Monsters Unleashed! Eight Legged Freaks: A Creepy Crawly Yet Hilarious Creature Feature

In a small mining town in the middle of nowhere, pollution mutates its spider population into enormous, monster sized spiders. Adding to the variety of this terror, a man in the town sells exotic spiders. So, you don’t simply have run of the mill SUV sized spiders, no, viewers also get to see tarantulas, trapdoor spiders, and black widows. It’s quite disgusting!

However, it’s disgusting in such a hilarious way. Eight Legged Freaks is a spoof of the 50’s radiation horror movies that, while scary back then, are quite comical if viewed today. Them of course springs to mind with its giant, killer ants.

The small town’s fun, and well written, cast of characters all convene in the town’s mall to battle the behemoth arachnids. It’s no holds barred, and no one is safe. The monster spiders bust through walls, they jump, they bite, they trap people in webs!

In a spoof horror comedy that went under the radar when released, you may not expect a decent cast, but that isn’t the case. Eight Legged Freaks sports David Arquette of Scream fame, Kari Wuhrer from Anaconda, and Doug E. Doug from Cool Runnings. However, much like those old informercials used to say, “But wait, there’s more!” In an early role, Scarlett Johansson stars as the teenage daughter of Wuhrer’s town sheriff.

Arquette is the town’s prodigal son that left years prior and comes back into town to stop the town from selling a mine that he believes has gold in it that can save the town from going bankrupt. Doug plays a local radio talk show host that believes every conspiracy theory he’s ever heard. Wuhrer plays a no-nonsense sheriff who Arquette used to have a crush on.

So, unlike many movies of this type that focus solely on the monsters and give you no characters to care for, Freaks gives you characters aplenty. That’s one of the many great things about this movie that puts it above others of its type. The spiders are creepy and fun to watch, but the audience will be rooting for these characters and hoping they don’t die. That gets you invested, gets you on the edge of your seat.

Viewers will be glued to the screen watching the cast struggle to survive. The spiders take people out left and right, sometimes in the blink of an eye. The idyllic small town quickly looks post-apocalyptic. The monsters look to have won as the remnants of the town’s population gathers for a final confrontation.

If you like horror comedies, Eight Legged Freaks will become a favorite. My family watches it yearly as one of our fun Halloween movies. It’s that level of fun and cheese rolled into one which everyone can watch and enjoy. Sure, it’s a horror movie, but it’s more of a comedy homage to those old 50’s horror movies. So, while there are jump scares gloriously coming around every corner, this is a horror movie for most any age.

As part of the movie’s great soundtrack, be on the lookout for the coolest version of “Itsy Bitsy Spider” you’ve ever heard.