I guess. She’s bleeding from the mouth at this point, which means certain death in movie code.
Geraldine starts convulsing and Dr Lecorpus massages her stomach. It’s his thing. I wonder if she has a belly button stud.
Bolivian Baja Bullshit
Meanwhile, the villagers present the other backpackers with jewellery, vegetables and other offerings, which I thought was a nice gesture. The backpackers act like they’re being assaulted.
“Please, no. I’m allergic to kindness.”
Gina is the main character. She is snarky but pretty enough to get away with it. She doesn’t appreciate the spider-themed necklace she is given, nor the spell of protection that a villager casts for her. She’s got a lot to learn about basic hospitality.
Dr Lecorpus emerges from his hut and explains that Geraldine was bitten by a Bolivian Baja Spider. He then flexes on them by saying its Latin name: Atrax Robustus.
Nobody questions it, but I know that Atrax Robustus is the Latin name for the Sydney Funnel Web Spider, so he’s talking bullshit. If I didn’t already know he was the bad guy, this would have confirmed it.
Anyway, I was unable to find a Bolivian Baja spider in my research. It may be another name for a Wandering Spider or a Recluse Spider, or Dr Lecorpus might be talking out of his ass again. I suspect the latter, because he then says the Bolivian Baja Spider produces its own antivenom.
It’s his justification for shooting up Geraldine with more venom, but it’s nonsense. No spider produces its own antivenom, but only spider experts like us would know that. The trouble is he sounds convincing, and that’s how he continues to get away with…whatever the hell he’s doing.
Fingernails Mchairnet
A strange man arrives in the village, wearing a ragged sack made from matted spider webs over his head. Like Dr Lecorpus, he sports long yellow fingernails. The village is clearly lacking a manicurist.
Gina spots him and says ‘that’s my cue to leave,’ which is sensible.
Gina, an American portrayed by an English woman, is joined by John, an American portrayed by an Irishman, and Phil, an Irishman portrayed by an Irishman.
Gina’s friend Stacey, an American portrayed by a Scottish woman, remains at the village with Brian and Geraldine. Fingernails Mchairnet waves at them in a creepy manner before vanishing into thin air. Dr Lecorpus’ informs them that Mchairnet is his brother! The fingernails must be an inherited family trait.
Stacey asks about a legendary temple located nearby. Dr Lecorpus confirms its existence and offers her and Brian a tour. A villager escorts them to the temple entrance and then disappears.
THIS IS A CLUE! If the natives won’t journey any further, you shouldn’t either. But they do. Of course they do. The movie’s not going to start itself.
Dr Lecorpus says the local area is home to spiders from all around the world. He doesn’t explain how, but makes it sound mystical. The rock face outside the temple is carved into the shape of a giant spider and the inside of the tomb is FULL of the bastards.
They still enter! For no reason! It’s not like there’s a golden idol to retrieve. It’s just a tunnel complex infested with spiders.
Spooky Temple
I should mention now that In the Spider’s Web is one of those rare non-giant spider movies, unless I can count the rock carving as a giant spider. I thought not.
As with my previous non-giant spider movie reviews (Kingdom of the Spiders, Kiss of the tarantula and Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo), the sheer volume of spiders on display compensates for it. I suspect a giant spider exists in the tunnels, but we don’t see it, so I can’t prove it. I’ll come back to that.
Stacey and Brian get lost in the tunnels. Stacey gets a large spider on her stomach at one point, and I’m starting to think this is the director’s fetish rather than Dr Lecorpus’.
Then Brian is snatched in one of those annoying no-sound abductions. It’s a horror movie cliché that needs to die. People don’t just wink out of existence. If someone grabbed you in a spooky, echoey cave, there would be noise. I’d scream like a teenage girl at an Elvis concert (how’s that for a topical reference).
Stacey wanders about for a while before a million spiders descend upon her and cocoon her ass, at the apparent behest of Fingernails Mchairnet. I don’t know, maybe he’s a spider whisperer.
We then get a replay of the opening credits, except with Geraldine on the operating table, having her stomach caressed and then cut open by Dr Lecorpus (no belly button stud, sadly).
The operating theatre is inside the temple cave complex. Corpses lie on gurneys and hang from the ceiling in web like Christmas as Hannibal Lector’s house.
This doesn’t look sterile to me
Mchairnet takes a human organ (a liver, I think) out of a freezer and puts it in an ice box. It appears his masterplan involves harvesting human organs.
Santa Carla
Meanwhile, Gina is having a great time flirting with John on a bus. Up until now, the movie has created the impression that the village is in the middle of nowhere, but it turns out the transport links are pretty good.
They arrive in the next town and head for the police station, which has a notice board with the largest number of missing posters this side of Santa Carla.
They meet Sergeant Chadhri, who has only been in post for two weeks since his predecessor went missing (his poster is on the wall). He’s a good cop because he journeys to the village by himself to check on Geraldine. He arrives just as a helicopter lands.
Spying from the bushes, he sees villagers loading boxes, presumably filled with the vital organs of his predecessor, onto the chopper. Mchairnet, who apparently possesses teleportation powers, abducts Chadhri and takes him to Dr Lecorpus.
Dr Lecorpus is surprisingly cordial and answers his questions. However, Chadhri makes the mistake of asking to see the temple, and we all know what goes on there.
Chadhri
They could have subdued Chadhri at the village, but instead wait until he enters the caves before Mchairnet chases him through the tunnels with a sword. Perhaps they just prefer to compartmentalise their lives and keep business and pleasure separate.
Om Namah Shivaya
While Mchairnet is chasing Chadhri, Dr Lecorpus chills out in the cave with his spiders. He opens a container given to him by the people in the helicopter. Inside is…another spider.
There’s no mystical explanation for the world’s spiders being here – he just couriered them in. It makes me wonder what his business model is. Is he exchanging human organs for spiders, or are the spiders just gifts given in the spirit of hospitality?
Either way, it seems redundant to take delivery of yet another spider. It’s only a tarantula, and he’s sitting there with thousands of them. It’s like pissing in the ocean.
Gina nags John into returning to the village while Phil heads for another town (I guess the town they’re already in isn’t quite towny enough). Gina and John seem to be competing over who can perform the worst American accent (John wins…or loses, depending on your point-of-view).
They somehow find the temple, where a weird spider-themed rave is taking place. The villagers are busy banging drums, howling, eating spiders and convulsing like they dropped a bad pill.
They bring out Stacey, who is alive but cocooned in web. They lay her on a bed of more spider web, which supports her weight somehow. Lecorpus (I’m dropping the Dr because I don’t believe this man ever went to medical school) shoots her up with spider venom and she starts to convulse.
The villagers’ hooting and howling goes on for over five minutes. It’s like they’re competing with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom over who can have the most boring India-based human sacrifice scene in movie history (for the record, this movie wins…or loses. You know what I mean).
But at least they don’t have some idiot chanting ‘Om Namah Shivaya’ for ten minutes.
Flawed Business Model
Gina and John run into the cave to rescue Stacey, but are forced to flee when Lecorpus, Mchairnet and a bunch of Thuggee henchmen arrive.
After being chased through the tunnels, Gina and John fall into a pit, but spider webs break their fall. They tumble through layer after layer of webbing like marbles in a game of Kerplunk.
Eventually, they stop and use the web like a cargo net to crawl back up. Spider silk may be stronger than steel, pound for pound, but in reality, it’s so thin that you’ll just fall right through it. These strands are inches across, so I can only infer that a giant spider produced it.
I spent the whole movie waiting for the Queen Alien to arrive, but she doesn’t. Shame on them!
Unlikely though it may be, let’s accept that regular spiders can produce web of such diameter. Why not harvest it and sell it for its light but durable properties? There are at least two giant spider movies with this exact plot, plus it’s actually happening in real life!
But noooo. Lecorpus is busy paralysing people with spider venom and harvesting their organs like a psycho. But I guess he enjoys what he does now. Somebody once said if you enjoy what you do, you never have to work a day in your life. He’s living the dream.
Rope Bridge Time
Gina and John wander through the tunnels for a while (there’s a lot of that in the last act). Brian, the disappearing tour guide, reappears briefly for a death scene. It’s nice to get some closure on that.
They find Chadhri, who is still alive and looking for a way out. They discover Lecorpus’ unsanitary operating theatre. Chadhri spots his cocooned predecessor, long dead (I knew it). Stacey is on the operating table and Lecorpus is caressing her belly without consent. Hey, leave her alone man. Anyway, they rescue her.
They exit a tunnel and find themselves at another pit. They use the web as a rope bridge to cross. It’s not a tomb movie without a rope bridge scene (will it break or will it not? It will).
Gina falls but climbs back up, only to run into Lecorpus. She pulls him into the pit. Lecorpus lands in the web and his spiders kill him. Gina is saved by the lucky necklace given to her by the villagers earlier. It catches on a rock and arrests her fall without breaking either the necklace, or her neck. Okay sure, whatever.
John gets left on the wrong side of the pit (there’s always one). Chadhri says he’ll return for him, but they all give him sad looks like they know he’s doomed.
When they exit the tomb, a rescue party arrives and kills Mchairnet. They remove his hairnet and he looks like Lance Henriksen in his Alien3 make-up. Spiderlings crawl out of his hollow eye socket. Aww, cute.
“It’s dark in here, Ripley. I’m not what I used to be”.
John’s Sad Fate
The rescue party was arranged by Phil. Remember him? He’s the Irishman playing an Irishman and doing a damn good job of it, too.
Earlier in the movie, he reaches another town and finds an old newspaper with an article on Dr Lecorpus (I’m reinstating the Dr because the article says he’s a doctor and they wouldn’t lie). Phil snitches on him to the cops.
Everyone hugs and it seems like a feel-good ending, until we cut to John still wandering about in the tunnels. He screams as spiders descend upon him.
The movie ends with Gina back in town talking to Chadhri. Chadhri’s men are still looking for John, but without success. The final shot is of John, cocooned in the cave and looking directly at the camera as a spider crawls on his face.
It’s such a strange, downbeat ending. Maybe they are setting him up as the heir to Fingernails Mchairnet. In the next movie, we’ll see him achieve full symbiosis with the spiders and become their king.
He’ll pull on the hairnet and team up with Kelsey Grammar’s character from 7 Guardians of the Tomb, who suffered a similar fate. Here’s my working title: Spider Whisperer and the Meat Puppet Man.
Rating: 3 spider legs out of 8
The post Giant Spider Review: IN THE SPIDERS WEB (2007) appeared first on Last Movie Outpost.
