See Eight Legged Freaks in theaters while you still can...

[Ken Begg]

Eight Legged Freaks, while a tremendously fun movie, is bombing big time at the box office.  It's already fallen out of the top ten movies.  I saw it last night and it's *great*, easily the best fun sci-fi film I've seen since Tremors.  I just wanted to warn people that, especially in summer-crowded cinemas, this is going to be leaving theaters very quickly.  So don't dely under the belief that you can catch it later.

The only good thing is that maybe the DVD will be out for Christmas.  Hopefully, this will be a cult hit on home video, like Highlander.  Still, I can't believe this thing is bombing so badly.

[Abby]

I really enjoyed Eight Legged Freaks. I had to drive out of town to catch it, because my local theater received a messed up print. It was worth seeing on a big screen for sure. It had some minor problems, but it was a good time.

It reminded me a lot of Gremlins. And I think its Gremlins traits (Re: comic horror with a lot of not-so-bad people dying terribly) are why it's not doing better. Gremlins scored high because it was falsely marketed as a kids' movie. It was a one-time trick with a nasty backlash no one wanted to see repeated. Gremlins 2, a lighter film that was marketed more honestly, failed miserably.

I haven't seen any Eight Legged Freaks ads since last year. The ones I did see were aimed at ... well, me, ... but besides that, I don't know. I don't think they had any specific audience in mind when they first started pumping the film, then I think the ad well ran dry. And unlike Gremlins, they never falsely advertised the film.  It's not quite suitable for little kids, but it would be hard to demonstrate its bite to older audiences without totally alientating the younger set. It didn't receive the press from the horror world that Jason X received (nor is it horrible enough to strike it big with horror purists), and it's not sci-fi enough to make Trek world headlines.

So in the end, it was marketed to ... no one. Too bad, really. Heck, had they just waited until Halloween it would have sold itself.

[Chadzilla]

I think it will rev up big time on video/DVD (I'm tellin' you when it his its MINE!).  Word of mouth has been strong, but Abby is right, it was a hard sell.  I caught a few ads on Cartoon Network, but the agressive hype that would start 'buzz' just wasn't there.  Too bad, this was a truly satisying monster comedy for me.

[John]

>I haven't seen any Eight Legged Freaks ads since last year.

 Strange, I saw a ton of them right before and after the film opened. Haven't seen any in a week or so though.