Eight Legged Freaks Review Episode II: Attack of the Nouns

These two photos showcase the level of budgetary commitment to brilliant moviemaking that was in evidence throughout this production. God forbid we actually PAY a photodouble, or stunt double - what we’ll do is just put the Production Assistant in the pants. The shot with the guy watching TV cuts to a reverse angle of the TV, with the guy’s legs in the foreground, going crazy as he is horribly mutilated by the spider. Those were my legs, which I’m proud to say that from the waist down my performance was excellent. As it always is. Ahem.

Anyhoo, I’m still not ready to drop a star level on this movie, because I’m still working it out through these posts. Importantly, and you should all know this because it’s (I think) relatively interesting: Every single day, from the hours between 4:45 and 6:15, we were in what is known in the business as “magic hour.” It is dusk, essentially, when the particular level of natural sunlight just does some really exciting things, photographically, and the shots you get can often resemble moving paintings with shades of auburns and yellows and reds and browns that would otherwise be unavailable and really make shots look super special.

On a normal movie, for example, you might have one shot that in the script is listed as “EXT. THE RANCH – DUSK. The horses hang around.” You know, going in to it, that you’re just going to put some horses in the field, set up the cameras, and wait for the Director of Photography to tell you, “Yes, it’s beautiful now, roll the cameras.”

On THIS movie, however, in the script, Every Single Important Thing that happens (i.e. spiders start to attack, police scramble, huge shotguns are fired, townspeople flee in panic to an abandoned mall, etc. etc.), ALL of those things are scripted as happening “at dusk.”

So, for two weeks straight, we would have a normal shooting day (Kari Wuhrer walks around and talks about something irrelevant, David Arquette gets out of a pickup truck, etc.), up until the point of about 430 PM, where we would then enter this 2-minute, West Coast Hurry-Up Offense where we would suddenly be simultaneously firing shotguns straight toward camera, exploding green slime all over the place, skidding police cars to a halt 6 inches in front of camera, asking totally fat, Arizona local extras to full-on sprint down a hill in fear of imaginary CGI spiders, and also P.A.s (me) waving giant foam spider tentacles at actors - just complete and total chaos. To this day, I wonder how anyone wasn't actually killed. And more on that in the hotly-anticipated Part III of my review.

And it was awesome. Bottom line for Horrorthon, though – was all this super-cool behind-the-scenes action effective? Did the movie succeed on any level? I think so, to a point. The movie will always suffer from a Complete Retread Factor – we’ve seen "the story" already, and we don’t really care, but some of the stuff we executed actually DID come out looking pretty goddamn cool in the final cut. But is this really a "horror" movie that merits the title? Is it more "Shaun" than "Dawn?" Does anyone other than those reading this post actually make such fine, nuanced, laser-precision distinctions? Would anyone go back and watch it unless they were either A) in the credits or B) in the movie? Which is to say, only, um, me?

Part 3 of my ongoing, riveting review will deal with blowing up an ENTIRE tractor trailer truck, and how cool it is to do something like that. I'll also discuss how I was almost killed or seriously injured on six or seven non-consecutive occasions. Shooting horror movies ain't always the peaceful picnic you might think it is. Said review will also give all of you my official final star level review, which I don't even know yet, and that I know you're all waiting on tenterhooks for. [Sidebar: "Tenterhooks 4" being the working title for my own horror movie satire I'm working on. Just start with 4. 1 thru 3 is irrelevant because of the joke. Because you can't hang anyone on a tenterhook. Built-in English-major audience. Rake in billions.]


It is my sincerest hope that the Horrorthon family finds this information useful, informative, and entertaining, because I would love to lay sole claim to the role of the guy that just simply reviews ONE movie, ad nauseuam, every October.

Lowest, but most quality score, Ever.

Love you guys. Horrorthon!!!